Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: May 28, 2022 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, just because | Tags: Charleton Heston, Columbine, Donald Trump, Fani Willis, Georgia grand jury, mass murders, NRA, Trumpism., Uvalde school shooting 24 Comments
Georgi Yordanov, Bulgarian artist
Good Afternoon!!
I’ve spent a couple of hours now searching the internet for good news. The closest I’ve gotten to finding it is some articles about bad news for Donald Trump.
First up: the investigation into Trump’s efforts to interfere with the 2020 presidential election process in Georgia appears to be building steam.
The New York Times: Up to 50 Subpoenas Expected as Grand Jury Begins Trump Inquiry.
ATLANTA — As many as 50 witnesses are expected to be subpoenaed by a special grand jury that will begin hearing testimony next week in the criminal investigation into whether former President Donald J. Trump and his allies violated Georgia laws in their efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state.
The process, which is set to begin on Wednesday, is likely to last weeks, bringing dozens of subpoenaed witnesses, both well-known and obscure, into a downtown Atlanta courthouse bustling with extra security because of threats directed at the staff of the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis….
Ms. Willis emphasized the breadth of the case. As many as 50 witnesses have declined to talk to her voluntarily and are likely to be subpoenaed, she said. The potential crimes to be reviewed go well beyond the phone call that Mr. Trump made to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on Jan. 2, 2021, during which he asked him to find enough votes to reverse the election results.
Ms. Willis is weighing racketeering among other potential charges and said that such cases have the potential to sweep in people who have never set foot in Fulton or made a single phone call to the county.
Her investigators are also reviewing the slate of fake electors that Republicans created in a desperate attempt to circumvent the state’s voters. She said the scheme to submit fake Electoral College delegates could lead to fraud charges, among others — and cited her approach to a 2014 racketeering case she helped lead as an assistant district attorney, against a group of educators involved in a cheating scandal in the Atlanta public schools.
“There are so many issues that could have come about if somebody participates in submitting a document that they know is false,” she said. “You can’t do that. If you go back and look at Atlanta Public Schools, that’s one of the things that happened, is they certified these test results that they knew were false. You cannot do that.”
Read the rest at the NYT.
Old Lady with a Cat, Jack Donavan, 2006
An Atlanta-area district attorney investigating Donald Trump‘s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results has subpoenaed half a dozen officials from the Georgia secretary of state’s office, according to copies of the documents obtained by CNN….
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis subpoenaed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Interim Deputy Secretary of State Gabe Sterling, General Counsel Ryan Germany, former Elections Director Chris Harvey, Legislative Liaison Victoria Thompson and former Chief Investigator Frances Watson, according to copies of the documents.
The subpoenas call for the witnesses to testify on dates from early to mid-June. Raffensperger, who has previously said he would comply with a subpoena, appears slated to be one of the first witnesses to testify on June 2. His call with Trump — in which the former President pressured Raffensperger to “find” the votes needed for Trump to win Georgia — lies at the heart of the Georgia probe.
Sterling, Raffensperger’s deputy, also has said he would comply with his subpoena. Several staffers in the office have already had voluntary conversations with Fulton County investigators and handed over relevant documents and recordings.
Willis, meantime, has said she’s not limiting her investigation to Trump’s infamous call with Raffensperger. She has cast a wide net — looking at Georgia’s fake electors, former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s conspiracy-ridden presentation to state lawmakers and other issues — as she tries to determine whether Trump and his allies engaged in a broad criminal conspiracy to try to swing the Peach State to Trump’s column….
Fulton County investigators traveled to Washington, DC, earlier this month to meet with staffers for the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection to go over information that may be relevant to the Georgia probe, according to the person familiar with the investigation.
Here’s hoping some bad news for Trump and good news U.S. democracy emerges from this investigation.
More potential bad news for Trump: his chosen candidates for 2022 aren’t doing so well.
The New York Times: Trump’s Primary Losses Puncture His Invincibility.
Donald J. Trump had cast this year’s primaries as a moment to measure his power, endorsing candidates by the dozen as he sought to maintain an imprint on his party unlike any other past president.
But after the first phase of the primary season concluded on Tuesday, a month in which a quarter of America’s states cast their ballots, the verdict has been clear: Mr. Trump’s aura of untouchability in Republican politics has been punctured.
Annamira, Jeffrey Nentrup
In more than five years — from when he became president in January 2017 until May 2022 — Mr. Trump had only ever seen voters reject a half-dozen of his choices in Republican primaries. But by the end of this month, that figure had more than doubled, with his biggest defeat coming on Tuesday when Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia thrashed a Trump-backed challenger by more than 50 percentage points. Three other Trump recruits challenging Kemp allies also went down to defeat.
The mounting losses have emboldened Mr. Trump’s rivals inside the party to an extent not seen since early 2016 and increased the chances that, should he run again in 2024, he would face serious competition….
