;)
May 16, 2022
Evening Update:
Christina Jewitt of the New York Times: "The Food and Drug Administration on Monday reached an agreement with Abbott Laboratories on the steps needed to reopen the company's shuttered baby formula plant, which could begin to ease the shortage of infant formula that has frightened and exasperated parents nationwide. The F.D.A. must still grant approval, once the company has taken the steps, for production to resume at the plant in Sturgis, Mich. It has been shut down since February after several babies who had consumed formula that had been produced there fell ill and two died. Abbott described the agreement with the F.D.A. as a 'consent decree' and said it would require federal court approval. Once the agency permits the plant to reopen, the company said production could begin within about two weeks and could translate to more formula on shelves in six to eight weeks. The company said it will continue flying formula in from a plant in Ireland. It was unclear how soon the F.D.A. might approve the plant reopening. Abbott's plant has been offline since February, when the F.D.A. discovered a deadly bacteria, called cronobacter, while swabbing in and near production lines. Abbott disputed that characterization...." An ABC News story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: I'd still like to know why it took three months plus for Abbott to clean up its act. Who caused the delay?
~~~~~~~~~~
Wake Up & Smell the Stinkbugs. Jonathan Lemire of Politico: "To the frustration of many Democrats and some of his closest advisers, President Joe Biden has steadfastly spent more than a year in office insisting on trying to work across the aisle with Republicans. It's produced some notable legislative successes. But it's also been colored by a fair dose of in-your-face GOP obstructionism. Now, more than a year later, Biden no longer believes that most Republicans will eventually drop their fealty to Donald Trump and show a willingness to engage. He himself admitted he was wrong."
Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Since Jan. 6 of last year, a growing chorus of activists, historians and political commentators have spoken of 'democracy on the brink' or 'democracy in peril.' What they mean is that, thanks to a paranoid, delusional and potentially violent new strain in our nation's politics, Americans may not be able to count on future elections being conducted fairly -- or the results of fair elections being accepted. And at least some news organizations are taking heed.... [Alex] Koppelman underscored what we should all be clear about by now: that most of the Republican Party publicly touts the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election but that the vote was rigged and victory stolen from him."
~~~ Marie: In a column urging journalists to make clear the danger Republicans pose to democracy, it took her till Paragraph 8 to begin to finger Republicans. This isn't making anything "clear" to the average newspaper reader, who barely gets past the headline, which, BTW, in this case, isn't any more helpful: "Democracy is at stake in the midterms. The media must convey that."
Richard Luscombe of the Guardian: "The supreme court is 'dangerous to families and to freedoms in our country', Nancy Pelosi said on Sunday, as justices prepare to finalize a draft ruling stripping almost half a century of abortion rights in the US. The House speaker railed against conservative judges appointed by ... Donald Trump in an interview Sunday on CNN's State of the Union, in which she urged Democrats to keep their 'eye on the ball' to protect other freedoms she sees under threat. 'Beware in terms of marriage equality, beware in terms of other aspects,' she said. '... This is not just about terminating a pregnancy. This is about contraception, family planning.... This is a place where freedom and the kitchen table, issues of America's families, come together.'"
Gillian Brockell of the Washington Post "Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. calls himself an originalist, someone who thinks the Constitution should be interpreted only by how it would have been understood by the Founders when they wrote it." So Brockell examines what abortion was like when the Founders were founding. Notably, measures to abort an embryo or early-term fetus were not considered abortions at all; "... most religious and legal scholars at the time did not think 'ensoulment' began at the moment of conception but at the time of 'quickening' -- when a pregnant person can feel fetal movement, generally between 16 and 22 weeks." Abortion was common: "... most homes would have had a medical manual ... [that] included recipes for concoctions that could induce menses that had been 'blocked' or 'suppressed' -- a common way to refer to early pregnancy." Especially since poisoning was a common method, abortion was dangerous. Abortion also was not illegal anywhere in the U.S. until 1821: decades after the Founders wrote the Constitution. And even that law -- passed in response to a scandal in which a preacher poisoned his pregnant lover -- should be viewed as more of a "poison-control measure," a scholar argued. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Another thing that becomes clear from reading Brockell's report is that Alito heavily cherry-picked the historical record to support his false suggestion that abortion was commonly prohibited back in the day. Alito isn't just an anti-woman fanatic; he's a sneaky, prevaricating anti-woman fanatic.
