Rafi Schwartz at Splinternews lists some Congressional people who offered thoughtsandprayers on the Las Vegas slaughter and have taken money from the NRA.

So who is sending their NRA-sponsored well wishes to the victims of the Las Vegas massacre today? Let’s take a look, with a little help from the campaign contribution database at opensecrets.org.

Missouri Republican Senator Roy Blunt received $11,900 from the NRA during the 2016 election cycle.

Saddened by the tragic loss of life in #LasVegas. My thoughts are with all of the families affected by this horrific attack.

— Senator Roy Blunt (@RoyBlunt) October 2, 2017

Virginia Congresswoman Barbara Comstock received $10,400 from the NRA during the 2016 election cycle.

I am heartbroken by the mass murder that took place last night in Las Vegas and I am praying for the victims, families, and first responders. The heroic actions taken by the SWAT team and many off duty police, no doubt saved many lives. To locate loved ones call 1-866-535-5654.

— Barbara Comstock (@RepComstock) October 2, 2017

North Carolina Senator Richard Burr; Colorado Congressman Mike Coffman; Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley; Texas Congressman Will Hurd…and a lot more. It’s a long inglorious list.

The sums are so small, too. Surely not worth the corruption.

I saw a tweet that staggered me.

Number of Americans killed on battlefields in all wars in history:

1,396,733

Killed by firearms in the US since 1968:

1,516,863

(NYT)

— richard bacon (@richardpbacon) October 2, 2017

Seriously?

Apparently so, yes. Politifact investigated and confirmed.

In a column published shortly after the on-air slayings of two TV journalists in southwestern Virginia, the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof offered some “data points” about the pervasiveness of gun violence in the United States.

One of them was: “More Americans have died from guns in the United States since 1968 than on battlefields of all the wars in American history.”

That sounded familiar. Really familiar. As it turns out, the web version of Kristof’s column sourced a PolitiFact article from Jan. 18, 2013, that fact-checked commentator Mark Shields’ claim that since 1968, “more Americans have died from gunfire than died in … all the wars of this country’s history.” (Shields used the year 1968 because it was the year presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated by gunman Sirhan Sirhan.)

We rated the claim True.

Two and a half years later, we wondered whether the statistic still held up, so we took a new look at the data.

They show their sources and add up the columns.

So the statistic still holds up: There have been 1,516,863 gun-related deaths since 1968, compared to 1,396,733 cumulative war deaths since the American Revolution. That’s 120,130 more gun deaths than war deaths — about 9 percent more, or nearly four typical years worth of gun deaths. And that’s using the most generous scholarly estimate of Civil War deaths, the biggest component of American war deaths.

We’ll offer some added thoughts for context.

These figures refer to all gunfire-related deaths, not just homicides. In fact, homicides represent a minority of gun deaths, with suicides comprising the biggest share. In 2013, according to CDC data, 63 percent of gun-related deaths were from suicides, 33 percent were from homicides, and roughly 1 percent each were from accidents, legal interventions and undetermined causes.

That’s a lot of suicides.

Another day in Crazyland.

A gunman on a high floor of a Las Vegas hotel rained a rapid-fire barrage on an outdoor concert festival on Sunday night, killing at least 58 people, injuring hundreds of others, and sending thousands of terrified survivors fleeing for cover, in one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history.

Online video of the attack near the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino showed the singer Jason Aldean’s performance at the Route 91 Harvest Festival, a three-day country music event, being interrupted by the sound of gunfire. The music stopped, and as victims fell bleeding, concertgoers screamed, ducked for cover, or ran.

The video clips show what a massive advantage the shooter had given himself – a huge open area on the ground packed with people, overlooked by a tall hotel, with the shooter on the 32d floor. There was nowhere to run to, no cover to take.

I have nothing intelligent to say about this.

I’ll just note that I read somewhere that the four worst mass shootings in US history all happened in this past decade – this one, Orlando, Sandy Hook, and Virginia Tech.

Meanwhile Congress keeps doing more to make guns easily available.

Yesterday there was an atheoskeptic or skeptoatheist conference in Milwaukee that was the subject of a lot of ginned-up “controversy” beforehand because that’s what the organizers went for. They invited several notorious Twitter abusers, because Let All the Voices Be Heard; some people who didn’t want to share a stage with notorious Twitter abusers dropped out, and others went ahead anyway.

One who went ahead was Thomas Smith of Serious Inquiries Only, who did a conversation with one of the worst notorious Twitter abusers, Carl Benjamin who tweets as Sargon of Akkad. Friends of mine were talking about how badly that went yesterday.

Charone Frankel posted a clip of the worst moment on Facebook.

Editing to add: Here is a sharper and easier to hear version on Twitter.

Sargoons cheer Carl Benjamin's tweeting 'I wouldn't even rape you' to a woman MP.#MythCon pic.twitter.com/Yo0O88Tejx

— drkmwinters (@KWintie) September 30, 2017

Carl Benjamin is no surprise. The cheers from the audience are a surprise.

