Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Maxine Waters and Al Green among members of Congress who've shown up outside the Supreme Court to denounce the end of Roe. "Women are going to control their bodies, no matter how they try and stop us," Waters says. "The hell with the Supreme Court, we will defy them." pic.twitter.com/SCkicoQj68
— Alejandro Alvarez (@aletweetsnews) June 24, 2022
The Friday Stealth Dump didn’t work:
Credit where due:
Saturday Morning Open Thread: The Only Way Forward Is ThroughPost + Comments (168)
It was an honor to make an appearance on episode 5 of @RuPaulsDragRace All Stars 7 this week. I was inspired by the contestants because they know their power. Their freedom of expression is what America is all about. #PrideMonth pic.twitter.com/d5D7wubRKp
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) June 12, 2022
Let’s hope that Churchy Lafemme’s most famous quote only applies, this month, to Republicans and other domestic terrorists.
Monday Morning Open Thread: <em>Friday the 13th Falls…</em>Post + Comments (109)
Saturday was the designated day the March for Our Lives. So far, I am only aware of one jackal attending. Did anyone else attained a march yesterday?
Commenter caphilldcne shared pictures from the DC March for Our Lives and was kind enough to tell us about the DC march.
The March for our lives took place this afternoon near the Washington Monument.
I got there as someone tried to disrupt it and sent a few people scattering although they stage speaker let people know it was ok.
Of course there’s always some pro gun nut hiding their face. I was happy about the family standing in front of him. I flipped him off on behalf of jackals everywhere.
Pretty cloudy and cool in DC today so the pics are a bit gloomy.
On my walk home (about two miles) I took a picture of the national archives. Home to the constitution and Bill of Rights that has been so radically reinterpreted by the Injustices. Also a very DC plastered poster of John Lewis urging folks to vote.
Anyway I think the photos just don’t really show the crowd size well. My best guess is maybe 20,000? Based on nothing except that’s a large space plus people were coming and going.
Update: March for Our Lives estimates seem to be more at the 40,000 or 50,000!
March for Our Lives on Saturday June 11, in Washington DCPost + Comments (58)
The Post says the group of senators working on a bipartisan deal on gun safety will announce a tentative agreement shortly:
Under the tentative deal, a federal grant program would encourage states to establish “red flag” laws that allow authorities to keep guns away from people found by a judge to represent a potential threat to themselves or others, while federal criminal background checks for gun buyers under 21 would include a mandatory search of juvenile justice records for the first time.
It does not include a provision supported by President Biden, congressional Democrats and a handful of Republicans that would raise the minimum age for the purchase of at least some rifles from 18 to 21. Handguns are already subject to a federal 21-and-over age limit.
Other provisions could funnel billions of new federal dollars into mental health care and school security programs, funding new campus infrastructure and armed officers. Several senators last week said they expected one cornerstone of the deal would be legislation sponsored by Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) to establish a nationwide network of “community behavioral health clinics.”
The article says the senators who’ve been working on the deal are trying to get 10 Republicans to sign on as a signal that they have the votes to pass it. One of the leaders of the effort, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, was realistic about the possibilities given the current configuration of the U.S. Senate. He says he’s open to changes in the text as long as the bill contains provisions that would save lives. Speaker Pelosi echoed that sentiment.
Murphy and other Dems who’ve worked on the bill have been criticized for giving bipartisan cover to Republican intransigence on this issue. I understand that criticism. Now Republicans will claim they’ve “done something on guns,” even though this bill is a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. Maybe that will relieve the pressure on them, which they don’t deserve.
Also, I’m wary of the “school security programs” component. Robb Elementary was already a “hardened” school, and there were cops on hand. It didn’t save those kids. Schools are already too prison-like thanks to gun-humpers’ inability to face the fact that it’s The Precious that’s the problem rather than a lack of school security or access to mental health care.
But my initial thought is this bill is better than nothing and worth doing. The bill Republicans passed here in Florida after the Parkland massacre wasn’t nearly enough either, but the red flag law component alone has almost certainly saved lives since it’s been used more than 5,000 times since passage to keep guns out of the hands of people who were deemed a danger.
I wouldn’t call it a “breakthrough” necessarily, but it’s a crack in the armor, and that’s not nothing.
Open thread.
ETA: The WaPo updated the article to reflect the announcement, which was signed by 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans.
