August 31, 2019: Even Good Guys with Guns Can't Stop Bad Guys with Guns - And Climate Change is Real

 

8/31/19: August ends in blood and gore, much as it began, with another pair of mass shootings. On Friday night we learn that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is if good guys never go outside. This time a shooting at a high school football game in Mobile, Alabama, leaves six teens wounded, five critically. According to USA Today, in a news conference, Mobile Police Chief Lawrence Battiste “cautioned people to be alert in public gatherings.”

 

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America has a gun problem.

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Or to be perfectly safe, one should hunker down in a bunker. Don’t go to church. Don’t go to elementary school. Don’t go to the theater, to a concert, to a Walmart, to night clubs or bars, and don’t attend high school football games. 

Or drive. 

This afternoon we have another mass shooting. Texas, again. White guy, again. Heavily armed, again. As far as we know, the bloodbath began when the suspect was stopped by a Texas Ranger for a driving infraction. The suspect then wounded the good guy with a lesser gun and started shooting at cars for no reason. Before the rampage ended, the murderer had hijacked at least one automobile, then a mail truck, and killed four bystanders and wounded 20. 

So, let’s just be blunt. America has a gun problem. Conservative voices offering up “thoughts and prayers” don’t cut it. 

As is so often true, as when a first grader prays for a pony, and doesn’t get it, this blogger seriously doubts prayers will move President Trump or the Republican Party. GOP lawmakers fear the wrath of the N.R.A. like people in West Africa fear the first signs of Ebola.

 

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Great Barrier Reef is dying. 

HURRICANE DORIAN continues to bear down on the Eastern Seaboard, with pretty much every scientist worth a nickel saying, “We told you so.” As oceans warm, and they are, hurricanes grow stronger. 

The latest evidence of a grave threat to the health of our planet comes from our friends Down Under. Off the northeastern coast of Australia, the 1,400-mile-long Great Barrier Reef is dying. As oceans heat, reefs round the world are “bleaching.” The Great Barrier Reef has suffered significant bleaching events in 1998, 2002, 2016 and 2017. The health of the Reef is updated every five years and this month it was downgraded from “poor” to “very poor.” 

As the government agency in charge of monitoring the situation notes, “Significant global action to address climate change is critical [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted] to slowing the deterioration of the reef’s ecosystem and heritage values and supporting recovery.” 

Scientists warned earlier this year, that fresh evidence shows oceans are warming faster than expected. As that fount of “Fake News,” Scientific American magazine, notes, quoting Science magazine, that other fount of “Fake News:” 

Multiple studies in the past few years have found that previous estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may be too low. A new review of the research, published yesterday in Science, concludes that “multiple lines of evidence from four independent groups thus now suggest a stronger observed [ocean heat content] warming.”

 

So: Hurricane Dorian is going to be stronger when it hits than it would have been in the past. 

It’s that simple. But it’s still too difficult for the orange-colored simpleton in the Oval Office to grasp. 

Again, “thoughts and prayers,” for the environment.

 

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FOX NEWS HOST Tomi Lahren, who likes to push her patriotic “Freedom” line of athletic wear, admits…um… 

Okay, her fine products are made in China! 

“Like many American small business owners, Alexo [the company Lahren partners with] aims to be Made in America. We are working towards that,” Lahren, who has touted “American made” on her show, explains. 

Amy Robbins, the Alexo CEO, talks about how difficult it is to make clothing in the USA. You know – as if no one used to produce t-shirts in North Carolina, as recently as twenty years ago. “Due to the increased labor costs and heightened regulations many US based manufacturers face,” Robbins says, “we were left with little option but to manufacture overseas to start out.”

 

Yes, you don’t want to have to pay U.S. workers a living wage to start out, not if you could get the Chinese to work for measly wages. 

“We’re working diligently to bring our manufacturing back home to the US,” she promises, “and work with other hardworking companies that pride themselves on integrity and quality.” 

“Integrity.” 

That is not the first word that comes to mind, when one thinks of manufacturing products in Communist China.

 

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The definition of propaganda. 

SPEAKING OF INTEGRITY, that reminds us that Mr. Trump ends the month tweet-hating on Fox News, because Fox has started reporting stories (occasionally) which make him look less than fabulous. 

When Trump rises on this last morning in August, he starts tweeting and retweeting like a fat man grabbing for candy out of a box. Tweet #1 comes at 6:45 a.m. The tweets come, fast and furious, from then on. Half an hour later, we get a gem: “Has anyone noticed that the top shows on @foxnews and cable ratings are those that are Fair (or great) to your favorite President, me!” Trump tweets. “Congratulations to @seanhannity for being the number one shoe [sic] on Cable Television!” 