Nebraska. Devan Cole of CNN: "Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska said Sunday that he will call a special session of his state's legislature to pass a total ban on abortion if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this term. 'Nebraska is a pro-life state. I believe life begins at conception, and those are babies too,' Ricketts told CNN's Dana Bash ... when asked if he thought the state should require a young girl who was raped to carry the pregnancy to term. 'If Roe v. Wade, which is a horrible constitutional decision, gets overturned by the Supreme Court, which we're hopeful of, here in Nebraska, we're going to take further steps to protect those preborn babies.' 'Including in the case of rape or incest?' Bash asked. To which the governor replied: 'They're still babies, too. Yes.'"
The New York Times' live updates of developments Monday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here: "Russia appears to be shifting its immediate ambitions on the eastern front of its invasion of Ukraine, as battlefield setbacks and dwindling troop numbers drain its war effort. Instead of attempting to encircle large numbers of Ukrainian troops from Izium south to Donetsk City, Russia is likely now trying to complete a takeover of the Luhansk area in the south, according to the Institute for the Study of War.... Russia may have lost a third of the ground forces it committed to the war in Ukraine, British intelligence officials said on Sunday." ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Monday are here: "Russia called Finland and Sweden's moves toward joining NATO a 'mistake' that could have 'far-reaching consequences' -- as both Nordic nations dispatched troops to participate in large-scale exercises by the military alliance. Republican U.S. senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), visited Helsinki after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the weekend. The U.S. Senate is expected to advance the approval of a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine on Monday, with a final vote as soon as Wednesday. The remaining authorized aid is set to run out Thursday." ~~~
~~~ The Guardian's live updates for Monday are here. The Guardian's "full report" is here.
John Hudson, et al., of the Washington Post: "Sweden's ruling party dropped the country's historic military nonalignment on Sunday and agreed to join NATO, shortly after Finland's leaders officially announced they would do the same. The moves were major steps in ending decades of military neutrality for the two Nordic nations, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continued to dramatically shift security considerations in Europe. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said their accession would be a 'turning point for security' in Europe. 'Their membership in NATO would increase our shared security, demonstrate that NATO's door is open, and that aggression does not pay.'"~~~
~~~ Edward Wong & Anatoly Kurmanaev of the New York Times: Jens Stoltenberg, "the head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said Sunday that the security bloc would grant fast-track membership to Sweden and Finland, raising the pressure on Vladimir V. Putin, who justified his invasion of Ukraine by what he cast as the need to keep the military alliance away from Russia's borders."
When You've Lost the Bloggers.... Anton Troianovski & Marc Santora of the New York Times: "The destruction wreaked on a Russian battalion as it tried to cross a river in northeastern Ukraine last week is emerging as among the deadliest engagements of the war, with estimates based on publicly available evidence now suggesting that well over 400 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded. And as the scale of what happened comes into sharper focus, the disaster appears to be breaking through the Kremlin's tightly controlled information bubble. Perhaps most striking, the Russian battlefield failure is resonating with a stable of pro-Russian war bloggers -- some of whom are embedded with troops on the front line -- who have reliably posted to the social network Telegram with claims of Russian success and Ukrainian cowardice.... As the news of the losses at the [Donets R]iver crossing in Bilohorivka started to spread, some Russian bloggers did not appear to hold back in their criticism of what they said was incompetent leadership."
