All of these murdered children are so rude! Always politicizing things that are inherently political:
All this was the context when Beto O’Rourke confronted Abbott during a press conference in Uvalde last Wednesday. “The time to stop the next shooting is right now, and you are doing nothing,” he said, adding, “This is on you.” O’Rourke, the former Democratic congressman and Presidential candidate, whose angry pledge to take away guns after the killings in El Paso was widely thought to have damaged his political prospects, is running for governor against Abbott this year. That likely explains, in part, why Don McLaughlin, the Republican mayor of Uvalde, who has appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show, called O’Rourke a “sick son of a bitch” and accused him of making the shooting “a political issue.” Senator Ted Cruz, who was also at the press conference, later said, “I get tired of all the politicking. It happens every time there is a mass shooting.” That Cruz used the phrase “every time there is a mass shooting” spoke volumes about how commonplace these abominations have become. Two days later, Cruz addressed the annual N.R.A. convention, in Houston.
O’Rourke did not politicize the shooting. The circumstances that make a mass murder of fourth graders possible are inherently political. The legal access to the weaponry involved is political. The most visible people refusing to see these things as political happen to be elected to political office. But O’Rourke was only partially right. Some of this is on Second Amendment fundamentalists and the politicians who translate their zealotry into law—the rest is on every one of us who has yet to find the courage, the creativity, or the resolve to stop it.
American Cities Are Rethinking Traffic Stops:
To prevent similar
incidentsmurders from happening in their city, Schor and other Lansing officials are trying something new in the state capitol… they banned traffic stops for minor infractions altogether. The goal is to avoid unnecessary escalations, racial profiling and pre-textual stops where an officer uses a minor violation to pull over and search a car.
Hmm…? Unnecessary escalations ad racial profiling? It seems like this takes racists cops pulling people over to hassle and murder them as a kind of given. Maybe there is a way to keep enforcing traffic laws but without all the racism and murders?
As Long As Coons and Manchin are US Senators – Is Voting in “Blue” states Pointless? Signs Point to – Yes
The United States has always, in some capacity, been governed through some form of minority rule. But the last 22 years (and the last six in particular) have underlined just how difficult it is for the will of the majority to translate into policy or governmental action. It feels like the United States is regressing, but we’re actually just getting redrawn according to this minority group’s architectural renderings of a Christian Nationalist Theocracy. We’re free to pound on the doors (politely, of course, and certainly not in a way that would make any Supreme Court justice feel uncomfortable). But we’re stuck in the design. With all these motherfucking guns.
Speaking of Coons, it is the 1 year anniversary of the New York Times publishing this nonsense:
To trail Mr. Coons on Capitol Hill is to witness how he operates as an extra pair of eyes and ears for the Biden administration in Congress, a kind of consigliere trusted by both the president and the senators — many of them Republicans — whom Mr. Biden needs to succeed.
It is a far less prestigious job than the one that Mr. Coons — who interned for Mr. Biden three decades ago, became his mentee on the New Castle County Council, campaigned for him in Iowa and now holds the seat that once belonged to him — initially sought in the Biden administration, where he had hoped to serve as secretary of state. But it can demand the same kind of shuttle diplomacy and high-stakes negotiation.
It seems like ten years ago. Nobody even pretends that there is a secret bipartisan caucus in the Senate anymore. Certainly no secret bipartisan caucus that is going to come out of hiding someday and save the Republic, anyway.