Mr. Trump remains broadly popular among Republicans and has a political war chest well north of $100 million. But there has been a less visible sign of slippage: Mr. Trump’s vaunted digital fund-raising machine has begun to slow. An analysis by The New York Times shows that his average daily online contributions have declined every month for the last seven months that federal data is available.
Mr. Trump has gone from raising an average of $324,633 per day in September 2021 on WinRed, the Republican donation-processing portal, to $202,185 in March 2022 — even as he has ramped up his political activities and profile.
Unfortunately, it appears that even if the Republicans dump Trump, the party is already suffused with Trumpism and that’s not likely to change.
David Smith at The Guardian: Republican primaries offer look into future of Trumpism without Trump.
The former US president suffered some humiliation on Tuesday when four candidates he handpicked in Georgia lost Republican primary elections in a landslide. It was a stinging rebuke in what has become ground zero for his “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen.
But it was no rebuke of Maga and all it stands for.
The hard-right, nativist-populist strain of Republican politics predates Trump and will surely survive him. This year’s primary season winners in Georgia and elsewhere have been careful not to disavow the movement, or its patriarch, even when they lack his blessing.
“Donald Trump has transformed the Republican party over the past five years and it is now a solid majority Trumpist party with everything that entails in policy and in tone,” said Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington. “On the other hand, Republicans, including very conservative ones, are clearly willing to entertain the possibility of Trumpism without Trump.”
Painting by K. Celia Wood
Galston, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, commented: “The results in Georgia were really stunning. Few, if any Republicans, have aroused Donald Trump’s ire so much as Governor Kemp and Brad Raffensperger and they both did substantially better than expected. Donald Trump went all out in Georgia and he ended up an egg on this face, which is significant.
“It may be that the people who have been in the bull’s eye of Trump’s ‘big lie’ campaign have started resenting it and took their resentment out. More generally, I think an increasing number of people are asking themselves a question that they weren’t asking previously: would we be better off with a Trumpist candidate who’s not named Donald Trump?”
Among those asking the question is Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, who campaigned for Kemp in Georgia and told the Politico website: “Trump picked this fight.” Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have also felt at liberty to campaign for midterm candidates denied Trump’s imprimatur.
Then there is Mike Pence, the former vice-president, who defied his old boss by rallying with Kemp on Monday and telling the crowd: “Elections are about the future.” Pence, himself a former governor of Indiana, has made a habit of speaking with pride about the accomplishments of the Trump-Pence administration while distancing himself from the “big lie”.
There’s more analysis at the Guardian link.
Yesterday, Dakinikat focused on the NRA convention in Houston, just after the ghastly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas and just two weeks after the racist mass murders in Buffalo, New York. Heather Digby Parton wrote at Raw Story about the NRA’s long history of arguing that they are the true victims of mass shootings: The NRA celebrates in Texas before Uvalde victims are buried.
In the wake of the horrific mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas this week some people expected the National Rifle Association (NRA) to cancel its annual meeting and extravagant gun show which starts today in Houston. The city, however, has a binding contract that prohibits it from canceling the show unilaterally. But the mayor, Democrat Sylvester Turner, asked the gun group to voluntarily postpone. They declined.
That’s to be expected, of course. The NRA has never let a mass shooting get in the way of gathering for fun and profit. The Washington Post’s Gillian Brockell reminded us this week that they did exactly the same thing after Columbine, the first of the modern school shootings that have plagued America for more than two decades. That mass killing took place in Littleton, Colorado, a suburb of Denver where the NRA convention was scheduled to take place just days later. In that case, the Denver mayor told them the city didn’t want them there and even offered to pay them for their trouble if they would cancel. They still refused.
Photo by Brooke Hummer
Last year, NPR correspondent Tim Mak came into possession of some recorded calls between NRA officials right after Columbine which showed that their primary concern at the time was that they would look weak if they canceled the meeting. In the end, after contemplating creating a “victims fund” and deciding it would look like an admission of guilt, their only compromise was to cancel the gun show portion of their convention and shorten their gathering to just one day. According to Brockell, NRA president Charlton Heston went on to give a memorable speech that year “blaming the media for scapegoating NRA members as somehow responsible for the tragedy, while ‘racing’ to ‘drench their microphones with the tears of victims.'” The next year he returned to give one of the most famous culture war speeches in history:
I believe that we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural war that’s about to hijack your birthright to think and say what lives in your heart. I’m sure you no longer trust the pulsing lifeblood of liberty inside you, the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into the miracle that it is…
As I’ve stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I’ve realized that firearms are — are not the only issue. No, it’s much, much bigger than that. I’ve come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain accepted thoughts and speech are mandated.
That was almost a quarter century ago so all this recent wailing about “cancel culture” is just a new term for the same culture war that’s been raging for years. And guns have been at the heart of it because the NRA put them there.