In late January 2016 Richard Dawkins retweeted a typically malicious and misogynist tweet by Carl Benjamin, one that mocks a specific woman who had long been a target of Twitter abuse. He was disinvited to speak at the Northeast Conference on Science & Skepticism as a result, but there was more uproar over that so he was disdisinvited i.e. reinvited.

Things have not improved much since then.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight tells the media to quit rationalizing the monster.

I’m happy to acknowledge that Trump’s responses to the news are sometimes thought-out and deliberate. His criticisms of the media often seem to fall into this category, for example, since they’re sure to get widespread coverage and Republican voters have overwhelmingly lost faith in the media.

But at many other times, journalists come up with overly convoluted explanations for Trump’s behavior (“this seemingly self-destructive emotional outburst is actually a clever political strategy!”) when simpler ones will suffice (“this is a self-destructive emotional outburst.”). In doing so, they violate both Ockham’s razor and Hanlon’s razor — the latter of which can be stated as “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” One can understand why journalists who rely on having close access to Trump avoid explanations that portray Trump as being irrational, incompetent or bigoted. But sometimes they’re the only explanations that make sense.

Or, rather, irrational, incompetent and bigoted.

It isn’t complicated. What we see is what there is. He’s stupid, he’s malevolent, he has no impulse-control, he’s grotesquely narcissistic. He acts like an enraged toddler because he thinks and feels like an enraged toddler.

An organization called the American Life League was passing this around in 2014.

Suffering is a grace-filled opportunity to participate in the passion of Jesus Christ. Euthanasia selfishly steals that opportunity.

But no. The point of laws allowing help in dying is to help people who ask for it. You can’t call suffering any kind of “opportunity” when it’s imposed on people against their will. That’s like saying we’re giving the people of Puerto Rico an “opportunity” to die of dehydration or disease by failing to respond to the hurricane damage promptly. People who want to avail themselves of the grace-filled opportunity to participate in the passion of Jesus Christ by suffering will still be able to do that even when euthanasia is an available option. It’s that simple. It’s not “selfishly” stealing anything to let people decide how much suffering they want to put up with.

Tom “Air Miles” Price is out. If only he’d had the sense to hop on Amtrak he could have stuck around.

But don’t let them tell you this is Trump keeping his promise to drain that swamp.

Mr. Price’s job was on the line since the first of a string of reports by Politico on Sept. 19 about his extensive use of charter aircraft. Mr. Trump has fumed privately and publicly about Mr. Price’s actions, fearing that they undercut his promise to rid Washington of the sort of abuses that have soured the public on its political class. The president made clear on Friday that he also saw it as undermining his promise to save the government money, citing efforts to renegotiate contracts.

fearing that they undercut his promise to rid Washington of the sort of abuses that have soured the public on its political class.

Which is the more significant abuse – a Cabinet secretary chartering jets just because he can, or a president milking the job for every dime of profit he can get his tiny little hands on? Which is more genuinely corrupting? Which is more likely to skew the policies and actions of the government?

I leave it to your wisdom to determine.

Now US high schools are trying to force students to make the Approved Demonstration of Loyalty to a Song [or Piece of Cloth or Man With Strange Hair].

In Long Island, the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which runs a private Catholic school system, said students at its three high schools could face “serious disciplinary action” if they kneel during the anthem before sporting events.

Sean P. Dolan, a spokesman for the diocese, said on Friday that the letter, which was sent to principals, was intended to restate policy that the diocese already had in place.

But he added in an emailed statement: “Although the Diocese does not agree that demonstrations are appropriate in its schools during the playing of the National Anthem — which recognizes the tremendous sacrifices of Americans of all races, ethnicities and religions — it notes that students who seek to challenge racism and racial discrimination are firmly in accord with Catholic teaching.”

Which of course raises a separate question of whether or not education should be expected to conform to “Catholic teaching” in the first place, which I very strongly think it should not – but on the kneeling/standing question, I don’t buy this claim that playing a “national” song “recognizes the tremendous sacrifices of Americans of all races, ethnicities and religions.” I don’t buy the claim that that’s what it’s about. I think it’s a gesture of patriotism or nationalism, and nothing more than that. It’s far from confined to military contexts, so why should we think it’s about the military? Or maybe Dolan didn’t mean military sacrifices alone but sacrifices of any kind…but that would be an even more novel version of what singing a patriotic song is supposed to mean.

I think people are adding all these meanings to the song in order to justify trying to bully people over it. That makes it pretty circular.

“Respect the flag!”

“Why?”

“The war dead!”

“But it’s not about the war dead.”

“It is now!”

“Why?”

“Because respect the flag!”

In northwest Louisiana, Scott Smith, the superintendent of schools in Bossier Parish, said student athletes are expected to stand for the anthem. “It is a choice for students to participate in extracurricular activities, not a right, and we at Bossier Schools feel strongly that our teams and organizations should stand in unity to honor our nation’s military and veterans,” he said in a letter that was obtained by The New York Times.

