US Politics: Dominoes falling, GOP failing, what a time to be alive!

[Luzifer's right hand]

The dream of righteously killing people is pretty standard among gun fetishists. It does not take that much to push that dream into unlawful territory I feel as the value of other people's lives is already pretty low in their minds.

[Bironic]

23 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I am feeling this so acutely right now as at the beginning of the week and Afro Cuban amiga, with whom we've been close for years, the single mother of triplets, who lived with her mother, committed suicide, threw herself off the balcony of their apartment 37 stories up.  Her note said, "I am worthless, I see this every day.  You are better off without me."  That was it

That's so sad. I am sorry for her, for her family and for you.

24 minutes ago, Zorral said:

committed suicide,

That's generally a far more likely outcome for somebody that struggles with mental health issues than mass murder... but it doesn't get nowhere near the same media coverage

26 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Yet, in every instance, of just those mass murders I listed above, committed with Those Weapons, the conclusion in all these cases, is that these murderers were lone wolves who suffered mental health issues.

I have no medical or psychological degree and I don't know enough about these cases, but there are nowhere near the same amount of mass shootings anywhere else in the world compared to the USA. And I don't think that people outside of the USA have all much better mental health (that last point might be wrong, maybe they have a similar amount of mental health but better help)

30 minutes ago, Zorral said:

is that our entire capitalist society fosters mental health issues

That's certainly true but it's true almost everywhere to quite the same degree and yet mass shootings are very unique to the USA...

32 minutes ago, Zorral said:

 in every way from the amount of graphic violence that we can consume 24/7 without interruption,

That is different a bit in certain countries (europe generally tends to censor violence in entertainment more than the USA while being much more relaxed when it comes to sex or four letter words), but again the amount of graphic violence is overall not so dissimilar...

34 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The real problem, besides how easy it is to obtain and keep these dreadful weapons in the hands of private citizens,

And here is the main difference between the USA and the rest of the world...

[LongRider]

@Zorral , very saddened to hear of your friend's suicide.  It's shattering for the survivors, whether they be friends or family.   I would give you a hug if I could.   

[Makk]

Quote

We already knew the 40-year-old worked as an army firearms instructor, according to an internal police notice, and has 20 years of military experience. 

The notice said Card had been committed to a mental health facility for two weeks this summer.

It also said Card had reported hearing voices and had threatened to carry out a shooting at the military training base in Saco, Maine.

It did not provide specific details about his treatment or condition.

I don't know how accurate these details are but I have read them in two places now. It seems staggering that this guy was in a mental health facility recently for a couple of weeks, threatened to carry out a shooting, but they didn't take away his guns. Are you allowed to own a gun in the US if you have been checked in for mental health issues?

[JGP]

58 minutes ago, Makk said:

I don't know how accurate these details are but I have read them in two places now. It seems staggering that this guy was in a mental health facility recently for a couple of weeks, threatened to carry out a shooting, but they didn't take away his guns. Are you allowed to own a gun in the US if you have been checked in for mental health issues?

Depends on the State, but if there're no background checks then it'd follow there'd also be few [if any] restrictions. 

[Zorral]

Maine friends who are in the Bowdoin community are locked down/sheltering in place as the killer is still on the run.  He grew up there, so it's not at all unlikely that he'd head there -- it's only 30 miles from Lewiston.  Here They are telling us to be careful and keep watchful in case he shows up here.  I highly doubt that. Observed bitterly, It's a long, difficult journey to get to this place where he's got no connection,  particularly if he is mentally disturbed. 

I've been losing so many people again, I just ... can't.  The idea that another person with whom I'm close gets hurt this week just sends me spiraling down.  Our friend's Partner, with whom they conceived and parented a wonderful child into productive lovely adulthood, has been battling cancer for nearly a year and a half.  She passed yesterday too, with him holding her hand.  I can't even imagine ... want to give him love and support, but speaking with another friend who went through this with his wife a few years ago, he confirmed the right thing to right in these first hours is to let him be alone.  The transition from dying, and all that caregiving, to when it now death, and all the caregiving has stopped -- can only be done alone.

 

[Fragile Bird]

2 hours ago, Makk said:

I don't know how accurate these details are but I have read them in two places now. It seems staggering that this guy was in a mental health facility recently for a couple of weeks, threatened to carry out a shooting, but they didn't take away his guns. Are you allowed to own a gun in the US if you have been checked in for mental health issues?

From what I understand of US law (I’m Canadian) to be able to take away guns from someone your state has to have a “red flag law”, where the state lists circumstances that would be considered a “red flag”, a warning. I assume different states have different red flags.

Maine, according to CNN, is a “yellow flag” state, meaning there are more onerous conditions that have to be met before guns will be taken away. First, you have to file a complaint with the police, and the police have to be convinced the person is dangerous. Then the police need to find a doctor who thinks the person is dangerous.Then the police have to petition a judge to have the firearms taken away. And then finally, of course, the judge has to be convinced the person is dangerous. 

I see that in Maine it was the pro-gun lobby that actually got to draft the law. 