The second March For Our Lives rally will take place Saturday in Washington, D.C.
With recent shootings in Texas and New York, tens of thousands of people are expected at rallies around the U.S. this weekend demanding meaningful changes to gun laws. https://t.co/E2kTly9FI5
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 10, 2022
Saturday Morning Open Thread: Weekend SalmagundiPost + Comments (221)
As I’m sure we’re all aware by now some guy from California tried to get access to Associate Justice Kavanaugh’s home around 1:30 AM this morning to assassinate him. He didn’t get past the US Marshals assigned to patrol and secure the Kavavaughs’ property and the Kavanaughs themselves, immediately admitted to what he was doing, then admitted it again after he was Mirandized. Several hours later Senator McConnell did his usual lachrymose bit on the Senate floor demanding the Democratic led House of Representatives immediately pass the bill that the Senate unanimously passed in under half an hour to increase the security and protection of the Supreme Court justices. You may recall the Senate actually moving very fast about a month ago within several hours of Associate Justice Alito’s neighbors hosting a block party to protest Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe V Wade. The neighbors were armed with such deadly weapons as wine, cheese, crudites, and s’mores for the kids!
It is important to note that it is already illegal to protest at the homes of Supreme Court justices and that protesting at/in front of the Supreme Court itself is severely restricted. There’s no reporting on what the home owners’ association covenants in Associate Justice Alito’s neighborhood have to say about this.
If the motto on my business cards wasn’t “The question IS NOT am I paranoid; the question is AM I PARANOID ENOUGH?” and because I don’t believe in coincidences, I’d almost think this was all too convenient.
Regardless, part of the problem here is the Republican Party and the conservative movement has been very vocal that the 2nd Amendment was actually intended to stop tyranny and/or overthrow the government, not for hunting.
Here’s Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Gun Owners of America) saying that on his House web page:
The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is not principally about hunting or recreation. In fact, the Second Amendment to our Constitution is our Founding Fathers’ restatement of our natural God given right to defend life, liberty, and property.
Here’s Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Pedo) making it even more explicit:
The Second Amendment is not about hunting, recreation, or sports. The Second Amendment is about the ability to maintain, within the citizenry, an armed rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary. I hope it never does.
Here’s the video, which was at one of his joint appearances with Congresswoman Taylor Greene (R-Sex With Someone Other Than My Husband In the Crossfit Box).
Here’s Senator Rand Paul (R-Moscow Oblast), who was almost shot when the GOP softball practice was targeted for a little armed rebellion if you know what Matt Gaetz means and I think you do (it means paying teenagers to dress up like Jefferson Davis and have sex with him).
Why do we have a Second Amendment? It’s not to shoot deer. It’s to shoot at the government when it becomes tyrannical!
Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Had Sex With the Guy Who Looks Like Zangrief and Is Not My Husband) has this to say about the 2nd Amendment on the Blue Footed Booby of Budapest’s radio show:
“Ultimately, the truth is it’s our Second Amendment rights, our right to bear arms, that protects Americans and gives us the ability to defend ourselves from a tyrannical government,” she said. “And I hate to use this language, but Democrats, they’re exactly … they’re doing exactly what our Founders talked about when they gave us the precious rights that we have.”
Here’s what Congresswoman Boebert (R-I Bought Bolt Ons Bigger Than My Head In the Hope That My Husband Will Stop Exposing His Penis To Teenage Girls In the Bowling Alley Instead and Will Instead Look at My Aftermarket Chest) had to say about the 2nd Amendment:
Congresswoman-elect Lauren Boebert says with a giggle that the Second Amendment “has nothing to do with hunting, unless you’re talking about hunting tyrants, maybe.” Boebert expressed this opinion in an interview with Breitbart News at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit held in Florida last week.
While not a Republican official, here’s The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway’s take on the 2nd Amendment:
“I think it’s comforting for simple-minded people to think that restricting the natural right to keep and bear arms would solve all of our problems, that destroying the Constitution would solve our problems,” said Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway on Fox News after President Joe Biden’s Thursday night gun control address. “We have a natural right of self-defense and to guard against tyranny in the Second Amendment, this is something that makes us American.”
“And Joe Biden showed that he does not respect the Constitution,” Hemingway continued. “He does not support this natural right. That really is an impeachable offense to talk this way against something so foundational to the country.”
