Comments Off on Republican Ghouls Send Identical Tweets After 19 Kids Killed in School Shooting
These are the folks who want control of Congress, the high court and the Presidency. MA
Matt Novak – 9h ago
Amass shooter killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday. And Republican politicians took to Twitter in the wake of this tragedy to express their condolences. But if you look closely, you’ll notice something odd. Many of the messages were identical, as though they’re all just copying and pasting the same tweets from the last mass shooting.
There seems to be a formula for how right-wing politicians are now responding to mass shootings on social media that goes something like this: I am [HORRIFIED, HEARTBROKEN, ETC] at the senseless tragedy in [LOCATION] today. We are [LIFTING THEM UP IN PRAYER, PRAYING FOR THEM] and thank the heroic efforts of [POLICE, FIRST RESPONDERS, ETC] on the scene.
That’s it. No promise that laws will be passed to help stop these mass shootings from happening again; no recognition that the U.S. is the only wealthy country in the world where mass shootings happen frequently; no acknowledgement that children in other countries don’t have to participate in active shooter drills. The only thing politicians can muster is “thoughts and prayers” and “thank God for our cops.”
Take a look at some of the tweets from yesterday, with an emphasis in the text from Gizmodo to show just how identical these statements really are.
Horrified and heartbroken by reports of the disgusting violence directed at innocent schoolkids in Uvalde, Texas. The entire country is praying for the children, families, teachers, and staff and the first responders on the scene.
Horrified and heartbroken to learn of the significant loss of life in the shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Please join me in lifting their loved ones up in prayer. Thank you to the local first responders working on the scene.
This is heartbreaking and soul wrenching. Our prayers are with the parents, families, students and staff of Robb Elementary in Uvalde, TX at this unimaginable time. Thankful for the heroic efforts of medical pros, law enforcement and community members who responded so quickly.
We’re horrified by the news out of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX today. Mikey and I are heartbroken for the families and loved ones of the victims & grateful for the first responders and law enforcement who worked to save lives.
Marty, the girls, and I are heartbroken over news from Uvalde, Tx. For children and innocent adults, including the school teacher, to be taken from this world in such a depraved, violent way, it is incomprehensible. We are lifting up the families of these victims, the first responders on the scene, and the entire community in prayer.
Heidi & I are fervently lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting in Uvalde. We are in close contact with local officials, but the precise details are still unfolding. Thank you to heroic law enforcement & first responders for acting so swiftly.
Cruz’s statement was identical to a statement he made back in October 2021 after another school shooting in Texas:
The list goes on and on. And they all use the same formula.
But oddly, it wasn’t just Republicans who used a similar mash-up of platitudes on Tuesday. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona, used language identical to the Republicans:
We are horrified and heartbroken by the senseless tragedy unfolding at Robb Elementary School in Texas and grateful to the first responders for acting swiftly. No families should ever have to fear violence in their children’s schools.
Perhaps all of these horrified and heartbroken politicians could do something about this national tragedy that just keeps repeating itself. Or maybe they can keep those tweets copied on their smartphones and ready to paste because this horror will no doubt happen again sometime very soon.
Comments Off on Why Are We Screwing Ourselves and Blaming Something or Someone Else?
It is unfortunate that we have allowed ourselves to be polarized by folks who have a platform that is widely read and distributed, their dis and mis information has cost LIVES, jobs and increased the suffering of the neediest of Americans. While all of this is occurring, the Right including the GOP is still pursuing their agenda where big business is more important than the consumers and voters. The current assault on Women’s health and abortion which is just small part of the anti-abortion issue. The right aka GOP and Trumpists abetted by FAUX news in the persons of _ ucker Carlson and S. Hannity et all. Have one goal in mind and that is power and using the strength of the extreme right, the Trump followers who are no more than the same type of folks who revel in the actions viewed on the “Jerry Springer Show” (Mr. Springer has stated that his show is staged). These followers are unfortunately aware of their duplicity in the problem by following and exhorting the misinformation the belies the facts. It might be well to point out that these promoters of the misinformation are out to enhance their lives and not ours. It is our (the voters) duty to look closely at the folks who are providing information and look behind the curtain of outright lies and understand that this is not what we want. We (the voters) must have a firm grasp on reality and the underlying reasons for our elected official’s reluctance to do the work we elected them to do and what they promised to do for us. If we (the voters) take a bit of time and read some history we will find that save a few, our elected folks have taken care of themselves and continually promised us that they would take care of us. As an example, why do we have high court judges who lied under oath about “settled” law? There is a method of relieving high court judged only if we the people push for it rather than hope or suppose our lack luster representatives will do their job. Our politics is about power and money, pure and simple. If you have money, you have power and using both to get what you want rather than being magnanimous in your actions. Simply put: why are millions spent to gain an office that pays Thousands? WE have had many “wake up” calls but we have failed to wash the sleep out of our eyes. Our only recourse is the vote and that requires us to avoid the “rhetoric” of politics and look at the facts. One fact that is apparent: “All politicians Lie!!”