Nicholas Confessore & Karen Yourish of the New York Times: "At the extremes of American life, replacement theory -- the notion that Western elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to 'replace' and disempower white Americans -- has become an engine of racist terror, helping inspire a wave of mass shootings in recent years and fueling the 2017 right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Va., that erupted in violence. But replacement theory, once confined to the digital fever swamps..., has gone mainstream. In sometimes more muted forms, the fear it crystallizes ... has become ... commonplace in the Republican Party -- spoken aloud at congressional hearings, echoed in Republican campaign advertisements and embraced by a growing array of right-wing candidates and media personalities. No public figure has promoted replacement theory more loudly or relentlessly than the Fox host Tucker Carlson, who has made elite-led demographic change a central theme of his show since joining Fox's prime-time lineup in 2016. A Times investigation published this month showed that in more than 400 episodes of his show, Mr. Carlson has amplified the notion that Democratic politicians and other assorted elites want to force demographic change through immigration, and his producers sometimes scoured his show's raw material from the same dark corners of the internet that the Buffalo suspect did." Read on. ~~~
~~~ Marianna Sotomayor of the Washington Post: "Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the No. 3 House Republican, and other GOP lawmakers came under scrutiny Sunday for previously echoing the racist 'great replacement' theory that apparently inspired an 18-year-old who allegedly killed 10 people.... While Stefanik has not pushed the theory by name, she and other conservatives have echoed the tenets of the far-right ideology as part of anti-immigrant rhetoric that has fired up the Republican base.... It marks a rapid transformation for Stefanik, who has sought to firmly align herself with former president Donald Trump and his nativist 'Make America Great Again' agenda over the last year after she replaced Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) as GOP conference chair.... [In one 2021 ad, Stefanik's campaign committee wrote,] '[Democrats'] plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.'... Other Republicans in Congress have been pushing the theory in more explicit terms. Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) ... said during a subcommittee hearing ... last year that many Americans believe 'we're replacing national-born American -- native-born Americans -- to permanently transform the political landscape of this very nation.' ... Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) ... [said] in a tweet [that Tucker Carlson] 'is CORRECT about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America.'" ~~~
~~~ The Party of Racists. Cas Mudde of the Guardian: "There is no easy fix to dealing with far-right terror. But we should stop assuming Republicans can help, when they are part of the problem[.]... The Grand Old Party has become a far-right party that advances racist arguments in both implicit and explicit form.... Just a few days before the terrorist attack [in Buffalo], a poll showed that nearly half of Republicans believe the conspiracy theory.... [As for the terrorist himself,] there are few if any real 'lone wolves.' Far-right terrorists are part of a larger subculture, online and offline, which is connected to the broader conservative movement.... If [President] Biden and the Democrats really want to fight white supremacy, including institutional racism, they must do it without the Republican party." ~~~
~~~ Martha Hamilton & Aaron Wiener in the Washington Post: "... while the great replacement theory has inspired horrific violence in the past five years, it's a lot older than that. More than 70 years ago, a U.S. senator published a book warning of the same destruction of White civilization. Theodore G. Bilbo, a Democrat, had twice been governor of Mississippi before he served in the U.S. Senate from 1935 to 1947, when 'the growing intolerance among many whites toward public racism and anti-Semitism' led to his fall, according to an account in the Journal of Mississippi History.... Bilbo saw an existential threat in the growing ranks of American-born descendants of enslaved Africans. His solution? Ship them back.... 'A White America or a mongrel America -- you must take your choice!'... Bilbo's [political] career built on racism and anti-immigrant bigotry ... ended [when he died of cancer in 1947]. But the bigotry lingers on."
Ann Marimow of the Washington Post: "One federal appeals court judge in D.C. has hired only male law clerks for the past two decades. Another judge allegedly refused to speak to a staffer for weeks after a child-care emergency caused the assistant to depart work early one day.... These and other complaints appear in a confidential workplace survey conducted for the federal trial and appeals courts in the nation's capital, an institution regarded as a steppingstone to the Supreme Court. It details instances of gender discrimination, bullying and racial insensitivity, while underscoring the stark power imbalance between judges with life tenure and the assistants who depend on them for career advancement.... Current and former courthouse employees who acknowledged having witnessed misconduct described their reluctance\>to file formal complaints against their superiors...." MB: Worth noting: Merrick the Reluctant served as chief judge from 2013 to 2021, and -- as far as we know -- he did nothing to address these problems.
Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "When the Trump administration >assigned a prosecutor in 2019 to scour the Russia investigation for any wrongdoing..., Donald J. Trump stoked expectations among his supporters that the inquiry would find a 'deep state' conspiracy against him. Three years later, the team led by the special counsel, John H. Durham, on Monday will open the first trial in a case their investigation developed.... But rather than showing wrongdoing by the F.B.I., it is a case that portrays the bureau as a victim. The trial centers on whether Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer with ties to Democrats, lied to the F.B.I. in September 2016, when he relayed suspicions about possible cyberconnections between Mr. Trump and Russia. The F.B.I. looked into the matter, which involved a server for the Kremlin-linked Alfa Bank, and decided it was unsubstantiated.... Mr. Sussmann had told an F.B.I. official that he was not acting on behalf of any client. Prosecutors contend he concealed that a technology executive and the Hillary Clinton campaign were his clients to make the allegations seem more credible."
Australian Exceptionalism. Damien Cave of the New York Times: "If the United States had the same Covid death rate as Australia, about 900,000 lives would have been saved.... At the milestone of one million deaths in the United States, the nations that did a better job of keeping people alive show what Americans could have done differently and what might still need to change.... Australia restricted travel and personal interaction until vaccinations were widely available, then maximized vaccine uptake, prioritizing people who were most vulnerable before gradually opening up the country again.... Dozens of interviews, along with survey data and scientific studies from around the world, point to a lifesaving trait that Australians displayed from the top of government to the hospital floor, and that Americans have shown they lack: trust, in science and institutions, but especially in one another."