I’ve written a lot over the years about Wayne LaPierre and his fantastically successful gun rights movement, for which he can pretty much take total credit. He saw the potential to turn the sporting and hunting organization into a political powerhouse and through his public relations and propaganda skills met his goals in the matter of a few short years. In doing so he made gun ownership a social identity for the American right wing.
Read the rest at Raw Story. Also worth reading is this piece by David Siders at Politico: ‘It’s straight out of a playbook’: At NRA convention, conspiracy theories abound.
Of course the top story today is still the events in Uvalde. Here’s the latest, links only:
Elderly woman with cat by Vicky Shuck
AP News: Police inaction moves to center of Uvalde shooting probe.
The Washington Post: Before massacre, Uvalde gunman frequently threatened teen girls online.
The Guardian: Vast majority of educators reject Republican proposals for arming teachers.
Tim Miller at The Bulwark: In Uvalde, the Most Enraging Press Conference in American History.
The New York Times: Gun in Texas Shooting Came From Company Known for Pushing Boundaries.
It’s difficult not to obsess about all the bad news, but we also have to take care of ourselves. So I wish you all well and hope you have a pleasant long weekend. And thank you for being here and sharing your thoughts with us.
Friday Reads: NRA Blood Money and the Slaughter of Lambs
Posted: May 27, 2022 Filed under: American Gun Fetish, Human Rights, Republican Code Words and Concepts, Republican politics, Republicans and NRA MONEY, Republicans NRA Blood Money | Tags: Buffalo Massacre, Uvalde Massacre 33 Comments
Hi Sky Dancers!
We’ve got the usual Dance of the Macabre performed by Republicans after another tragic shooting in a grade school two weeks after a tragic shooting in a grocery store. My Senators are among the idiots saying bizarre things to keep their NRA checks in place. When is this going to stop?
Take my Senator Cassidy, please! I guess all of us around here need an AR-15 to stop feral pigs. I’m not sure what purpose splattering a huge hog all over the neighborhood would serve but I’m sure our Fish and Games folks have something to say about that.
So, how many states actually have feral pigs? You don’t even need that much to get a huge alligator. One rifle shot to his sweet spot on the head and the guy is dead. Again, Lousiana Fish and Games, is that what you use?
But then, thankfully I don’t have this asshole for a Senator. Why on earth would he ask for this? Well, this weekend he’s kissing NRA butt so I suppose he thinks it doesn’t matter now.
I’m also struggling to watch them try to act like the “hardening” of schools, theatres, grocery stores, and whatever would simply solve the problem when it was obvious that Robb Grade school and its community of Uvalde supposedly had all of this in place. It doesn’t work. Follow the link above for more on that.
Uvalde also dedicates 40% of its city budget to the police who also had a swat team that didn’t seem to even show up that day. You can read BB’s post yesterday for more on that but even last night we learned more about a series of screw-ups and failures that undoubtedly led to more deaths until the Border Patrol came to the rescue.
We’re learning more about that today.
This is from the Texas Tribune Tweet above and I’m about to turn my tv on to see what they fumble with today. There’s a live link in the tweet.
Authorities are set to address the public from Uvalde on Friday about the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School this week that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
The scheduled update comes a day after law enforcement left several questions unanswered during a chaotic and confusing press conference Thursday. The Texas Department of Public Safety, the state’s top law enforcement agency, still has not answered key questions, including why it took an hour for officers to stop the 18-year-old gunman and why an entrance to the school appeared to be unlocked, allowing him to enter the building in the middle of the school day.
Videos have circulated on social media showing frustrated parents confronting police officers outside the school while the gunman was inside — and debating whether to charge into the school themselves.
But back to the big question … why do we need these kinds of weapons in our communities? How is it that an 18-year-old can’t drink, can’t rent a car, and can’t do a lot of things but can buy tactical weapons and equipment in Texas and other states?
This is from the NPR tweet above.
Though the motivations in these particular cases likely differ, the suspects of these shootings, and others like it, have a lot in common, according to James Densley and Jillian Peterson, co-founders of The Violence Project. Their research organization studies gun violence, mass shootings and violent extremism.
“Usually what’s motivating these shootings is an element of self-hatred, hopelessness, despair, anger, that’s turned outward to the world,” said Densley, who is also a sociologist.
Connecting the two shootings is important, said Peterson, a psychologist.
“I think we’re too quick to write things off because the motive is slightly different,” she said. “It’s the same trajectory over and over and over again. Just people get radicalized in slightly different directions, their anger points in different directions, but its roots are the same.”
The shooters were both 18 and male
Salvador Ramos was 18 years old and a high school dropout, according to officials.
Payton Gendron, is also 18, and white. He turned to various websites during the pandemic, according to a document allegedly written by him, and said he was radicalized that way.