Yes, a shoe that is “great” to the president is a great show, and everyone should watch. But Americans should NOT watch all the mean Fox News people who are reporting stories that “your favorite President” does not like.

 

Here, it would seem appropriate to provide the definition of propaganda: “Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” 

(By 8:07 a.m., when “your favorite blogger” takes time to check, President Trump is on Tweet #49.) 

Speaking of “propaganda,” the White House announces that Trump is spending the weekend at Camp David, where he is focused on the threat from Hurricane Dorian. In other words, Trump is acting like a real president, albeit a real president addicted to tweets. Checking back later, we see that tweets #50-53 come by 10:18 a. m.

 

Then Trump’s Twitter feed goes silent for three-and-a-half hours. Reporters explain that Trump has headed off to Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 

Okay, a little less presidential… 

Next, The Hill posts a video which they say proves Trump got bored focusing on Hurricane Dorian and snuck off to go golfing. 

Way less presidential.

 

Reporters (a.k.a. the “enemies of the people”) pin down White House Press Secretary Grisham. Did Trump go golfing? Grisham doesn’t dare say “no,” lest more damning evidence surface. 

She responds, lamely, “I have no idea what that video is.” 

The video is not definitive. But does that mean Grisham has no idea where her boss has gone and she’s not going to bother to find out? 

Or does she know where he is, what putter he prefers, and just doesn’t want to admit it? (See: 9/3/19.)

 

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Your pharmacist wants to kill you. 

MORE PROOF, not counting recent mass shootings, that the Great Wall of Trump might not keep us all toasty and safe from harm. The DEA launches a series of raids, netting 300 suspects, and shuts down a dozen Florida pharmacies, which are part of a highly organized drug ring. Forget undocumented immigrants with murder and mayhem in their hearts! Your pharmacist wants to kill you. More than 200,000 opioid pills, 35 weapons and $3.3 million in assets are seized. 

Meanwhile, a Utah man, Aaron Michael Shamo, is convicted of running a multi-million dollar opioid ring, selling fake prescription pills laced with fentanyl, a potent and highly dangerous synthetic pain killer. He’s not an undocumented immigrant. He’s some white dude, whose lawyers describe him as “a clean-cut millennial who grew up in a family that belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” 

And no drug mule snuck fentanyl across our southern border. Shamo found it on the dark web and had it shipped from China by mail. Shamo and an assortment of native-born white guys were soon doing a booming business. They were allegedly selling tens of thousands of potentially deadly, fake pills per month.

 

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AS FOR KEEPING us safe with that big beautiful wall, which Trump swears is being built, but even Fox News admits is not, we will now be “Keeping America Great” by guarding against young immigrants who want to kill us by running us over in wheelchairs. 

CBS explains: 

Due to a change in policy by the Trump administration, hundreds of immigrant children receiving medical care in the U.S. are facing possible deportation. The children are in the country legally and many suffer from serious diseases, including cancer.

 

A vibrating vest, nebulizer and special medication help keep 16-year-old Jonathan Sanchez alive. He’s battling cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening disorder damaging his lungs and digestive system. It also claimed the life of his sister Samantha, back in Honduras, when she was just 6 months old.

 

The family came to the U.S. legally in 2016 and applied for “medical deferred action,” a program that allows immigrants to receive life-saving treatment for up to two years. But this week they received a denial notice [for renewal], giving them 30 days to leave the country or face deportation. 

 

“To receive that letter is like a big hit,” said Gary Sanchez, Jonathan’s father. “I don’t know what will happen with the future.”

 

In fact, Jonathan knows exactly what will happen. “The letter, in the words, it said that we need to leave the country in 33 days. But in my perspective, it’s making legal homicide,” he says. 

This new policy is so heartless that when CBS News seeks comment from officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which share responsibility for implementing the change, no one “would appear on camera.” An ICE official said the agency “was not consulted about the policy change and only learned of it once those letters were sent out.”

 

 

Typical of those facing deportation and a tacit sentence of death, is Maria Isabel Bueso. Now 24, she came to this country at age 7, to receive treatment for a rare genetic disorder. Doctors enrolled her in several studies. With her help they managed to improve care for others suffering from the same crippling disability. 

“I have been feeling super scared and overwhelmed,” Ms. Bueso told a reporter this week. As The New York Times explained, her lower body is paralyzed from the disease, an enzyme disorder that inhibits cells from processing sugars. “The treatment that I receive keeps me alive,” she says. 

Well, too bad for you, young lady. Back to Guatemala – which you hardly remember – you go!

 

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“Nations with allies thrive, and those without them wither.” 

AS FOR “keeping us safe,” let’s give General James Mattis, first Secretary of Defense under Donald Trump, the final word for the month. Mattis pens an editorial which is seen as highly critical of the president and his “America First’ foreign policies. Mattis does not mention the president by name. 