"Uh, Well, No." Josephine Harvey of the Huffington Post: ">Anthony Fauci said Sunday he would not return to his position as chief White House medical adviser if Donald Trump was reelected president in 2024. The infectious disease expert was asked by CNN's Jim Acosta if he would have confidence in Trump's ability to deal with a public health emergency should Trump serve another term as president. 'Would you want to stay on in your post?' Acosta added. 'Uh, well, no,' Fauci said. 'To the second question.... The first question ... if you look at the history of what the response was during the administration, I think at best you could say at best it wasn't optimal. I think just history will speak for itself about that. I don't need to make any further comment on that. It's not productive.'"
Beyond the Beltway
Maryland. Tiffany May of the New York Times: "Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland announced late Sunday night that he was recovering from 'a minor stroke,' the second Democratic lawmaker to fall ill from the ailment this year. Mr. Van Hollen, 63, said in a statement posted on Twitter that he had been admitted to George Washington University Hospital, which is in the District of Columbia, 'after experiencing lightheadedness and acute neck pain' while delivering a speech. An angiogram showed that he had had a 'minor stroke in the form of a small venous tear' at the back of his head."
Pennsylvania Senate Race. Katie Glueck of the New York Times: "Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, the front-runner for his state's Democratic Senate nomination, said on Sunday that he had had a stroke on Friday and was recovering.... The incident has kept him off the campaign trail for the final weekend before Tuesday's primary election in one of the nation's most closely watched Senate contests. It was unclear when he would return to in-person campaigning.... 'I'm well on my way to a full recovery,' [he said." The Guardian's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Pennsylvania, et al. Colby Itkowitz & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: Three top candidates for statewide elections in Pennsylvania attended the "Stop the Steal" rally on January 6, 2021. "The trio are part of a phalanx of Republican candidates nationwide who ... strongly embraced Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.... Should the candidates win their elections, some would be in position to play a critical role in the administration of the presidential vote in 2024."
News Ledes
Washington Post: "Two months before Payton Gendron allegedly killed 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, he was confronted by a security guard at the store during a trip on which he compiled detailed plans of the location, according to a document posted online last month by a writer who identified himself as Gendron. 'I've seen you go in and out ,,, What are you doing?' the guard told Gendron on March 8, according to an account in the document. Gendron replied that he was 'collecting consensus data' before making excuses and leaving for his car, according to the account, adding: 'In hindsight that was a close call.'"
New York Times: "A Las Vegas man who the authorities say opened fire on a Taiwanese congregation at a Southern California church on Sunday -- killing one person and injuring five others before the pastor and congregants overpowered and hogtied him -- was motivated by hatred, the Orange County sheriff said on Monday. The suspect, David Chou, 68, a U.S. citizen who emigrated from China, was charged with murder and five felony counts of attempted murder for what Don Barnes, the sheriff, described at a news conference on Monday as a 'politically motivated hate incident' prompted by grievances against the Taiwanese community."
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Reader Comments (15)
Hummeda, hummeda, hummeda…
Fox News, according to an NPR story this morning, is, as they always do, attempting to evade any responsibility for allowing their golden boy, the explicit racist pig, TuKKKer KKKarlson, to push this ridiculous replacement theory, an idea that has just cost many people their lives in Buffalo (and in many other places as well).
Fox sez it’s not about race, um, well, um, not at all…it’s about the “elites” replacing, um,….real ‘mericans. Yeah! That’s it!
Right. Point out for me someone more elite than Fox executives and their pigs. TuKKKer KKKarlson is worth over $400 million. He makes a minimum of $35 million a year. He spreads lies and racist ideology like oil slick defiling natural habitats. That’s not elite?
Oh, but none of this is his fault.
The right is big on responsibility for others (I’ve read that the baby formula shortage is an evil plan by Biden to kill babies that were not aborted, and it’s the Democrats’ responsibility to fix this problem), but does not allow that anyone on their side is ever responsible for anything bad.
But here’s the thing. When you think about it, there IS a replacement plan out there right now. It’s not a theory and it’s not “on the drawing board”. It’s in full swing. The Party of Traitors and Racists and their legal snakes are working full time to replace democracy with an authoritarian, theocratic system in which their enemies are shoved out of the way (or murdered, if necessary).
And Biden thought he could work with these people?