He threatened his high school last year, prompting a visit from the New York State Police.
Densley and Peterson said they see two kinds of age clusters of mass shooters: Men in their mid-40s for those who are workplace shooters and school shooters or those involved in other types of mass shootings between the ages of 15 and 24.
Of the 180 instances of mass shootings in the U.S. they’ve studied, they found that there are only two cases where women acted alone.
It’s always men otherwise, Peterson said.
“We know that 18 is this kind of fragile age, this kind of coming of age where people tend to have mental health crises, or they may feel suicidal,” she said.
These shootings are emblematic of that.
The shooters have “the desire to have that pain, and that anger be known to the world, to have us all watch and witness it, to hear their names, to see their pictures, to read what they’ve left behind for us to read. These are public performances meant for us to watch,” she said.
Notably, in many places in the U.S., it’s also the age they can legally buy their weapons of choice.
There’s more at the link and it’s worth the read.
A House-passed bill, HR 1446, backed by Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, would close what’s known as the “Charleston loophole,” which allows some licensed gun sales to go through before a required background check is done.
Specifically, the legislation would increase the amount of time, from three business days to a minimum of 10 business days, that a federal firearms licensee must wait to receive a completed background check prior to transferring a firearm to an unlicensed person.
Using that loophole, a White gunman was able to legally purchase a firearm to kill nine people at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.Senate Democrats took steps Tuesday night to place the bill, called the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021, onto the legislative calendar so it can be voted on.
It’s unclear when the Senate will vote on the measure, but it needs 60 votes in the chamber to overcome a filibuster, and it’s clear the legislation does not have that support (at least not right now) — nor does it have full Democratic backing to gut the Senate rule altogether.
It’s unclear when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will try to force a procedural vote to break a filibuster. Unless there’s an agreement from all 100 senators, the earliest he could set up the procedural vote would be Saturday, according to a Democratic aide.
But senators were expected to leave for next week’s Memorial Day recess on Thursday afternoon. So they may wait until after the recess to take that procedural vote, even though leaving town amid the Texas tragedy would be bad optics.
The aide said Schumer has not indicated when he may try to force the vote yet.Still, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who has pushed for gun safety legislation since the Sandy Hook shooting in his state nearly 10 years ago, told reporters Tuesday there should be a vote even if it is doomed to fail.
“I think we need to hold every member of Congress accountable and vote so that the public knows where every one of us stand,” he said. Asked about the potential for bipartisan agreement, he added, “I think there may well be areas of agreement. I have come close to agreement with a number of my colleagues on a red flag statute.”
A woman reacts as she pays her respects at a memorial site for the victims killed in this week’s elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Thursday, May 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
As “The Reid Blog” points out, “Texas Republicans offer the same old shameful responses to shootings. Hours removed from a massacre at a Texas elementary school, Republican lawmakers from Texas are still prioritizing guns over people.” This analysis is by
That wasn’t surprising. Like Abbott, Cruz acts like a shill for the gun lobby, which he’s demonstrated through his repeated efforts to block gun safety measures. And speaking to reporters Tuesday afternoon, Cruz made it clear we shouldn’t expect the most recent mass shooting in his state to move him in any way.
“Inevitably when there’s a murder of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” Cruz said. “That doesn’t work. It’s not effective. It doesn’t prevent crime.”
That claim is ironic coming from Cruz, who frequently poses as a supporter of law enforcement. If he were as attuned to the needs of police as he often suggests, he’d know law enforcement groups tend to back certain gun safety measures.
But Cruz’s stance is typical of conservatives when it comes to gun safety: They’re careless about who carries the burden for their perverted affinity for guns. That probably explains why Cruz proposed adding armed law enforcement to school campuses as a simple solution to mass shootings, despite the fact the gunman in Tuesday’s shooting reportedly got past armed police officers.
As my colleague Steve Benen wrote for the MaddowBlog, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joined Cruz in suggesting more guns are needed in schools — except Paxton said teachers should be armed.
If it’s not abundantly clear by now, the GOP is desperately trying to avoid criticizing guns. Another Texas Republican, Rep. Brian Babin, even tied love for guns to Christ on Tuesday, appearing on the right-wing network Newsmax to suggest that the love of guns is interwoven with America’s “Judeo-Christian foundation.”
It’s clear that today’s Republican party has an agenda that only represents a sliver of the America where we grew up. They hate any kind of diversity and want state control of anything that goes against their white nationalistic version of Christianity. We’re paying for that with the blood of our elderly and our young. These are the country’s most vulnerable.