It doesn’t take a genius to read between the lines. “When you’re going to a gunfight, bring all your friends with guns,” Mattis writes. “Nations with allies thrive, and those without them wither. Alone, America cannot protect our people and our economy. At this time, we can see storm clouds gathering.” 

That is: Category 5 Hurricane Donald.

 

Jeffrey Goldberg, who has talked at length with Gen. Mattis (who went into a lot of gunfights during forty plus years with the U.S. Marines), explains that the general adheres to the belief that military men do not criticize the Commander-in-Chief. Mattis is going as far as he believes he can while keeping his integrity. 

He may not stay silent forever. 

Goldberg elaborates in an interview with David Green on NPR: 

GOLDBERG: Jim Mattis has unique insight, and we know he’s on record with his [resignation] letter, with other things, things he said to me that he does not believe Donald Trump is a good president. I think that’s fairly clear from everything that he’s written. His book is one long indirect critique of the president. 

 

GREENE: Wouldn’t that be a violation of the duty that he said he’s so committed to if he does come out and start talking at some point?

 

GOLDBERG: I think he has in his mind, and I don’t know what they are. I think he has red lines in his mind. I think he does have – and, you know, one could argue that that Trump crossed them again and again – he quit over one of those red lines obviously. But I think he’s a little bit burdened by this dilemma. Everything in his character tells him – I don’t talk, but this is an unusual circumstance.

 

As in, Trump is a terrible leader, a terrible human being, and a threat to the long-term safety of these United States.

July 8, 2021: Right-Wingers See Nazis Giving Us Vaccination Shots

 

7/8/21: The Delta variant of the coronavirus is spreading across the United States. The worst outbreaks generally are in states where vaccinations lag, and where people enjoyed voting for Trump. 

If we consult a list of the top jurisdictions for vaccinations, and cut the list off where rates fall below 50%, we have nineteen states that voted for Biden, Washington, D.C., which also went for Biden, and Maine, which splits electoral votes (so Trump got one) but also went for the challenger. 

Not the Orange Chump.

 

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IF YOU WONDER why vaccines might be lagging among Trump fans – even though Trump got one months ago – think: Idiots. 

Think: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Co.). Greene was at it again this week, comparing vaccinations to death squads, after making previous comparisons between mask mandates and Nazis. And then apologizing. And saying that a trip to the Holocaust Museum had opened her eyes. 

And then forgetting. 

As a former history teacher my rule is not to make Nazi comparisons unless there are gas chambers involved.

What real Nazis did.

  

Greene, however, sees Nazis lurking behind every parked car, mailbox, and shrub. Politico explains: 

Greene (R-Ga.) on Tuesday called efforts by the Biden White House to vaccinate more Americans against Covid-19 a “political tool” and likened the administration’s on-the-ground push to a Nazi paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung [or “SA”], often referred to as “brownshirts.”

 

People have a choice, they don’t need your medical brown shirts showing up at their door ordering vaccinations,” Greene wrote in response to a video of President Joe Biden describing a plan to offer vaccines door-to-door. “You can’t force people to be part of the human experiment.”

 

First, let’s pass over Rep. Greene’s glaring inability to differentiate between “order” and “offer.” 

In my role as former history teacher, let me explain who the “brownshirts” were. Here I will simply quote from “Hitler’s Black Harvest,” a reading I prepared for my seventh grade students. 

I believe Rep. Greene might have learned something by sitting in my class: 

“Force is the first law,” Hitler once said. … Long before he came to power, he organized the “Sturmabteilung” or “SA,” his own private army. These brown-shirted “storm troopers,” as they were called, were assigned one task. They must beat, silence, and even kill Hitler’s political opponents.

 

One infamous night, they went to work, stirring up the mobs and showing them how to murder Jews: 

Widespread violence exploded in November 1938 after a Jewish student attacked and killed a German official in Paris. In the dark hours of November 9-10, known since as Kristallnacht, or “Night of Glass,” German mobs attacked Jewish homes, shops, and synagogues. Thousands of businesses were looted. Two hundred homes were destroyed. Every synagogue in Germany was vandalized. Dozens of Jews were murdered, including one young boy who was thrown from a third-story window. In days to come the Gestapo arrested 26,000 Jewish men, women and children and carted them away to prison.

 

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NOT TO BE OUTDONE by Rep Greene’s boneheaded comments, Rep. Boebert cracked her knuckles this morning, and began wailing away on her iPhone. And out popped a tweet. And it was idiotic. Like her clueless colleague, Boebert decided to pull out the Nazi card to make a comparison. 