Let’s leave aside the conflating of natural rights, which is a Catholic theological concept, with the US Constitution, which is not the reason to cite Hemingway here is she’s been beside herself all day about this. And quite frankly that’s TWO Mollie Hemingway’s too many! Earlier today Hemingway was freaking out about Associate Justice Kavanaugh’s safety and how this is all Senator Schumer’s fault for inciting Americans to acts of terrorism against the Republican members of the Supreme Court. Or any other elected or appointed official either.
Consistency, little minds, hobgoblins…
It took me two minutes of keyword searching to find these quotes and videos. It took 35 minutes longer to copy, paste, and write it all up in a post than it did to find it with the keyword search.
This rhetoric, specifically indicating that the sole purpose of the 2nd Amendment is so that Americans can either scare elected and appointed officials into doing what they want them to do or not do or to overthrow the government is all the rage in the Republican Party and conservative movement. As a result none of them should be surprised, least of all Senator McConnell, when an American decides to take his 2nd Amendment rights out for a cross country adventure to stop what he believes is tyrannical behavior by an appointed government official with lifetime tenure and his own security detail.
That’s not to condone what fortunately didn’t happen in the early morning hours on the mean, manicured lawns of suburban Maryland. But given the Republicans own violent rhetoric and publicly expressed fantasies it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that someone is listening, absorbing it, and ultimately acting on it.
That’s why we call it stochastic terrorism.
Finally, the 2nd Amendment is NOT about overthrowing the government, it was about Madison trying to finagle the thorny issue of who would have control over the state militias in order to keep the anti-Federalists from preventing the Constitution being ratified and destroying the US before it had a chance to get started. The best history of this is Saul Cornell’s A Well Regulated Militia.
Open thread!
Axon, the company that developed the Taser, announced it was pausing plans to develop a stun-gun-equipped drone that it said could be used to prevent mass shootings. Nine members of its ethics board resigned after the company announced the proposal. https://t.co/aivVdt3J0M
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 6, 2022
Nobody respects all-American entrepreneurship any more! From an earlier AP article:
… In an interview with The Associated Press, Axon founder and CEO Rick Smith said he felt compelled to make the idea public after the mass shooting at an Uvalde, Texas elementary school, saying he was “catastrophically disappointed” in the response by police who didn’t move in to kill the suspect for more than an hour…
“This is an idea that should get into the public’s consciousness while our minds are open to it and I felt if I wait another six months, the world is going to change and people are going to forget this pain and we’re going to see a shift in sentiments where people are going to focus a lot more on what could go wrong, rather than the pain of this problem we need to solve,” he said.
Axon’s stock price rose with the news. But the announcement angered members of the ethics board…
“This particular idea is crackpot,” said Barry Friedman, a New York University law professor who sits on the Axon AI Ethics Board. “Drones can’t fly through closed doors. The physical properties of the universe still hold. So unless you have a drone in every single classroom in America, which seems insane, the idea just isn’t going to work.”…
“We begged the company not to do it,” Friedman said of the company’s announcement. “It was unnecessary and shameful.” …
Board members who spoke with The Associated Press said they were taken aback by the school drone proposal — which they got notice of only earlier this week — and cobbled together a unanimous statement of concern that described Axon’s decision as “deeply regrettable.” The company tweeted out the board’s dissent shortly after its own statement Thursday announcement…
On Friday in an “Ask Me Anything” chat on the online forum Reddit. Smith acknowledged that “drones in schools can sound nuts” but went on to answer detailed questions about them. They could travel through school vents, he said, and perch on doors and walls near ceilings. It could be a “good thing” if a gunman tried to shoot one down because it would distract from trying to kill people.
“We’re doing this because we care,” Smith said. “We’re a business so ultimately we have to find a financial model that works, but at the end of the day we’ve been successful because our mission drives our business and we solve problems we care about,” he added.
Smith told a Reddit user that Axon was “absolutely not” trying to capitalize on recent tragedies to attract investors. He noted the advisory board’s disagreements but said the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas — and what he described as misguided proposals to arm teachers with guns — compelled him to go public with the drone idea to field a “far broader array of voices.”
I’m sure ‘personal protection taser drones’ would be very exciting to people who think they need AR-15s. At least until the ‘sharks with laser beams on their heads’ and ‘guard dogs that shoot bees out of their mouths’ prototypes become available.
Monday Evening Open Thread: Minor BlessingsPost + Comments (73)
