Obama said it far better than Trump did.
We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments; leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people.
Yes we should. Looking squarely at you, Donald Trump.… Read the rest
The White House has now released the transcript of Trump’s dreadful, clumsy statement this morning. It was clumsy because he’s so desperately bad at reading a prepared speech. It was also worse than clumsy.
… Read the restGood morning. My fellow Americans, this morning, our nation is overcome with shock, horror, and sorrow. This weekend, more than 80 people were killed or wounded in two evil attacks.
On Saturday morning, in El Paso, Texas, a wicked man went to a Walmart store, where families were shopping with their loved ones. He shot and murdered 20 people, and injured 26 others, including precious little children.
Then, in the early hours of Sunday morning in Dayton, Ohio, another twisted monster opened fire on a crowded
How did Trump manage to swap Toledo for Dayton in his hostage video address to the nation today?
He can’t read, so he misread the teleprompter.
The Trump campaign owes El Paso hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And yet…
President Donald Trump has pledged the federal government will provide “whatever is needed” to help El Paso, Texas, recover from a mass shooting Saturday that killed 22 people.
But Trump’s own 2020 re-election committee still hasn’t paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in police and public safety-related bills and late fees that El Paso city officials say it owes from Trump’s campaign visit on Feb. 11.
“The Trump campaign has not paid the invoice as of yet,” El Paso spokeswoman Laura Cruz-Acosta confirmed to the Center for Public Integrity late Monday morning.
Well. You know. That’s Trump money – money to promote … Read the rest
i guess mitch is ok with a bunch of his white boys symbolically attacking a cutout of aoc
One choking, one pointing at her crotch – all good clean fun. Hurr hurr.
Updating to add an observation:
It’s worth noting that strangulation is an almost uniquely gendered crime. A large majority of victims are women (often intimate partners of their attackers) and the vast, vast majority of perpetrators are men.
It’s one of those areas where the size and strength advantage is relevant.… Read the rest
About the Dayton mass-murderer:
[P]olice said there was nothing in the background of 24-year-old Connor Betts that would have prevented him from purchasing the .223-caliber rifle with extended ammunition magazines that he used to open fire outside a crowded bar.
Nothing at all?
High school classmates of the gunman who killed nine people early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, say he was suspended for compiling a “hit list” of those he wanted to kill and a “rape list” of girls he wanted to sexually assault.
Oh, that.
The entire paragraph reads:
… Read the restHigh school classmates of the gunman who killed nine people early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, say he was suspended for compiling a “hit list” of those he wanted
In the least surprising news ever…
President Donald Trump tried to blame a lot of things Monday for a series of horrific shootings over the weekend. What he didn’t do was take any of the blame onto himself or pledge to change his rhetoric.
Well. This is Trump. Has he ever in his life taken any blame for anything?
I don’t know for a fact that he hasn’t, because I wasn’t there, but I think if he ever had we would have been told. From everything we’ve been all too able to see, he never does and he is incapable of ever doing so. He’s incapable of it in the same sense I’m incapable of speaking Mandarin. I’ve never … Read the rest
Saturday the official Twitter account of Mitch McConnell for the Senate tweeted:
The Grim Reaper of Socialism at #FancyFarm today. #FancyFarm139
Amy McGrath is his Democratic opponent. That’s her name on the tombstone in the lower right corner. She tweeted this morning:
Hours after the El Paso shooting, Mitch McConnell proudly tweeted this photo. I find it so troubling that our politics have become so nasty and personal that the Senate Majority Leader thinks it’s appropriate to use imagery of the death of a political opponent (me) as messaging.
As far as I can tell it was the campaign account that tweeted it rather than McConnell himself, but that’s a minor distinction, especially since the tweet is still sitting … Read the rest
The Trump gang drives another scientist out of government work:
… Read the restOne of the nation’s leading climate change scientists is quitting the Agriculture Department in protest over the Trump administration’s efforts to bury his groundbreaking study about how rice loses nutrients due to rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Lewis Ziska, a 62-year-old plant physiologist who’s worked at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service for more than two decades, told POLITICO he was alarmed when department officials not only questioned the findings of the study — which raised potentially serious concerns for the 600 million people who depend on rice for most of their calories — but also tried to minimize press coverage of the paper, which was published in the journal
Trump says this could be GREAT. It’s up to us. We can do this! We can make it GREAT! Make American mass-murder great again! MAMGA!