It’s beyond shameful. It’s cruel. It’s rooted in greed and hatred. We have to find a way to vote them all out. We’re losing our country to the worst of humanity.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
So Strong
by Labi Siffre
The higher you build your barriers
The taller I become
The further you take my rights away
The faster I will run
You can deny me
You can decide to turn your face away
No matter, cos there’s
Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it
Tho’ you’re doing me wrong, so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone
Oh no, something inside so strong
Oh oh oh oh oh something inside so strong
The more you refuse to hear my voice
The louder I will sing
You hide behind walls of Jericho
Your lies will come tumbling
Deny my place in time
You squander wealth that’s mine
My light will shine so brightly
It will blind you
Cos there’s
Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it
Tho’ you’re doing me wrong, so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone
Oh no, something inside so strong
Oh oh oh oh oh something inside so strong
Brothers and sisters
When they insist we’re just not good enough
When we know better
Just look ’em in the eyes and say
We’re gonna do it anyway 2x
Something inside so strong
And I know that I can make it
Tho’ you’re doing me wrong, so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone
Oh no, something inside so strong
Oh oh oh oh oh something inside so strong
Brothers and sisters
When they insist we’re just not enough
When we know better
Just look ’em in the eyes and say
We’re gonna do it anyway 4x
Because there’s something inside so strong
And I know that I can make it
Tho’ you’re doing me, so wrong
Oh no, something inside so strong
Oh oh oh oh oh something inside so strong
Thursday Reads: The Uvalde, Texas Nighmare
Posted: May 26, 2022 Filed under: just because 36 CommentsGood Morning!!
Last night, the shocking truth began trickling out. The massacre in a Uvalde, Texas elementary school was actually enabled by police officers who were too cowardly to go into the school while an 18-year-old murdered 19 children and 2 teachers in a 4th grade classroom. Police put up crime scene tape outside the school while the shooter was murdering children inside. The AP reports that parents and other adults begged police to go in and save those kids, but they refused. In the end, it was a lone border patrol agent who went into the school and killed the shooter.
Associated Press: Onlookers urged police to charge into Texas school.
UVALDE, Texas (AP) — Frustrated onlookers urged police officers to charge into the Texas elementary school where a gunman’s rampage killed 19 children and two teachers, witnesses said Wednesday, as investigators worked to track the massacre that lasted upwards of 40 minutes and ended when the 18-year-old shooter was killed by a Border Patrol team.
“Go in there! Go in there!” nearby women shouted at the officers soon after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, 24, who saw the scene from outside his house, across the street from Robb Elementary School in the close-knit town of Uvalde. Carranza said the officers did not go in.
Javier Cazares, whose fourth grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack, said he raced to the school when he heard about the shooting, arriving while police were still gathered outside the building.
Upset that police were not moving in, he raised the idea of charging into the school with several other bystanders.
“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” he said. “More could have been done.”
Here’s video of the people shouting at police to go into the school.
More from the AP story linked above:
Minutes earlier, Carranza had watched as Salvador Ramos crashed his truck into a ditch outside the school, grabbed his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle and shot at two people outside a nearby funeral home who ran away uninjured.
Officials say he “encountered” a school district security officer outside the school, though there were conflicting reports from authorities on whether the men exchanged gunfire. After running inside, he fired on two arriving Uvalde police officers who were outside the building, said Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Travis Considine. The police officers were injured.
After entering the school, Ramos charged into one classroom and began to kill.
He “barricaded himself by locking the door and just started shooting children and teachers that were inside that classroom,” Lt. Christopher Olivarez of the Department of Public Safety told CNN. “It just shows you the complete evil of the shooter.”
All those killed were in the same classroom, he said.
A locked door equals “barricaded?” WTF?! Where are all those battering rams cops use to break down doors in no-knock raids? BTW, the tiny town of Uvalde actually has a SWAT team.
Back to the AP story:
Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw told reporters that 40 minutes to an hour elapsed from when Ramos opened fire on the school security officer to when the tactical team shot him, though a department spokesman said later that they could not give a solid estimate of how long the gunman was in the school or when he was killed.
“The bottom line is law enforcement was there,” McCraw said. “They did engage immediately. They did contain (Ramos) in the classroom.”
For an hour the gunman was left free to murder children while cops stood around and did nothing but prevent parents from getting to their children. In the end a border patrol agent had to ask a school staff member to unlock the door with key so he could get to the shooter.
Texas officials are clapping themselves on the back for what they’ve described as “heroic” and “courageous” actions by law enforcement who responded to an armed 18-year-old at an elementary school on Tuesday.
Nineteen children and two teachers were killed. Seventeen more were injured.
And despite Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s insistence at a press conference Wednesday that things “could have been worse” if not for law enforcement’s actions, officials are being strangely opaque about what actually happened at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.
When asked how much time passed between the gunman arriving at the school and the gunman being killed, Texas’ Director of Public Safety Steve McCraw offered an indefinite response.
“Forty minutes, an hour,” he said. “But I don’t want to give you a particular timeline.” [….]
Sometime late Tuesday morning, the gunman shot his grandmother in the face. (As of Wednesday she remained hospitalized and in critical condition.) He then got into a truck, drove toward the elementary school a few miles away, and crashed into a ditch more than a hundred feet from the property.