But the supe’s personal feefees shouldn’t be a rule to the entire student body. Even his strong feefees shouldn’t. Schools are not the army, and students are not supposed to be under military discipline.

Waylon Bates, the principal of Parkway High School in Bossier City, La., a city of more than 60,000 people near Shreveport, outlined the punishment students would face at his school. He sent a letter on Thursday to athletes and parents saying athletes were required to stand “in a respectful manner” during the anthem.

Or?

Or they won’t be allowed to play.

“Failure to comply will result in loss of playing time and/or participation as directed by the head coach and principal,” the letter said. “Continued failure to comply will result in removal from the team.”

Just as Trump shouted on Twitter. Trump is controlling what high school athletes can do now.

When the issue is swept up into the public school system, as is happening in Louisiana, it runs up against students’ First Amendment rights and a Supreme Court ruling in 1943, which said public school students could not be forced to salute the American flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance if it conflicted with their religious beliefs. That ruling involved a case of Jehovah Witnesses who were expelled from school for not reciting the pledge.

“The law does not permit schools to forbid students from to expressing their views, and all schools should be on notice that these policies are in fact unconstitutional,” Marjorie Esman, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, said in an interview on Friday.

The Supreme Court also touched on students’ right to peaceful protest during public school hours in 1969, when it ruled in favor of students who wanted to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War.

The 1969 ruling essentially said that students do not lose their constitutional rights to free speech at the schoolhouse gate, said Francisco Negrón Jr., the chief legal officer of the National School Boards Association. If a protest is not disruptive, public schools have to allow it.

Catholic and other goddy schools of course can be as authoritarian as they like. Since “god” is an authoritarian concept in itself, that’s often very authoritarian.

Oh good, another heckuva job, Brownie.

“I am very satisfied,” acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke told reporters outside the White House. “I know it’s a hard storm to recover from but the amount of progress that’s been made, and I really would appreciate any support that we get. I know it is really a good news story in terms of our ability to reach people and the limited number of deaths that have taken place in such a devastating hurricane.”

Well, that’s because it takes a few days to die of dehydration and a few more to die of starvation. The deaths are expected to rise sharply as those few days tick by.

Tom Bossert, the White House homeland security adviser, expressed full confidence that the response effort is appropriately led and resourced and unfolding at a good pace.

“What I will tell you is that we are mobilizing and marshaling the resources of the United States of America in a way that is absolutely professional, fast, and adequate to meet the needs,” Bossert said alongside Duke.

“This is textbook and it’s been done well,” Bossert added later from the White House podium.

It’s only those silly people actually in Puerto Rico who don’t see it that way, and what do they know?

Duke’s suggestion that the federal response was a “good news story” struck some as tone deaf and reflected the perils of the Trump administration’s attempts to reassure Americans that the federal government is responding appropriately to the unfolding crisis.

Asked to clarify her comment that the government’s response to the storm is a “good news story,” Duke pointed to effective coordination between federal and local authorities and said there is “unification of command.”

Oh. Well that’s nice, I guess, but it loses sight of the actual goal, which is to keep people in Puerto Rico from dying in the horrible aftermath of the hurricane. It’s nice if everyone wears a clean uniform and all but it’s not really the core issue here.

President Donald Trump did not publicly address the situation in Puerto Rico on Thursday, but acknowledged a day earlier the difficulties of bringing quick relief to the island, calling it “a very difficult situation.”

“That place was just destroyed. That’s not a question of, gee, let’s dry up the water, let’s do this or that. I mean, that place was flattened. That is a really tough situation,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House.

One that he didn’t so much as mention in his official Twitter dispatches for several days because he was so laser-focused on the dire emergency of football players kneeling instead of standing for Our Patriotic Song.

Oh yes, oh yes – a male researcher has worked out (to his own satisfaction at least) that lesbianism is something to do with pleasing men.

A new study that attempted to reveal the origins of lesbianism, is claiming that same-sex relationships in women only exist because it turns men on.

Published on Science Direct, the report by Menelaos Apostolou, a male professor at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus comes to the conclusion that lesbian and bisexual attraction all stems from male desire.

Well that does make sense if you think about it, because only men are actually human. Women are just simulacra, remotely operated from the planet Androcentro.

“My argument in the paper is this: A considerable proportion of men desire same-sex attractions in women, and this is one possible reason why many women have such attractions,” Apostolou told Pink News.

The study also suggests another possible reason for men being attracted to lesbian or bisexual women, is that if their partner cheats on them, they’re still in with a chance of having children.

Deffo. Say you’re a man. You don’t want Your Woman getting pregnant by another man, because kids are expensive, dude. What to do, what to do. Solution! You make it so that she has sex with women instead of men.

Ok but how? How do you make it that she does that?

With the magic of your mind, of course.

“A woman, driven by her sexual desires, may seek sexual contact outside of her long-term intimate relationship,” it writes.

“When this woman has sex with another woman she does not have sex with another man which translates into same-sex contact reducing the risk of cuckoldry.”

Totally. If there are any kids, they’ll be your kids, and thus the expense won’t be so irritating.