Out came a gem: 

Biden has deployed his Needle Nazis to Mesa County.

 

The people of my district are more than smart enough to make their own decisions about the experimental vaccine and don’t need coercion by federal agents.

 

Did I wake up in Communist China? 

(You woke up ill-informed and clueless, that much we know.)

 

Let’s go back to the assignment my students were tasked to read. Boebert might have gained from sitting in my class, too. 

First, we’ll ignore the comparison to “Communist China” she tries to make. For the 3,300 individuals who hit the “love” button on her tweet, allow me to direct them to the story of Tiananmen Square. 

For fun, we could even consider the time Donald J. Trump said it was cool that Xi Jinping had worked a little communist magic to ensure he could serve as “president for life.” Don thought that was great. 

Anyway, for Boebert, a little bit of information about Nazis and doctors: 

Soon no one was safe, whether Jew or not. The mentally ill were granted “mercy deaths” under a secret plan known as T-4. Handicapped German children were also marked for destruction. One SS doctor preferred to slowly starve such children to death. Most were taken from families and sent to government “hospitals.” There they were secretly gassed and their bodies buried. Homosexuals were also among the victims. Arrested and sent to prison, they wore pink triangles on their uniforms, just as Jews wore yellow stars. Terrible medical experiments were tried to “cure” them. Many died as a result. Most were simply eliminated. One victim was SS Commander Heinrich Himmler’s gay nephew.

 

He was gassed by order of his own uncle.

 

And: 

Terrible medical experiments were carried out by SS personnel. (“Black murderers in white doctors’ coats,” as one survivor labeled them.) There were tests to see how much cold a man could stand, so the German air force might design better jackets for pilots. Naked Russian prisoners were left outside in bitter cold. Others were submerged in icy water to see how long they survived. When body temperatures fell to 82.5 F, one doctor reported, death was certain, “despite all rescue attempts.”   Other experiments measured the effects of flying at high altitude. Careful notes show what happened to one Jew. Tested, without oxygen, at the equal of 29,400 feet, he “began to perspire and roll his head” after four minutes. After five minutes spasms began. Ten minutes: unconsciousness.

 

Thirteen. Death.

 

In fact, madness had no limits. SS doctors attempted bone transplants on prisoners, hoping new techniques might save wounded German soldiers’ lives. Jews were infected with malaria to test experimental drugs. Dr. Josef Mengele, known as “The Angel of Death,” was interested in blood transfusions. He often used twins in experiments. Once he sewed two together, connected their veins, and studied their combined circulation. Others used x-rays and drugs to cause sterilization of prisoners. Such methods, one researcher claimed, might provide Germany with “a new and extremely effective weapon” in the battle against “inferior peoples.”

What real Nazis were like.

 

Above, we have Nazis rounding up innocent victims. 

Below, we have nurses vaccinating people to protect them from COVID-19, and medical people getting the shot themselves. 

Only complete numbskulls would compare nurses and Nazis.

We would be remiss if we failed to mention Rep. Madison Cawthorn and Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren in regard to this idea that Nazis are coming to give us vaccines or force us to mask up on planes. First, Cawthorn decides to add a twist, claiming that the people Mr. Biden sends out to visit our homes will…take away our Bibles and guns! 

The idea that medical people might go door-to-door, offering vaccinations for protection freaks out the simple-minded lawmaker. “The thing about the mechanisms they would have to build to be able to actually execute that massive of a thing – and then think about what those mechanisms could be used for,” he hints darkly to a reporter for the Right Side Broadcasting Network.” 

Yeah. Think. They could come and give you a shot. 

“They could then go door-to-door to take your guns,” Rep. Cawthorn suggests. “They could then go door-to-door to take your Bibles.”

 

Since Cawthorn is gazing into the future and imagining what could happen, let me try my hand. 

They could come to your house and take away your dental floss. 

They could come to give you a shot, and take all your frozen lima beans. 

They could barge into your garage and take you hedge clippers. 

In reality, all they’re going to do is offer you a shot.

 

As for Lahren, she’s outraged over the idea that people on planes are required to wear masks. “There are so many good flight attendants out there, but there are some flight attendants out there that take their job as the mask police to extremes, becoming almost Nazis of the air. And it’s ridiculous,” she fumes. 

So, one final time, let’s go to the reading that I prepared for seventh graders who still had open minds, not just open mouths. 

Real Nazis made lampshades out of tattooed human skin. Real Nazis cut off the testicles of gay men to see if it would “cure” them of being gay. Real Nazis tried to get a suspect to give information by cutting off his mother’s head and carrying it into his cell. Real Nazis shot down thousands of prisoners during mass executions, and complained when their shoulders hurt from shooting all day. 

That’s what real Nazis were like.