There was a state referendum in 2016 that proposed background checks that the Maine voters rejected. And background checks were proposed to lawmakers again 2 years ago and again were rejected.

Edited October 26, 2023 by Fragile Bird
Sp

[The Anti-Targ]

A bit like drugs are a health issue not a crime issue, mass shootings are a health issue not a crime issue. Certainly the individuals doing the mass shootings need to be dealt with, but this is a social disease that has no hope of being addressed if every instance is put down to lone gunman with non-specified mental illness.

Back when the pearl clutchers were trying to blame video games they were wrong on root cause, but they were right in trying to find common social root causes that contribute to the phenomenon. I imagine most thoughtful people can correctly list 3 or 4 root causes, and it is very likely for each of those root causes conditions are either being ignored or getting worse.

Access to guns isn't a root cause, but it is most definitely a contributory factor.

[Zorral]

 We have fleets of helicopters circling and cops standing around in packs on corners doing nothing all over our immediate neighborhood.  Have no idea why: Israel and Hamas? The latest mass killer? Something else?  My nerves are having a rough time, so I can only imagine what it's like in Gaza, the West Bank, and some places in Israel.

[Zorral]

The police may have Card surrounded.  Live.

https://abc7ny.com/lewiston-maine-mass-shooting-shooter-robert-card/13974278/

https://www.wcvb.com/article/lewiston-maine-shooting-spree-gunman-manhunt/45658874#

https://apnews.com/article/lewiston-maine-shootings-49da6d06a8b5a15d3b619b3927bc33ff

 

Edited October 27, 2023 by Zorral

[Zorral]

Nope. Police have left.

[Martell Spy]

Rep. Dean Phillips files paperwork for presidential bid against Biden
The Minnesota Democrat is making his long-teased run official.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/26/rep-dean-phillips-files-paperwork-for-presidential-bid-against-biden-00123923

Quote

 

Rep. Dean Phillips is officially running a longshot primary bid against Joe Biden.

The Minnesota Democrat, who has been teasing a run for months, filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday night. He registered his campaign committee as “Dean 24 Inc.”

He is expected to formally announce his campaign on Friday morning in Concord, N.H. He previously told fellow lawmakers that he was planning to run.

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

16 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Rep. Dean Phillips files paperwork for presidential bid against Biden
The Minnesota Democrat is making his long-teased run official.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/26/rep-dean-phillips-files-paperwork-for-presidential-bid-against-biden-00123923

 

 

 

[kissdbyfire]

I wonder if MAGA Mike will make people miss My Kevin?

He blames gun violence on teaching kids about evolution and abortion.

 

During a 2016 sermon at the Christian Center in Shreveport, Louisiana, Johnson said that a “series of cultural shifts” in the United States — led by “elites” and “academics” in the 1930s who were engaging with the theories of Charles Darwin — erased the influence of Christian thinking and creationism from society. 

“People say, ‘How can a young person go into their schoolhouse and open fire on their classmates?’” Johnson asked the audience. “Because we’ve taught a whole generation — a couple generations now — of Americans, that there’s no right or wrong, that it’s about survival of the fittest, and [that] you evolve from the primordial slime. Why is that life of any sacred value? Because there’s nobody sacred to whom it’s owed. None of this should surprise us.”

 

In 2015, Johnson, then a lawyer in Louisiana fighting for increased abortion restrictions, told Irin Carmon of New York magazine that “many women use abortion as a form of birth control, you know, in certain segments of society, and it’s just shocking and sad, but this is where we are. When you break up the nuclear family, when you tell a generation of people that life has no value, no meaning, that it’s expendable, then you do wind up with school shooters.” 
 

Seriously, WTAF. Someone said he’s Gym with a jacket and a better haircut. 
Few more details on his CV.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/top-11-things-know-new-house-speaker-mike-johnson-rcna122309

[Zorral]

15 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Access to guns isn't a root cause, but it is most definitely a contributory factor.

US History:  Gunz & Politics & NRA Money Money Money > Murder Murder Murder

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-26-2023?

Quote

 

.... By 1920, rifle shooting was a popular American sport, and the NRA worked hard to keep it respectable. In the 1930s the NRA backed federal legislation to limit concealed weapons; prevent possession by criminals, the mentally ill, and children; require all dealers to be licensed, and require background checks before delivery. The NRA backed the 1934 National Firearms Act and parts of the 1968 Gun Control Act, designed to stop what seemed to be America’s hurtle toward violence in that turbulent decade.

But in the 1970s, a faction in the NRA forced the organization away from sports and toward opposing “gun control.” The NRA formed a political action committee (PAC) in 1975, and in 1980, for the first time, it endorsed a presidential candidate: Republican Ronald Reagan. When Reagan was elected, the NRA became a player in national politics and was awash in money from gun and ammunition manufacturers. 

By 2000 the NRA was one of the three most powerful lobbies in Washington. In 2004 the federal assault weapons ban expired, and gun companies began to sell AR-15–style semiautomatic rifles (the AR stands for “ArmaLite Rifle,” which was the name of the military weapon on which the mass-market AR-15 is based). Gun sales had been flat for years, but gun and ammunition sales took off during the administration of Democratic president Barack Obama as advocates told customers that he would confiscate their guns.

