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:

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

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:

One 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

Oh honestly. Not this again. “I am Skeptic, I can settle all this for you with some Facts.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson:

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

Good move.

In 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

Siva Vaidhyanathan points out:

In 2015 the man who is now governor of Texas Tweeted this:

 … Read the rest

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

The BBC home page right now:

It’s a broken place.… Read the rest

Mitch McConnell yesterday:

The entire nation is horrified by today’s senseless violence in El Paso. Elaine’s and my prayers go out to the victims of this terrible violence, their families and friends, and the brave first responders who charged into harm’s way.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just now:

The House passed HR8, a Bipartisan Background Checks Act, 5 months ago and the Senate has yet to vote on it. It was one of our 1st major priorities after ending the gov shutdown. You’ve been sitting on it since February giving bogus excuses. Care to explain the people why?

I did an angry reply to McConnell myself yesterday. It’s stomach-turning watching Trump and McConnell pretend to be sad about El Paso when … Read the rest

If NewsOne is right the El Paso mass murderer is a white supremacist Trump fan.

While officials did not immediately announce the identity of the shooter, the Washington Examiner reported that “A law enforcement source in El Paso told the Washington Examiner that 21-year-old suspect Patrick Crusius from Dallas, Texas, has been taken into custody.”

A manifesto purportedly written by Crusius, perhaps even in the hours before the shooting attack that according to one report left at least 15 people dead, was left behind. Pages of the manifesto included anti-immigrant rhetoric with the author going into depth on why he is “against race mixing,” supports the idea to “send them back” and offering a prediction of “genocide.”

Lie down … Read the rest

Good to see he protected his hearing before killing at least 18 people at random.

… Read the rest

Brilliant juxtaposition. So appropriate, so thoughtful, so sensitive.

… Read the rest