The Scorpion and the Frog story comes to mind. These people are vicious and single minded. They don’t care what happens as long as they kill YOU.
I'd like to think it's an overwhelming sense of guilt that inspires "great replacement theory" proponents and adherents.
That their study of American history told them that in 1492 the Native American population was as great as 112 million but had already declined to under 10 million by the mid-1600's and continued to plunge over the next 200 years as the great replacement theory's ancestors murdered and infected the peoples they found in their way, tearing up a succession of solemn treaties, forcing the rag-tag remainder of America's Native peoples onto reservations where they could be conveniently forgotten....
I'd like to think that, but I don't.
Instead, perhaps that while their knowledge of history doesn't run quite so deep, their dim awareness of what their ancestors did to Native Americans inspires a fear that they will be treated no better by their successors and that when they are, they will deserve it.
When pinheads like Reprehensible Perry refer to themselves as "native-born," I have to wonder what they are thinking. as the word "native" rolls so easily off their tongues.
"...Americans have shown they lack: trust, in science and institutions, but especially in one another."
These last words in the column about Australia's way of dealing with a pandemic compared with this country is one of the saddest sentences ever to grace these pages. It's like the final blow–-the end game–-looking at ourselves without the makeup that covers our imperfections. The old chestnut–--"Who [or what] will save us from ourselves"––hangs limply by a thin string of words that have lost meaning. How I wish I could be more optimistic but just when I think we may be gaining some ground, we have more horrendous shootings along with acknowledging the "stench" in the S.C.
I spent the whole of my young life by the shores of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin never encountering a person of color because there were none –-the exception being when we wintered in Arizona one year and the schools were integrated. I'm told, since I've not been back for years, that things have changed in Sheboygan but I bet not a whole lot.
The problem of not embracing all human beings because of race or/and ethnicity goes back, I imagine, to the beginnings of human interactions. But we hoped we could embrace in time. not divide –-but it appears this is not the case. Another way of looking at this point in our history is another old chestnut: Things get worse before they get better.' Hang onto that for awhile while we slog through the next year.
To date: I have killed four stink bugs––one managed to get inside, crawled into the couch, but I caught the sucker and sent him off to the smelly world of Gar--bage as we used to say in the old days–-making a stinky thing posh.
Too nice…
I realize that people like Anthony Fauci have to be at least nominally polite. They are, after all, in positions of responsibility and they prefer to come across as sober and highly competent and not partisan.
Fine. I get it.
But at what point does being polite cross over into allowing murderers to get off scot free?
“Not optimal” is how he describes the Fat Fascist’s response to the coronavirus pandemic that has now killed over one million Americans.
Criminally negligent with an astonishing disregard for human life is a much better and far more accurate way to describe Trump’s response to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Also, “What’s in it for me?”
But the traitors KNOW that Democrats will never call them out properly. Foment insurrection? Okay, three years of hearings before issuing a 7,000 page report that no one will read, and no action will be taken by Creampuff Casper Merrick Garland.
Republicans must piss their pants laughing about what they get away with. A democrat stubs his or her toe and the traitors descend en masse, accusing them of high crimes and misdemeanors. Republicans attempt a violent overthrow of the government, and it’s “Well, let’s not be hasty. Surely there are good people on that side of the aisle!”
Fuck that shit. So goddam tired of this bullshit.
BTW, what's so "Great" about the Great Replacement Theory?
Certainly didn't take a Newton or an Einstein to come up with it.
Ken,
Your idea of “dim awareness” about the history of this continent on the part of the traitors is partly correct. “Dim” is certainly accurate. Not so sure about the “awareness” part.
For Republicans, history is a matter of what works for them. What they require it to say. Remember the mantra of the Decider’s debacle? Reality is what we say it is.
Native peoples don’t even register for these scumbags. They are non-persons. Like women. Like gay or trans people. They don’t factor into winger calculus, except as a mathematical expression that can be declared unnecessary.
It could be that part of reason for the vicious attacks on the 1619 Project is their absolute need to avoid any discussion of white supremacy, but their lizard brains operate at such a low level, who knows what they really understand?
On CNN, When It Bleeds, It Leads. I'm beginning to think that while we're quite properly blaming Fox "News" for promoting racist conspiracy theories that inspire right-wing terrorism, we should blame CNN for its wall-to-wall coverage of terrorist events. I turned CNN on at 9 am, and at 9:45, I don't think they've talked about anything but the racist murderer in Buffalo. (Admittedly, I've been doing other stuff, so it's possible I missed some quick reference to something else.) I'm not saying they shouldn't cover it or even that they shouldn't lead with it, but 3/4ths of its "news" coverage? No.