A school resource officer had heard the reports about the crashed vehicle, so he confronted him, according to McCraw. The gunman entered the school anyway. “[The school resource officer] followed him right in immediately,” McCraw said. At that point, “rounds were exchanged.” Then officers from the Uvalde Police Department arrived. There was more shooting, and the officers were wounded (though other officials have said repeatedly that they sustained just minor injuries).
Did police “contain” the shooter in the 4th grade classroom full of children? It sounds like it.
Eventually, those officers “were responsible” for containing the gunman in a classroom, McCraw said. (Spokespersons for the Texas Department of Public Safety had repeatedly told news outlets earlier that the suspect barricaded himself into the classroom and immediately started shooting.)
Spokespersons from Texas Department of Public Safety said in several media interviews that Uvalde Police first received 911 calls at around 11:20 a.m. local time reporting the crash, and reporting a man wearing a backpack, some form of body armor, and holding a rifle, approaching Robb Elementary.
At 11:43 a.m., the school announced that it was going on lockdown, according to KSAT, a local news station. That was the same time that the Uvalde Police Department wrote on Facebook that the school was the site of an active police scene and urged people to avoid the area.
At 12:17 p.m., the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District wrote on social media that there was an active shooter at Robb Elementary, and that people should avoid the area.
At 1:06 p.m., more than an hour and a half after those first 911 calls were made, the Uvalde Police Department said that the shooter “was in police custody.”
All that time went by before anyone actually tried went into the school; and when someone did go in it was border patrol agent, not anyone on the Uvalde police force. Read the rest at Vice News.
And get this: the tiny town of Uvalde has a SWAT team. Where were they in all this?
In February, the Uvalde SWAT team visited local schools and businesses to “familiarize themselves with layouts” of the buildings.
A child who survived the attack on Robb Elementary School in Uvalde has described what happened in that 4th grade classroom. KENS5: ‘It’s time to die’ | Fourth-grader who survived Uvalde school shooting gives heartbreaking account of what gunman told students.
UVALDE, Texas — A fourth grader who survived the mass shooting at Robb Elementary has shared gut-wrenching details about what he witnessed inside that classroom.
“He shot the next person’s door. We have a door in the middle. He opened it. He came in and he crouched a little bit and he said, he said, ‘It’s time to die,'” the boy recalled….
“When I heard the shooting through the door, I told my friend to hide under something so he won’t find us,” he said. “I was hiding hard. And I was telling my friend to not talk because he is going to hear us.”
The boy and four others hid under a table that had a tablecloth over it, which may have shielded them from the shooter’s view and saved their lives. The boy shared heartbreaking details about what happened in that room.
“When the cops came, the cop said: ‘Yell if you need help!’ And one of the persons in my class said ‘help.’ The guy overheard and he came in and shot her,” the boy said. “The cop barged into that classroom. The guy shot at the cop. And the cops started shooting.”
He said that once the shooting stopped, he came out from under the table.
“I just opened the curtain. And I just put my hand out,” he said. “I got out with my friend. I knew it was police. I saw the armor and the shield.”
He said his teachers, Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles, saved their lives.
“They were nice teachers,” he said. “They went in front of my classmates to help. To save them.”
The boy said that it made him feel better hugging his family and telling them about his feelings. He spoke with a counselor and said a highlight was seeing his friend who also survived.
“I would like to say to every kid and parent to be safe,” he said.
Finally, here’s an interview with a parent who lost his daughter in the shooting.
I’m sick to death of Republicans who would rather take blood money from the NRA than save children’s lives. They only care about fetuses; once the babies are born, they are on their own. And I’m sick to death of the Senate, where Republicans can block any attempts to pass gun control legislation because of the filibuster. And I’m sick to death of Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema, who would rather have children die from gunshot wounds than vote to the the idiotic filibuster rule.
Here are some more stories on this nightmarish situation:
NBC News: The Uvalde school district had an extensive safety plan. 19 children were killed anyway.
NBC News: What we know — and don’t know — about the Texas elementary school shooting.
Texas Tribune: Hours after Uvalde school shooting, Gov. Greg Abbott attended a fundraiser 300 miles away.
NBC News: Abbott calls Texas school shooting a mental health issue but cut state spending for it.
The Washington Post: After Texas shooting, Republicans face online anger over NRA money.
Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect: The Senate Has Forfeited Its Right to Exist. Not even 19 butchered children can break through its idiotic traditions.
Ronald Brownstein at The Atlantic: The Real Reason America Doesn’t Have Gun Control. The basic rules of American democracy provide a veto over national policy to a minority of the states.
Steve Israel at The Hill: The haunting reason Congress won’t pass sensible gun laws.
