July 28, 2019: Stephen Romero's Last Day on Earth - And Other Tragedies

 

7/28/19: This turns out to be Stephen Romero’s last day on earth. The six-year-old is shot and killed, along with two other innocent bystanders, while enjoying himself at the Gilroy, California Garlic Festival.

 

“They were outgunned with their handguns against the rifle.” 

The shooter is a 19-year-old man armed with an “AK-47 style” assault rifle, which was purchased legally in Nevada. A 13-year-old girl and a man in his 20’s are also killed. A dozen others are wounded. 

Police respond within a minute – the proverbial good guys with guns stopping the proverbial bad guys with guns – and kill the shooter. Gilroy police chief Scot Smithee praises the bravery of three officers who returned fire. Without intending, he hits on a problem facing the entire nation. “Despite the fact that they were outgunned with their handguns against the rifle, those three officers were able to fatally wound the suspect,” Smithee explains.

 

The police were outgunned. Think about that a moment. And the gory toll is advanced yet again, another fifteen innocent people killed and wounded. Americans have been gunned down at work, in driveways, at Walmart and Kroger. They have been slaughtered in synagogues and churches, at high schools and colleges, in suburban bars and at house-warming parties. They die on baseball diamonds, while pumping gas and minding their business at home, at country music festivals and, now, Stephen Romero, 6, has been killed at the Garlic Festival. 

Trump will not act on gun violence. That much we know. 

Trump will tweet about how we need a multi-billion-dollar border wall to keep ourselves safe.

 

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IN OTHER NEWS, Sen. Mitch McConnell is furious because the hashtag #MoscowMitch is trending on Twitter. Trump fans don’t remember – or don’t care to remember – but when President Obama wanted to issue a warning (before voters went to the polls) about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, “Moscow Mitch” refused to go along until the warning was watered down. 

Now Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with ties to organized crime, is offering to build a $200 million aluminum factory in McConnell’s Kentucky backyard, which looks more than a little like payback for services rendered. 

Next come the moves that earn McConnell the new Twitter sobriquet. The House of Representatives passes a pair of bills to protect the 2020 election. Senate Democrats demand a vote on the same. 

One measure would require states to use paper ballots or keep paper ballots for backup, in case computers are hacked. It would also increase funding for the Election Assistance Committee, to protect the vote. 

A second measure would require candidates to report any offers of election-aid from foreign governments to proper law enforcement authorities. That might cramp President Trump’s style. 

“Moscow Mitch” blocks both bills from reaching the Senate floor.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (12/27/20): Consider the irony. Democrats wanted to insist that all states keep paper ballots as backup, in case voting systems were hacked. Republicans were opposed. By the time I add this note, Trump, having been thumped in the 2020 election, has refused for almost two months to concede his loss. 

He insists that computers in several states were hacked; and he was cheated out of up to ten million votes. It’s an incredible claim. It’s also just more Trump Math. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: We learn today that another member of Team Trump is being investigated for selling diplomacy to the highest bidders. (See: 2/4/19.) 

As ProPublica explains, 

President Donald Trump’s inauguration chairman, Tom Barrack, lobbied the new administration to share nuclear power technology with Saudi Arabia while, at the same time, making plans to team up with the Saudis to buy a company that would benefit from the policy change [emphasis added].

 

Later, Barrack shared a draft of a campaign policy speech on energy with a businessman from the United Arab Emirates. The foreign businessman suggested changes, and Barrack – with the help of Paul Manafort, then Trump’s campaign chair – worked to get the final draft altered per the foreigner’s request. 

(Diplomacy shaped by the highest bidder?)

 

Even Barrack seemed to smell something not quite right, emailing warning to Manafort as he passed along the request: “This is probably as close as I can get without crossing a lot of lines. Give me a call.” 

(As in, give me a call so we can work this out in a way nobody else can trace?)

 

Elijah Cummings, head of the House Oversight Committee smells enough, himself, to crinkle his nose. “The American people deserve to know the facts about whether the White House is willing to place the potential profits of the president’s personal friends above the national security of the American people and the universal objective of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons,” he says. 

Trump is already mad at Rep. Cummings, and you figure at his next rally, the MAGA crowd will be chanting, “Lock him up!” 

Or, since Cummings is African American, maybe that old favorite of racists, “String him up!”

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE #2: In July 2021, Barrack is indicted for crossing a number of lines, and as suggested here, selling U.S. diplomacy to the highest bidder. You can tell what prosecutors think of the man, when they require him to post $250 million bail.)