Firearms companies played on the politics of the era, advertising their products as tools for heroic figures taking on dangerous threats in society. The firearms industry estimates that about 20 million AR-15s have been sold in the U.S., and mass shootings took off as individual rights trumped the rights of the community.

The NRA spent more than $204 million on the 2008 election. In 2016, NRA spending surged to more than $419 million, with more than $30 million going to support Trump. Since 2020, lawsuits and a dramatic dropoff in funding have dramatically weakened the NRA, but the image of the gun-toting individualist has become so central to the Republican Party that congress members have taken to sending holiday cards showing their families brandishing assault rifles and to wearing AR-15 lapel pins on the floor of Congress. 

But now, as the nation reels from another mass shooting, there is yet more proof that Republican economic individualism from which the gun obsession developed doesn’t work as well as the idea of using the government to support the American people. ...

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/11/audit-shows-nra-spending-surged-100-million-amidst-pro-trump-push-in-2016/

https://billmoyers.com/story/todays-nra-price-freedom/

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/20/1171027638/how-the-ar-15-became-the-bestselling-rifle-in-the-u-s

https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/public-mass-shootings-database-amasses-details-half-century-us-mass-shootings#a-troubling-upward-trend

 

 

Edited October 27, 2023 by Zorral

[Phylum of Alexandria]

4 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

During a 2016 sermon at the Christian Center in Shreveport, Louisiana, Johnson said that a “series of cultural shifts” in the United States — led by “elites” and “academics” in the 1930s who were engaging with the theories of Charles Darwin — erased the influence of Christian thinking and creationism from society. 

“People say, ‘How can a young person go into their schoolhouse and open fire on their classmates?’” Johnson asked the audience. “Because we’ve taught a whole generation — a couple generations now — of Americans, that there’s no right or wrong, that it’s about survival of the fittest, and [that] you evolve from the primordial slime. Why is that life of any sacred value? Because there’s nobody sacred to whom it’s owed. None of this should surprise us.”

 

In 2015, Johnson, then a lawyer in Louisiana fighting for increased abortion restrictions, told Irin Carmon of New York magazine that “many women use abortion as a form of birth control, you know, in certain segments of society, and it’s just shocking and sad, but this is where we are. When you break up the nuclear family, when you tell a generation of people that life has no value, no meaning, that it’s expendable, then you do wind up with school shooters.” 
 

Seriously, WTAF. Someone said he’s Gym with a jacket and a better haircut. 
Few more details on his CV.

I think it's important for Democrats to point to this radicalism, and use him to (accurately) paint the GOP as beholden to extremists. 

But still, I do have my doubts as to how much of it will stick.

I agree with Josh Marshall's assessment of Johnson as smooth. In our infotainment-driven culture, a smooth and approachable presentation may be enough to fight against the narrative of him being extreme. I hope it's not the case though.

[Zorral]

When assessing guns and violence in the USA, we also see the horrific number of mass killings as a small number within the much vaster numbers of gun violence in the USA overall -- from domestic violence, accidental killings by one toddler of another, cops killing 'suspects',  to suicide.  All this has to do with gun access.

Edited October 27, 2023 by Zorral

[kissdbyfire]

Gun violence in America is out of control. In fact, it has been out of control for some time now. And in a way it’s strange that legislators seem incapable of doing anything about it when fairly recent polls show a lot of support across the board for some measures that could and probably would make a difference. And legislators apparently will never be able to do something unless dems have an overwhelming majority in both houses of congress and the WH. I mean, even Bernie voted to protect gun manufacturers from lawsuits… He later said that was a “bad vote”, but still. And even when some states have a little more regulation, in comes SCOTUS and says, “nah you can’t do that”. So much for states independence or whatever. And all this inability to do anything is, at least in part, because of how a handful of Federalist Society weirdos interpret a couple of sentences written 200+ years ago by a handful of men who owned women and PoC. So for now “thoughts and prayers” is the best they can do. It’s just so sad…

[Zorral]

It's blood sacrifice. The politicians who formulate the accessible to all gun laws and prohibit all regulation of gun safety and accessibility say, "These deaths are the price we pay for being safe."

[Martell Spy]

White House hits Johnson over claiming gun violence was a matter of the ‘heart’
The first punches are thrown between the two leaders.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/27/white-house-johnson-gun-violence-00124001

Quote

 

The Biden administration hit back Friday on Speaker Mike Johnson’s recent comments that placed blame for mass shootings in the United States on Americans’ “hearts,” calling the remarks “offensive.”

In a statement, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said the administration “absolutely” rejected “the offensive accusation that gun crime is uniquely high in the United States because of Americans’ ‘hearts.’”

“Gun crime is uniquely high in the United States because congressional Republicans have spent decades choosing the gun industry’s lobbyists over the lives of innocent Americans,” Bates added.

The comments from Bates marks the first tiff between the newly elected Republican speaker and the Biden administration. It also serves as a reminder of the vast distance between the two most senior elected leaders of their respective parties, after a few short hours in which they showed a bit of good will toward each other.