The New York Times: In More Than 100 G.O.P. Midterm Ads This Year: Guns, Guns, Guns.
Roxanne Gay at The New York Times: These Are Desperately Uncivil Times. We Are Disgracing America.
I’m so sick and tired of this. Republicans are working as hard as they can to destroy our country, in every way they can think of. And they are succeeding. If you have any reasons for hope, please share them in the comment thread.
Wednesday Reads: It’s fucking enough.
Posted: May 25, 2022 Filed under: 2022 Primaries, Congress, Domestic terrorism, Gun Control, health hazard, mass shooting, Mitt Romney, morning reads, open thread, Political and Editorial Cartoons, Politics as Usual, Psychopaths in charge, QAnon Queen Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican politics, the GOP | Tags: Uvalde 37 Comments
I’ve got nothing to say, because we all know this is fucking never going to change. Fuck these Republicans and their thoughts and prayers:
End this post with this thread here:
This is an open thread…
Tuesday Reads: High Plains Grifters
Posted: May 24, 2022 Filed under: 2022 Primaries, corruption, Jared Kushner, Steven Manuchin 30 Comments
Frederic S. Remington (1861-1909); A Dash for the Timber; 1889; Oil on canvas; Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas; 1961.381
Good Day Sky Dancers!
There’s a seemingly endless discovery of shakedowns and grifts that came at the end of the Trump administration. We know many individuals carted off the people’s property like Trump himself and Mike Pompeo. Donald Trump’s emolument violations are legendary and unpunished.
We also know that Jared Kushner made endless trips to Saudi Arabia asking for his pay for how much he helped them benefit from his access to his father-in-law. Now, we know Steve Mnuchin made just as many trips and received money for his business. All this happened while the White House was planning the insurrection.
From the New York Times: “Kushner’s and Mnuchin’s Quick Pivots to Business With the Gulf. Weeks before the Trump administration ended, Jared Kushner and Steven Mnuchin met with future investors on official trips to the Middle East.” This revolving door usually happens after officials leave office but not these two. Under the guise of “The Abraham Fund”, these two milked their positions for all they were worth.
Shortly before the 2020 election, Trump administration officials unveiled a U.S. government-sponsored program called the Abraham Fund that they said would raise $3 billion for projects around the Middle East.
Spearheaded by President Donald J. Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, the fund promised to capitalize on diplomatic agreements he had championed between Israel and some Arab states — pacts known as the Abraham Accords. Steven Mnuchin, then Treasury secretary, helped inaugurate the fund on a trip to the United Arab Emirates and Israel, hailing the accords as “a tremendous foundation for economic growth.”
It was little more than talk: With no accounts, employees, income or projects, the fund vanished when Mr. Trump left office. Yet after Mr. Kushner and Mr. Mnuchin crisscrossed the Middle East in the final months of the administration on trips that included trying to raise money for the project, each quickly launched a private fund that in some ways picked up where the Abraham Fund had ended.
Mr. Kushner and Mr. Mnuchin brought along top aides who had helped court Gulf rulers while promoting the Abraham Fund, and soon, both were back in the same royal courts asking for investments, although for purely commercial endeavors.
Within three months, Mr. Mnuchin’s new firm had circulated detailed investment plans and received $500 million commitments from the Emiratis, Kuwaitis and Qataris, according to previously unreported documents prepared by the main Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which itself soon committed $1 billion. Mr. Kushner’s new firm reached an agreement for a $2 billion investment from the Saudis six months after he left government.
A New York Times report last month revealing the Saudi investments in the Kushner and Mnuchin funds raised alarms from ethics experts and Democratic lawmakers about the appearance of potential payoffs for official acts during the Trump administration.
The Challenge
Charles Marion Russell – Date unknown
These were no small sums as reported by Business Insider: “Jared Kushner and Steve Mnuchin cashed in fast on their Trump-era work, raising $3.5 billion from Arab states for private funds, report says.” At least the money showed up after the Trump administration ended but the grift occurred during it.
Shortly after Trump left office, Mnuchin launched a fund, Liberty Capital, and Kushner followed soon after, launching Affinity Partners in July.
Within six months, Affinity Partners had secured a $2 billion investment from the Saudi sovereign-wealth fund, The Times reported in April.
Liberty Capital raised more than $1.5 billion from the sovereign-wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar within three months of Mnuchin leaving office, The Times reported.
Political commentators and ethics experts were concerned that the investments may be a way for the investors to gain footing with those close to Trump, should he run for and win the 2024 election. Trump has yet to declare whether he will run.
The Times reported that Kushner and Mnuchin made a string of visits to the Middle East while in office, meeting those who would ultimately invest billions in their funds.
Kushner made three trips to the Middle East shortly after the November 2020 US election, The Times said, including a January 5 meeting in Saudi Arabia with leaders of the Persian Gulf states.
