DL Open Thread Sunday, April 18, 2021

Why do so many Central Americans seek asylum in the United States? Because so many U.S. guns have migrated to Mexico and Central America. Officials estimate about 2 million guns have moved south over the past decade.

The General Assembly is returning to Legislative Hall, but the public isn’t invited. House Speaker Pete Schwartkopf said sessions will still be held by Zoom with lawmakers in their offices. This won’t please Delaware Republicans, who depend on Cletus and Bubba showing up with their guns to intimidate their Democratic colleagues.

If you always thought heavy metal music was a bit too snuggly with nihilistic fascism, guess what? You were at least partly right! The poster boy for that is now a graying tool you’ve never heard of, Jon Ryan Schaffer, the guitarist for a metal band you’ve never heard of, Iced Earth. He’s the first Capitol rioter to plead guilty to his role in the insurrection and is cooperating with prosecutors. Schaffer is listed as a “founder and life member” of the Oath Keepers right-wing terrorist group, but apparently that’s just the group’s PR; Schaffer’s lawyer claims he hardly knows them. To their credit, two of the members of Iced Earth decided they don’t want to know Schaffer — they’ve quit the band, probably a smart move considering their guitarist, even after flipping, is likely to do time.

Nixon-tattooed shitbag Roger Stone is being sued by the Department of Justice, which claims he owes the U.S. $2 million. Stone claims he has no job, at least not any legitimate one, which has been apparent for years now.

Historian Jon Meacham, interviewed about the Derek Chauvin trial, traced Trump’s defeat to his disastrous Bible stunt, in which protesters were tear-gassed so Captain Fat-Ass could walk to the church. The protest he heavy-handedly attacked was over the murder of George Floyd.

Dumbfuckery has its costs. The state of Oklahoma found that out the hard way. It invested heavily in hydroxychloroquine on Captain Fat-Ass’s say-so and is now stuck with 1.2 million doses sitting in a warehouse, enough to supply 1,600 lupus patients for a year. Unfortunately, they don’t have a year — the medication expires at year’s end.

Interesting long read on the gamesmanship behind the release of the Pentagon Papers. The upshot: New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan was lying to Daniel Ellsberg while trying to procure the documents, most egregiously by making a copy of them after Ellsberg extracted a promise that he wouldn’t.

Five Thirty Eight does a deep dive into the Great Outmigration from the nation’s churches and finds it’s not just the young, and it’s not just white people who are deciding organized religion isn’t for them.

The floor’s yours.