February 3, 2021: Bad Cops, GOP Nuts, and Soaring Gun Sales

 

2/3/21: How insane are some Republicans? This week the Oregon chapter of the GOP passed a resolution saying that the attack on Capitol Hill was a “false flag.” That is, an “operation designed to discredit President Trump, his supporters, and all conservative Republicans,” and provide the “sham motivation to impeach” the God-chosen President Trump.

 

 

January 6: A false flag?

 

You know the Trump version of the GOP is bonkers when the MyPillow guy shows up on Newsmax, spouts off his usual conspiracy theories, and forces the newscaster to walk off the set. You know – because the newscaster realizes if he listens to Mike Lindell talk nonsense, he too could be sued for defamation.

 

While we clean up the wreckage in Trumpistan, I would encourage you to read a report by Jonathan Swan, a writer for Axios. He describes the “craziest meeting of the Trump presidency.”

 

Another nutty company CEO figures in the story.

 

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PROOF ONCE AGAIN, that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a snow shovel or a syringe. Or a therapist. 

On February 3, after a snowstorm blanketed Plains Township in Pennsylvania, trouble erupted when two neighbors started shoveling snow off their property. A neighbor accosted them and said they were shoveling their snow onto his land. Angry words followed. Then gunfire. James Spaide, 47, killed James Goy, 50, and Lisa Goy, 48. Then he killed himself. 

The Goy’s sound like fools, themselves, but as ABC reports, after profanities flew, and Mr. Goy threatened Mr. Spaide with a fist, Spaide went inside, grabbed one of his guns, and “allegedly opened fire on the couple, shooting both of them multiple times. Officials said Spaide then went back into his house and retrieved another firearm, which he reportedly used to shoot them again.”

 

Six days later, another angry old white guy, George Ulrich, 67, took a gun to a health clinic in Buffalo, Minnesota, and opened fire. One person was killed, four others wounded, three seriously. 

“We are very familiar with the suspect,” Police Chief Pat Budke told reporters. “There is a history of him being unhappy with health care – with the health care he received,” the chief said.

 

Gun sales in 2020 reached new highs, with 39.7 million people completing background checks to purchase pistols, rifles, and shotguns. That would surpass the old yearly record by almost ten million. 

In the early 2000s, the F.B.I. processed under nine million background checks per year. Then, in 2008, the NRA began warning that Barack Obama and the Democrats were going to take away all our guns. Permit requests surpassed 14 million in 2009 and kept climbing, to 27.5 million in 2016. The panic to buy guns before all the guns were gone dissipated in 2017, when Donald J. took the helm. Then they rose again, to 28.4 million in 2019, and to a new record last year. 

From January 1, 2000, to January 1, 2021, Americans filed requests to buy 362,660,000 guns. 

Or more than 1 gun for every 1 person in the land.

 

Meanwhile, murder rates in 2020 skyrocketed in America’s cities. President Trump had taken credit when rates fell to a fifty-year low in 2019. Now he blamed “Democratic mayors” for a huge rise in gun killings. Christian Science Monitor notes that Democratic-run cities were in fact hit hard (Madison, Wisconsin, for example, saw a 400% increase, Boston 54%, Memphis 45%). But so were Republican-led cities (Omaha 120%, Lubbock, Texas 100%, Jacksonville 20%). 

 

FUN – WITH COPS: This blogger is not one who believes all police are bad, or even most police. They have a dangerous job and a large majority do their best to protect the rest of us from harm. (Also, they hand out speeding tickets to fine drivers such as the blogger, who does have a lead foot.) But Donald J. Trump’s penchant for claiming 99% are good, or even 99.9%, is always stupid. 

Some plumbers are bad. Some politicians are bad. Same with cops. Case in point: NYPD Inspector James F. Kobel – just fired for racist social media posts. It was revealed recently that he liked to post under a nickname on the social media platform Rant. President Obama? Kobel called him a “Muslim savage.” The bi-racial son of the mayor? Kobel thought it was fun to label him “brillohead.” He likened another African American to a “wildebeest,” and used an obscene slur to describe a female NYPD chief. For variety, he sometimes spiced up his post with anti-Semitic language, too.

 

Second case in point: three other NYPD officers fired and later convicted for their role in a bribery scheme. The officers had been selling accident report information and steering damaged vehicles to tow truck companies that paid.