On January 5, 2021, Mnuchin started his own Middle East tour, with scheduled stops to visit the heads of the sovereign-wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait, The Times reported.
A.R. Mitchell, True Love
Rough way to make a living hmmm? The worst is that the policy pay-off is pretty disgusting and may include letting the Khashoggi murder slide. From MSNBC’s MaddowBlog: “Why Saudi money for Kushner, Mnuchin is drawing fresh scrutiny. Before leaving office, Jared Kushner and Steven Mnuchin engaged in official Middle Eastern travel to countries they would soon hit up for private cash.”
On the former, let’s not forget just how eager Team Trump was to cozy up to Riyadh. As we discussed last month, Trump’s first foreign trip while in office was to Saudi Arabia. When Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman imprisoned other members of the royal family, Trump announced his support for the move. When the Saudis imposed a blockade on U.S. allies in Qatar, Trump endorsed this, too. When the U.S. had evidence of bin Salman approving the operation that killed Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump boasted that he came to the crown prince’s rescue and shielded him from consequences.
Kushner was responsible, at least in part, for helping shape the administration’s policy, making at least three trips to Saudi Arabia during his father-in-law’s first year in the White House. (Oddly enough, the actual total might be more: One of Kushner’s trips was kept private and only came to public attention after his return.)
Then, as his father-in-law’s term wound down, Kushner didn’t just prepare for life after a powerful White House role, he also made a series of additional trips to the Middle East, meeting with representatives of countries his newly formed private equity firm would soon approach for substantial financial investments.
Gunfighters, Charles M. Russell,1904
Texas, of course, is well known for its high plains grifters. This is from CNN: “Jackson may have violated federal law by using campaign funds to pay for private dining club, report finds.” Do we need to mention that he’s a Republican?
GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson may have violated federal law by using campaign funds to pay for “unlimited access” to a private dining club in Texas, according to a review by a House advisory panel, referring the matter for further investigation.
The Office of Congressional Ethics is asking the House Committee on Ethics to launch an investigation into Jackson’s use of campaign funds after its review found “substantial reason to believe” that Jackson either converted campaign funds for personal use or expended funds that were not attributable to campaign or political purposes — a potential violation of campaign finance law and House rules.
Jackson refused to cooperate with the investigation, according to the review, but his attorney disputed the findings in a letter to the House ethics panel.
The advisory board found that Jackson’s campaign expenses “may not be legitimate,” asserting that Jackson “used campaign funds to pay for unlimited access to the Amarillo Club, a private dining club located in Amarillo, Texas.”
The review documents that Jackson’s campaign fund, Texans for Ronny Jackson, has made consistent payments to the Amarillo Club since October 2020, including dues, membership food, beverage and membership fees. Between October 2020 and September 2021, the review found that Jackson’s campaign committee made 11 monthly dues payments to the club, totaling $1,929.07.
On the Southern Plains, 1907, Frederic Remington
And for some reason, someone just had to hear from Henry Kissinger’s war criminal mouth one more time. This is from the Washington Post. “Kissinger says Ukraine should concede territory to Russia to end war. ” He really puts the meat to the bones in terms of that old saying “Only the good die young.” They evidently invited him to Davos. (Sigh)
Former U.S. secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger said Monday that Ukraine should concede territory to Russia to help end the invasion, suggesting a position that a vast majority of Ukrainians are against as the war enters its fourth month.
Speaking at a conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Kissinger urged the United States and the West to not seek an embarrassing defeat for Russia in Ukraine, warning it could worsen Europe’s long-term stability.
After saying that Western countries should remember Russia’s importance to Europe and not get swept up “in the mood of the moment,” Kissinger also pushed for the West to force Ukraine into accepting negotiations with a “status quo ante,” which means the previous state of affairs.
“Negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome. Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante,” said Kissinger, 98, according to the Daily Telegraph. “Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself.”
There are 4 states having primaries today. Georgia will likely be the most-watched but all are important.
This is from the NPR tweet link above. Some of these candidates are real doozies.
Four states hold primary contests Tuesday, including runoff elections in Texas.
Georgia holds the political spotlight, as the endorsement power of former President Donald Trump faces its biggest test yet — and likely its largest failure — as Democrats also seek a path to flip the state’s control from a divided GOP.
Trump has endorsed a slew of Georgia candidates — including lesser-known, down-ballot races like insurance commissioner — in the state where he faces a criminal probe after a January 2021 call in which he asked Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” some 12,000 votes to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
I personally want Huckabuck defeated in Arkansas because I can’t take any more of her constant lying. Unfortunately, the Lt Governor dropped out to run for AG and her only rival is a dark horse. We’ll have to hope that the Democratic candidate can win in November.
Well, that’s today’s Journal of High Plains Grifting. I’m sure there will be more when the Jan, 6 Committee starts its hearings next month.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
Minkoff Minx
NW Luna
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
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