We cannot let those killed in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, die in vain. Likewise for those so seriously wounded. We can never forget them, and those many who came before them. Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying……..this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform. We must have something good, if not GREAT, come out of these two tragic events!
Come on, kids! Make it GREAT!! It’s in your hands!… Read the rest
Trump gave a “statement” this morning. I tried to watch it but it’s too unbearable, watching him try to pretend to care, try to pretend to be shocked and sad, try to pretend to be an adult.
The Guardian calls the statement “scattered,” which is tactful.
… Read the restTrump issued a statement on the attacks in El Paso and Dayton in which he blamed violent video games and mental health-care, among other things, for mass shootings.
Condemning the “barbaric slaughters,” Trump called on the nation to reject racism. “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” Trump said.
But he then pivoted to any number of other subjects — including violent video games, access to mental-heath care and
Oh honestly. Not this again. “I am Skeptic, I can settle all this for you with some Facts.”
In the past 48hrs, the USA horrifically lost 34 people to mass shootings.
On average, across any 48hrs, we also lose…
500 to Medical errors
300 to the Flu
250 to Suicide
200 to Car Accidents
40 to Homicide via Handgun
Often our emotions respond more to spectacle than to data.
?????
Dude, we know lots more than 34 people die in the US every day. We know. But when one person with a big gun kills a lot of people in seconds, yes, we pay attention. We pay attention and we have emotions about it. We ought… Read the rest
… Read the restIn the waning days of Barack Obama’s administration, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a set of grants to organizations working to counter violent extremism, including among white supremacists. One of the grantees was Life After Hate, which The Hill has called “one of the only programs in the U.S. devoted to helping people leave neo-Nazi and other white supremacy groups.” Another grant went to researchers at the University of North Carolina who were helping young people develop media campaigns aimed at preventing their peers from embracing white supremacy and other violent ideologies. But soon after Trump took office, his administration canceled both of these grants. In its first budget, it requested no funding for
Fox News declares in a headline:
Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke slam Trump in wake of El Paso massacre, face backlash for politicizing tragedy
I stare, I blink, I stare some more.
For politicizing? What, because in fact it was just a random natural event, like a volcano burping? It was a Tragedy but not at all a political act?
Come on now.
The “tragedy” is political in so many ways. It’s political because the NRA is political, and the NRA is why we can’t have any restrictions on gun ownership. It’s political because El Paso is on the border, and mostly Hispanic. It’s political because the US grabbed Texas from Mexico in 1845. It’s political because Trump has been spewing … Read the rest
And via Ensaf Haidar:
Burqa pride.… Read the rest
Forests. Forests and climate change. It’s not just in Siberia and Alberta and California that they’re in danger of disappearing altogether. Germany too is losing forests.
… Read the restGermany’s parched forests are nearing ecological collapse, foresters and researchers warn. More than 1 million established trees have died since 2018 as a result of drought, winter storms and bark beetle plagues.
Germany’s forests are undoubtedly suffering as a result of climate change, with millions of seedlings planted in the hope of diversifying and restoring forests dying, warns Ulrich Dohle, chairman of the 10,000-member Bunds Deutscher Forstleute (BDF) forestry trade union.
“It’s a catastrophe. German forests are close to collapsing,” Dohle added in an interview with t-online, a online news portal of
The BBC’s Gordon Corera on the rise of fascist violence:
The El Paso shooting fits a growing and disturbing trend of far-right violence internationally.
Like the attack in Christchurch, the suspected attacker fits a particular profile – an individual who may have acted alone but who inhabited an international online subculture of extremism, one in which others incite and encourage violent acts.
A document – which authorities have linked to the attacker – was posted online and was characteristic in its claims about population replacement (in New Zealand it was Muslims, in El Paso, Hispanics).
The “population replacement” thing is absurd. Anglo-Saxons did quite a bit of Maori-replacement in New Zealand, and Spanish people replaced Mayans and others in … Read the rest
Please, tell us again how Trump has nothing to do with inspiring white supremacists to go on shooting sprees in border city Walmarts.