One thing these mass murderers seem to crave is attention, and CNN is accommodating them.
Ken,
Good point about “Great Replacement Theory”. The word “great” in this instance is what linguists call an intensifier. Intensifiers are typically employed to add emotional weight to the word or phrases they modify.
Plus, the addition of “great”, in this case, aspires to adopt a patina of historical importance and authenticity. Think of the Great Migration, the Great Awakening, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the Great Depression, the Greatest Generation.
It’s all a con. Comme d’habitude. The only thing great about a non-existent movement is it’s scam quotient, promoted by the greatest assholes.
Marie,
The media in general have so much to answer for about the state we’re in. NBC and CNN, much more than Fox, are responsible for the atrocity of Donald Trump. Allowing traitors to come on “news”
Shows and lie with impunity, the both-sides hippity hop bullshit, the promotion of obviously unqualified demagogues as learned opinionators…Jesus. Trying to calculate the raw tonnage of that responsibility makes my brain hurt.
Akhilleus,
Was thinking more along the lines of "piddly" replacement theory.
Ken,
Ha. Peddling the piddling. KKKarlson’s speed alright.
AK: you always say the things I want to but don't have the vocabulary and ability to pull out language that is colorful and descriptive. I can't remember not agreeing with every word you write. Also Ken, PD, Marie-- you "guys" are marvelous.
Hey, how 'bout that orange moon last night...!! The clouds rolled away just in time to see it, although it was sort of dim. Like the repugnants.
We are aghast that our Lt. Governor, John Fetterman, is still hospitalized in our town from a stroke. Daughter tweeted a picture of my Levi Fetterman (his dog--) tee shirt that I happened to wear yesterday. We already voted for him. We want him to roar into congress in place of finance ogre Toomey, the coward he always is... John would really shake things up. I don't know what this means for the primary tomorrow.
So not unbelievable that an 18-year-old white incel felt so superior that he drove 200 miles to declare open season on black people. Bigots are not usually spontaneously made-- they are born to crap parents. I don't plan to read his manifesto. I will take everyone's word that this young piece of crap has been marinating in this for a while. He joins a long line of young people with no sense of their own worth, even when that is doubtful, and an overdeveloped military might sense. Glad the country can provide him with firepower for the event...this is truly a stupid country.
Replacement: Out here in LaLaLand it is gradually becoming recognized that California natives were not nearly eliminated by infections but rather by lead and steel at the behest of territorial and later state officials, supported hand in hand by the US army and by armed immigrants feeling entitled to the land vacated by said natives, a process one imagines played out from the getgo all over the continent. A brief treatment:
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/revealing-the-history-of-genocide-against-californias-native-americans
Jeanne,
That kid who murdered those innocent people in Buffalo (shot dead while deciding on whether you want crunchy or smooth peanut butter…because you’re black?!?) is now reported to have had some mental issues.
Perfect.
Just what the gun knobbers and the supporters of gun violence pray for (when they sniff “Thoughts and prayers”, their thoughts are for their own gun collection and the prayers are that this won’t finally be the time when enough people say “This shit ends now!”): an out. “Oh, he was a lone wolf. A bad apple. A mental case!”
Right. But the crap they sell about things like replacement theories and welfare queens driving Caddies, and black moochers living off honest white folk, the shit they’ve been shoveling for decades, is exactly what sets off unstable people, and what makes relatively stable people crazy.
But it’s not their fault. Noooo…this poor kid had too many Zagnut Bars and went off the deep end. Bad brain chemistry, you see? So, thoughts and prayers (heh-heh). See you next time.
Meanwhile, BUY MORE GUNS!! Biden and Pelosi are coming to take them all!!!
Lock and load! RevoLUTION!!
@Whyte and All
And this one by a historian my younger son was fortunate enough to take a class from:
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/naming-americas-own-genocide/
@Akhilleus
If we define mental illness as a set of perceptions and/or behaviors that are so far outside the mainstream that they they render those who exhibit them unable to function in the given social order, there's sure a lot of that going around.
And clearly identifying, let alone treating that "it" may be an insurmountable challenge when a large portion of any population exhibits symptoms of the same pathologies.
As in: You have to be crazy to believe the 2020 election was stolen....that Democrats are all pedophiles...that the Pretender has ever made any sense....
But for Republicans, all that is mainstream thinking...