Texas secession was an ironic joke when I was in high school. Can’t believe these clowns have put it into a major political party platform. They are going to put the Onion out of business.
Didn’t move to CA because of these nutcases, but this makes me more glad we did.
I just bought a house, which is looking like a bad idea. If these fuckers put secession up for a referendum, it’ll pass and we’ll all be fucked.
Does your van fit in the garage?
And honestly, if my momma didn’t live here. I don’t know that I would.
I am only here until I retire, which is hopefully only another 5 years. Cheaper to buy a house than rent over that time frame, even with current interest rates.
Maybe I lack imagination, but I’m having a hard time understanding why the slapdicks in Uvalde are so hell bent on covering up what happened. They’re a bunch of uneducated, illiterate incompetent fuckwits who are great at intimidating people during a traffic stop but when faced with someone who plainly would not hesitate to shoot them, they’re proven to be every bit as cowardly as any other bully. Does this surprise anyone? It shouldn’t. So what’s the deal?
A while back there was some (I thought morbidly fantastical) speculation that these idiots were responsible for killing some of the kids. That now looks unlikely since the shooter was in the same two rooms the entire time the cops were milling around wondering who was going to take charge and any poor soul who was in either of those two rooms had been dead for an hour and a half by the time the cops decided to do something.
I’ve seen some speculation that the local law enforcement knew that this kid was nuts and had him under some sort of surveillance, and they fucked up and let him assemble a small armory, buy an AR, crash his car a block away from the school (Anyone ever figure out why that happened? Seems to me you’d want to pull quietly into the parking lot and calmly enter the school if you were planning a massacre rather than crash your truck and exchange fire with the guys at the funeral parlor before even getting to the school but what do I know?) enter the school and proceed to murder 22 people or whatever the number was when they weren’t paying attention. It seems likely that law enforcement had him on their radar or at least should have, since his grandmother apparently phoned the police and told them that her grandson was nuts and was planning mass murder.
But even that sort of additional incompetence doesn’t seem like nearly enough to motivate this coverup effort. It seems like any of this could easily be addressed with the insistence that every teacher everywhere must at all times be armed with an AR slung over their shoulder.
So I don’t understand what’s going on here.
Having a couple of dozen “good guys with guns” cower in a corridor while a single teenager murders children because he has an assault rifle has to be the elephant in the room. If they admit that a full armed and armored police response won’t go in that room, then they cannot protect anyone from that weapon anywhere.
Which means that type of weapon has to be banned. Which their paymasters don’t want. And they don’t want because then they’ll have to tell their only-gun-powder-gets-me-hard voters that their AR-ED is going bye-bye.
It’s right wing maximalist politics, where you take everything always and never ever ever give a fraction of an inch regardless of the cost.
I was being serious when I said that the ready solution to the problem that the police were under equipped to take on one lunatic with an AR is to mandate that everyone carry one.
These people do not exist in reality so it’s difficult for me to ascribe their motives to anything resembling the rational thought processes that you describe. I mean, Cornyn got roasted for a bill with little more than lame background check language. These people are fully aware that an assault weapons ban is a non-starter in the US.
We had one earlier this century. What they fear is that - like the Fox News poll above - some of their reliable single-issue voters will rethink that position. If they lose that hook into voters, then they have to compete on other issues, for which they have nothing.
They have demonstrated quite a knack for inventing issues out of thin air - CRT, grooming, the great replacement, hat et al.
Anyway, no way in hell any sort of weapons ban passes unless there are 62 Democratic senators and probably not even then.
Conservatives typically react to issues only once they are personally impacted. The issue that no amount of firepower can keep their kids safe at school from an AR-toting kid came home to roost very hard. All the lies they’d been relying on - like “hardening targets” and armed security, even armed teachers (who would’ve been blown away like the guard in Buffalo) - were pantsed in Uvalde.
They now know that all that is bullshit and the only way to keep them and their kids safe is to get ARs and their ilk off the street. That’s why a Fox News poll has an assault weapons ban favored by almost a 2:1 margin.
The constituency’s concerns are irrelevant. As long as there is a further-to-the-right loony challenger, the incumbent will need to spend money, and the money he needs to spend doesn’t come from his constituents: it come from the PACs/lobbies who give it to him with very clear strings attached.
10 gallons of hat, 0 ounces of guts.
One thing’s for certain, Lawrence O’Donnell is must-see-tv tonight.
These people are totally divorced from reality. Any sort of logical conclusion that you or I might make is not a place these people will arrive. The lunatics in charge of your state’s GOP are incensed by the very idea of red flag laws.
And they don’t know that at all. They are calling for all teachers to be armed, no doors, station tanks at doors, dig moats and stock them with poisonous dragons, you know, who knows what, anything but fewer guns designed to kill as many people as fast as possible. And feral hogs.
So I don’t understand the cover-up. There is no one who was pro AR before Uvalde who is now anti AR. Or Buffalo or Sandy Hook or pick your favorite of the 700 the country has had over the last five years. There is no one who is suddenly going to find religion when someone shoots up a Chuck E Cheese next week. There is not a dialog happening here.
Is it as simple as it being an election year, and Abbott doesn’t want to give Beto any oxygen?
I hope so, because they suck at it. Abbott gave Beto his most vital moment to date, and has face-planted from space into this mess.
Meanwhile, at Fox News…
I love that they tried to use the 1st Amendment as a shield against a civil lawsuit. They’re high on their own supply.
Also, Ron Johnson is now up to his treasonous goiter in the fake electors scheme and is being hounded by the press for answers he doesn’t have.
Plus, Kevlar-wearing seditionist congressman Mo Brooks lost his primary last night.
The year of finding out continues.
To wit:
https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1539418226651762695?s=20&t=4EG__S21ZGUgtREQeerRzQ
His on-the-fly explanation is perfectly summarized in that tweet, and leaves everyone with lots of questions. #1 being “Why was that shit sent to you?”
So apparently Trump’s senior aides and lawyers were unaware he was being filmed up to and during January 6th, as it was organized by Kushner and all hush hush. One of Trump’s lawyers apparently texted the documentarian “What the fuck is this?” when they found out about it yesterday. I suspect more will be seeking a criminal attorney.
I believe the documentary is due to come out this summer. 