Comments Off on ‘How do you even sleep at night?’ Texas Sen. Ted Cruz faces backlash after Uvalde shooting
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Stefan Stevenson, Fort Worth Star-Telegram – Yesterday 9:56 PM
This is indicative of how broken our politics are, people die in mass shootings, yet Congress refuses to do anything about it due to the funding from Gun lobbyists and the big money allowed by the “Citizen’s United” decision by the “Subprime Court”. MA
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is taking heat to his response to the shooting in Uvalde.
The death toll as of Tuesday night rose to 19 children and two adults. Police say an 18-year-old gunman acted alone and is also dead.
Uvalde is a town of 15,000 about 80 miles west of San Antonio.
“Heidi & I are fervently lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting in Uvalde,” Cruz said in a post on Twitter. “We are in close contact with local officials, but the precise details are still unfolding. Thank you to heroic law enforcement & first responders for acting so swiftly.”
Cruz’s sentiments, however, were quickly rebutted by many accusing him of hypocrisy. Cruz received more than $300,000 in campaign donations from gun lobbyists during his last senatorial campaign in 2018, more than $80,000 more than the second closest candidate.
Cruz released a statement that expanded on his social media message.
“Today is a dark day. We’re all completely sickened and heartbroken,” Cruz said. “As of now, 15 innocent people are dead. 14 were children. Others are still in critical condition or otherwise injured, and we are all praying for each of them.”
“We’ve seen too many of these shootings,” Cruz added. “No parent should have to bear the pain of burying their child. We need to come together, as one nation, and support Uvalde as they try to heal from this devastating loss.”
Cruz, fellow Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott are scheduled to speak Friday at the National Rifle Association’s 2022 annual meeting in Houston.
Today, a gunman murdered at least 19 children and 2 adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
For years now, after one massacre or another, I have written some version of the same article, explaining that the nation’s current gun free-for-all is not traditional but, rather, is a symptom of the takeover of our nation by a radical extremist minority. The idea that massacres are “the price of freedom,” as right-wing personality Bill O’Reilly said in 2017 after the Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas, in which a gunman killed 60 people and wounded 411 others, is new, and it is about politics, not our history.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution, on which modern-day arguments for widespread gun ownership rest, is one simple sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” There’s not a lot to go on about what the Framers meant, although in their day, to “bear arms” meant to be part of an organized militia.
As the Tennessee Supreme Court wrote in 1840, “A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.”
Today’s insistence that the Second Amendment gives individuals a broad right to own guns comes from two places.
One is the establishment of the National Rifle Association in New York in 1871, in part to improve the marksmanship skills of American citizens who might be called on to fight in another war, and in part to promote in America the British sport of elite shooting, complete with hefty cash prizes in newly organized tournaments. Just a decade after the Civil War, veterans jumped at the chance to hone their former skills. Rifle clubs sprang up across the nation.
By the 1920s, rifle shooting was a popular American sport. “Riflemen” competed in the Olympics, in colleges, and in local, state, and national tournaments organized by the NRA. Being a good marksman was a source of pride, mentioned in public biographies, like being a good golfer. In 1925, when the secretary of the NRA apparently took money from ammunition and arms manufacturers, the organization tossed him out and sued him.
NRA officers insisted on the right of citizens to own rifles and handguns but worked hard to distinguish between law-abiding citizens who should have access to guns for hunting and target shooting and protection, and criminals and mentally ill people, who should not. In 1931, amid fears of bootlegger gangs, the NRA backed federal legislation to limit concealed weapons; prevent possession by criminals, the mentally ill and children; to require all dealers to be licensed; and to require background checks before delivery. It 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 mid-1970s, a faction in the NRA forced the organization away from sports and toward opposing “gun control.” It formed a political action committee (PAC) in 1975, and two years later it elected an organization president who abandoned sporting culture and focused instead on “gun rights.”
