Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

The revolution will be supervised.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

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

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

No Justins, No Peace

You are here: Home / Politics / Gun Issues / Open Thread: Red Staters for Moloch

Open Thread: Red Staters for Moloch

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I can think of nothing worse than children — in school, sitting at their desks, reading banned books. A horrible thought, all those children solemnly holding books in their hands and reading them and putting the thoughts in those books into their minds. Learning the wrong lessons and growing up — the wrong way. Growing all the way up. Getting to grow up and think thoughts about those improper things they read in unsanctioned books, their whole lives, maybe. Horrible. I can think of nothing worse. Children who get to be 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and beyond — children who get to grow and have children of their own, and call their mothers or forget to call them, children who get to see the places they always wanted to see and children who get to be the best aunts in the world, but one afternoon in 2023 they read a book I didn’t approve of. I can’t imagine anything more horrible. Something must be done. To protect the children, we must stop at nothing…

I can’t think of anything worse than children reading history and feeling bad. Imagine, children, going home alive to their parents and complaining that they were made to feel bad by reading about the horrible events of the past. Can you think of a worse thing? Imagine that happening to a child. Imagine being a parent, and seeing the door open, and your child come through it, unharmed, with a complaint about a textbook. Unthinkable. Awful. Frightening. We must pass legislation…

Can you think of something worse? Are you thinking of something worse? Don’t worry: I will not think of it. I will not legislate about it. I will not give it a moment’s concern. To protect the children, I will stop at nothing. At absolutely nothing.

Reader Interactions

36Comments

  2. 2.

    Elizabelle

    Good post, Anne Laurie.  Are you and spousal unit back to health, or most of the way?

    And good for Joel Wertheimer for calling out that asinine tweet by Dan Hodges.  It is cheap cynicism, it is not true,  and I cringe every time I see it.

  3. 3.

    Alison Rose

    Hell yes, Rep Bowman. Massie can fuck all the way off.

    And while I understand the dude’s point re: the Sandy Hook tweet, I think the original statement was about the fact that with the GOP as it is now, we’re never going to get meaningful federal reform, and that matters a lot. Yes, things happen at the state level in some places, and yes, activists and groups have made some big strides. And sure, people say they want these laws…and then some of those people elect GOPers who won’t do a fucking thing.

    Which is why electing more Democrats is crucial. Because at least we have one party that wants kids to live.

  4. 4.

    Elizabelle

    Alexandra Petri is a new mother.  She must be wondering how much can be improved in the four or five years before her firstborn goes to school.

  5. 5.

    kalakal

    I think it will change for the better but I am so sick and tired of all the blood and misery on the way.

    Fuck the NRA

  6. 6.

    Raoul Paste

    The parents of the children in the Uvalde shooting were asked for samples of their (the parents’) DNA after the incident.  They needed it to identify the blown-apart children.
    A.R. 15s are not like ordinary guns.  The preferred weapon of the mass shooter.  And apparently, the preferred lapel pin of some Republican congressmen

  7. 7.

    Elizabelle

    @Raoul Paste:  The WaPost has been running a series on AR 15s in America this week.  The day they put up their “this is what an AR 15 does to a human body” item, the Nashville AR 15 murders at a school knocked their story off top of the website.

  8. 8.

    dmsilev

    Time for WaterGirl to bake her cake. WaPo screaming headline:

    TRUMP INDICTED

     

    A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict former president Donald Trump, making him the first person in U.S. history to serve as commander in chief and then be charged with a crime — and setting the stage for a 2024 presidential contest unlike any other.

    The indictment was sealed, which means the specific charge or charges are not publicly known. But the grand jury had been hearing evidence about hush money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, allegedly to keep her from saying she’d had a sexual encounter with Trump years earlier. It comes after weeks of speculation about whether and when Bragg might take such a step, setting the stage for a courthouse showdown between one of the most combative politicians in modern American history and local prosecutors who have pursued him for years.

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    @Leto: Yeah, I’m not surprised… Been busy all afternoon with Real Work ™, so this was the only thread I’ve read here for most of the day.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    OT. The Catholic Church is woke.