This was the second thing that led us to where we are today: leaders of the NRA embraced the politics of Movement Conservatism, the political movement that rose to combat the business regulations and social welfare programs that both Democrats and Republicans embraced after World War II. Movement Conservatives embraced the myth of the American cowboy as a white man standing against the “socialism” of the federal government as it sought to level the economic playing field between Black Americans and their white neighbors. Leaders like Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater personified the American cowboy, with his cowboy hat and opposition to government regulation, while television Westerns showed good guys putting down bad guys without the interference of the government.
In 1972, the Republican platform had called for gun control to restrict the sale of “cheap handguns,” but in 1975, as he geared up to challenge President Gerald R. Ford for the 1976 presidential nomination, Movement Conservative hero Ronald Reagan took a stand against gun control. In 1980, the Republican platform opposed the federal registration of firearms, and the NRA endorsed a presidential candidate—Reagan—for the first time.
When President Reagan took office, a new American era, dominated by Movement Conservatives, began. And the power of the NRA over American politics grew.
In 1981 a gunman trying to kill Reagan shot and paralyzed his press secretary, James Brady, and wounded Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy and police officer Thomas Delahanty. After the shooting, then-representative Charles Schumer (D-NY) introduced legislation that became known as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, or the Brady Bill, to require background checks before gun purchases. Reagan, who was a member of the NRA, endorsed the bill, but the NRA spent millions of dollars to defeat it.
After the Brady Bill passed in 1993, the NRA paid for lawsuits in nine states to strike it down. Until 1959, every single legal article on the Second Amendment concluded that it was not intended to guarantee individuals the right to own a gun. But in the 1970s, legal scholars funded by the NRA had begun to argue that the Second Amendment did exactly that.
In 1997, when the Brady Bill cases came before the Supreme Court as Printz v. United States, the Supreme Court declared parts of the measure unconstitutional.
Now a player in national politics, the NRA was awash in money from gun and ammunition manufacturers. By 2000 it was one of the three most powerful lobbies in Washington. It spent more than $40 million on the 2008 election. In that year, the landmark Supreme Court decision of District of Columbia v. Heller struck down gun regulations and declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.
Increasingly, NRA money backed Republican candidates. In 2012 the NRA spent $9 million in the presidential election, and in 2014 it spent $13 million. Then, in 2016, it spent over $50 million on Republican candidates, including more than $30 million on Trump’s effort to win the White House. This money was vital to Trump, since many other Republican super PACs refused to back him. The NRA spent more money on Trump than any other outside group, including the leading Trump super PAC, which spent $20.3 million.
The unfettered right to own and carry weapons has come to symbolize the Republican Party’s ideology of individual liberty. Lawmakers and activists have not been able to overcome Republican insistence on gun rights despite the mass shootings that have risen since their new emphasis on guns. Even though 90% of Americans—including nearly 74% of NRA members—support background checks, Republicans have killed such legislation by filibustering it.
The NRA will hold its 2022 annual meeting this Friday in Houston. Former president Trump will speak, along with Texas governor Greg Abbott, senator Ted Cruz, and representative Dan Crenshaw; North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson; and South Dakota governor Kristi Noem—all Republicans. NRA executive vice president and chief executive officer Wayne LaPierre expressed his enthusiasm for the lineup by saying: “President Trump delivered on his promises by appointing judges who respect and value the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and in doing so helped ensure the freedom of generations of Americans.”
Tonight, President Joe Biden spoke to the nation: “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?… It’s time to turn this pain into action. For every parent, for every citizen in this country, we have to make it clear to every elected official in this country, it’s time to act.” In the Senate, Chris Murphy (D-CT) said, “I am here on this floor, to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues….find a way to pass laws that make this less likely.”
But it was Steve Kerr, the coach of the Golden State Warriors basketball team, whose father was murdered by gunmen in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1984, who best expressed the outrage of the nation. At a press conference tonight, shaking, he said, “I’m not going to talk about basketball…. Any basketball questions don’t matter…. Fourteen children were killed 400 miles from here, and a teacher, and in the last ten days we’ve had elderly Black people killed in a supermarket in Buffalo, we’ve had Asian churchgoers killed in Southern California, and now we have children murdered at school. WHEN ARE WE GONNA DO SOMETHING? I’m tired, I’m so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families…. I’m tired of the moments of silence. Enough. There’s 50 senators…who refuse to vote on HR 8, which is a background check rule that the House passed a couple years ago…. [N]inety percent of Americans, regardless of political party, want…universal background checks…. We are being held hostage by 50 senators in Washington who refuse to even put it to a vote despite what we the American people want…because they want to hold onto their own power. It’s pathetic,” he said, walking out of the press conference.
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