    The Vatican on Thursday responded to Indigenous demands and formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery,” the theories backed by 15th-century “papal bulls” that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property laws today.

  16. 16.

    Mike S

    The Florida Legislature passed  a permitless, concealed carry law to honor those children today. A recent poll showed that the citizens of Florida were overwhelmingly against it, including 66% of republicans.

    Like Steve M said either yesterday or today, they can do this because they will never be punished by their voters. They can shoot children on Miami Beach without losing support.

  18. 18.

    scav

    Ah, as for home schooling?  Having a gun in the household means that child faces a substantially higher risk of being shot.  Still, I guess that’s another win for parental control.

  20. 20.

    Geminid

    @Mike S: I think the only time I’ve seen a Republican politician take a pro-gun control stance was over permitless concealed carry. In 2019, a challenger to my state Senator, Emmet Hanger, advocated permitless concealed carry, and Hanger slammed her for it in his mailings. He won easily.

  21. 21.

    Dan B

    @dmsilev:  Maggie Haberman (yuk, but she has access) reports that former Trump employees are sending congratulatory emails to each other.

  23. 23.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Mike S:

    they can do this because they will never be punished by their voters.

    Their voters want the kind of asshole who will pass the most horrible laws possible, and by and large they are getting what they wanted and happy about it.  The actual laws passed are a side issue of lesser importance.

  24. 24.

    Elizabelle

    Meanwhile, in the UK, they are dealing with a “phantom cat shaver.”  WaPost:

    At least 80 pets have reportedly had chunks of their fur sliced out since last year, according to an animal charity that is mapping out the attacksto help warn concerned owners. The strange incidents have received national coverage, with British media dubbing the unknown perpetrator the “phantom cat shaver.”

    The vast majority of attacks have been reported in the southern county of Kent, although the organization has also recorded attacks in London and as far north as Aberdeen, Scotland.

    Aberdeen.  A copycat cat shaver, methinks.

  25. 25.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Dan B:

    Maggie Haberman (yuk, but she has access) reports that former Trump employees are sending congratulatory emails to each other.

    The sort who now appear on MSNBC?

  26. 26.

    dm

    Over on Mastodon I saw a photo of a classified ad that read:

    Perhaps it is a good time for all Patriotic Americans to donate their AR-15s to the Ukrainian army.

  29. 29.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Sister Golden Bear: ​@Elizabelle: ​
    First time in London (spring 2022) I went looking for (and found!) Lee Ho Fook’s. And when I walked in the first diner I saw had a distinctly, uh, lycanthropic air about him. Though he was chowing down, not on chow mein, but a bento box. Details, details… Aaaaaaooooooow!​

  31. 31.

    kindness

    What will it take for Republicans to start listening to the majority of their voters?  I mean the majority of Republican voters that support some gun restrictions/control.  The elected ones, the party Republicans?  Nothing.  They could care less what their voters think because they think their voters will continue to vote Republican.  I’m sad because I think they’re right.  There isn’t an answer to the US’s gun problem that doesn’t involve important people being killed by the guns they currently shield.  It isn’t even karma but it’s still a bitch.

  32. 32.

    Tony G

    @SpaceUnit: I was working at an IBM office in a semi-rural area of upstate New York when the Sandy Hook massacre occurred.  Some of the guys — northern rednecks, in my opinion — in my office responded by purchasing more guns “before Obama grabbed them”.  Obviously the gun industry and the NRA have plenty of blood on their hands. But the real problem is a significant minority of the American people.

  34. 34.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    Petri’s dispatch reminds me of what Neil Gaiman said about Terry Pratchett, how beneath the humor there was an undercurrent of rage. I couldn’t fault Pratchett for his rage, and I can’t fault Petri for hers.

    I mean, the GOP probably doesn’t realize it, but the path they want to put the US on leads to Borogravia: an insane country in an senseless eternal war, shackled by nonsensical rules and parroting empty faith to a dead god.

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