School Shootings: A Retrospective

Another mass shooting but not at a school (for a change)….this time in Birmingham, Alabama…..

A mass shooting killed four people and wounded 18 others in a popular nightlife area in Birmingham, Alabama, with many of the victims caught in the crossfire, police said. No one was immediately arrested, and police asked the public for information. The shooting happened shortly after 11pm Saturday in the city’s Five Points South entertainment district, said Officer Truman Fitzgerald in an email to the AP. Officers arriving at the scene found two men and a woman on a sidewalk with gunshot wounds, and they were pronounced dead there. An additional male gunshot victim was pronounced dead at a hospital.

A preliminary investigation showed that “multiple suspects fired upon a large group of people who were outside in a public area,” Fitzgerald said. “Detectives believe the shooting was not random and stemmed from an isolated incident where multiple victims were caught in the crossfire,” Fitzgerald said. Injured people began showing up at hospitals, Fitzgerald said. By early Sunday, police had identified 18 other victims with injuries, some of them life-threatening.

That attack lead me to look at the school shootings that are all too common.

Almost daily there is a school shooting or a bomb threat or other assorted attacks on the schools of our great nation….it has become commonplace and gets nothing more than a shrug from the people that we depend on to make our schools safe…..why is that?

School shootings are American Exceptionalism in action. No other country does them like we do. None even come close. USA! NRA! USA! NRA! USA! NRA!

A country that tolerates the routine shootings of its own school children as the cost of doing business in our weird notion of a “free society” is unlikely to feel any empathy for Palestinian children killed by the weapons we sell Israel. Violence is our chief export; indifference to the bloodshed is our national characteristic.

This is just a retrospective of these incidents and how some politicians handle them.

JD Vance, who now speaks at outdoor rallies inside a box of bulletproof glass, said that school shootings are now “a fact of life” in America.

Number of school shootings in the US by year…

2024: 45
2023: 82
2022: 79
2021: 73
2020: 22 (Pandemic school closures)
2019: 52
2018: 44
2017: 42
2016: 51
2015: 37
2014: 36
2013: 26
2012: 13
2011: 15
2010: 13
2009: 22
2008: 18

States with the highest per capita school shootings since 2008

Louisiana: 32 shootings; 0.69 shootings per 100,000 people
Maryland: 32 shootings; 0.52 shootings per 100,000 people13 s
Alabama: 25 shootings; 0.50 shootings per 100,000 people
Tennessee: 33 shootings; 0.48 shootings per 100,000 people
Mississippi: 13 shootings; 0.44 shootings per 100,000 people
Arkansas: 13 shootings; 0.43 shootings per 100,000 people
North Carolina: 41 shootings; 0.41 shootings per 100,000 people
Georgia: 41 shootings; 0.38 shootings per 100,000 people

How long will we tolerate this kind of crap?

Instead of action against this obscenity we get such platitudes as “thoughts and prayer’ or the ever politician BS…’there is no place for violence in America’….have these idiots ever watched a news story?

Violence does have a place in America unless you are too blind to see it…..and will continue as long as some garden slugs believe there is a Constitutional right to kill children.

Thanx to my friend at beetleypete.com for bringing this quote from Tom Waits to my attention.

“We are moneys with money and guns”

I Read, I Write, You Know

“cognito ergo me agitare”

Is It An Illusion Of Liberty?

I have been thinking about some people that cherish our liberties but in the past few years those so-called liberties have been eroding away and a special thanks to the Supreme Court for helping the demise.

Below are some thoughts from an author, Stuart Delony, on what we are losing, piece by piece….

It’s that time when we celebrate our freedoms while cooking meat, blowing things up, and conveniently ignoring the erosion of the very liberties we’re celebrating. So between the hotdogs and fireworks, let’s explore if we’re as free as our forefathers intended… or living in blissful ignorance.

Remember back in history class? When we all learned that the founding fathers risked everything to declare independence from British tyranny? They gave us the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and seemingly endless bumper sticker quotes.

Fast forward to now, and I’m left wondering if those sacrifices were in vain and freedom a relic of the past. Think I’m wrong? Let’s look down a list for fun:

A Surveillance Nation

Our civil liberties are on life support. Mass surveillance has become the norm. Big Brother watches our every move. Sure, we’ve still got the right to protest, but only if you’re okay with being pepper-sprayed, tasered, and/or hauled off to jail. It really doesn’t seem much of an upgrade to tar and feathering.

The Voting Games

Voting is supposed to be the cornerstone of democracy, right? Except it’s not as simple as showing up and casting a ballot. Gerrymandering ensures that politicians pick their voters and not the other way around. Then we’ve got voter ID laws, polling place closures, and purges of voter rolls. Those are just a few of the tricks used to suppress the vote. And don’t even get me started on the Electoral College.

The Rich Get Richer

You’re free to pursue the American Dream – if you can afford it. The top 1% hoard their wealth while the rest of us are stuck in a cycle of debt, stagnating wages, and skyrocketing living costs. The richest 1% of Americans own more than 40% of the country’s wealth. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% collectively own just 1%. A level playing field is never an option when corporate greed reigns supreme. The system is rigged whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

A Selective Kind of Liberty

Personal freedom used to mean being able to make choices about your own body and life. Today, reproductive rights are under constant assault, with politicians horny to control what women’s bodies. Doesn’t sound creepy at all. Then there’s LGBTQ+ rights. While progress has been made, there’s always a new push to strip away the hard-won gains.

The Changing Narrative

Is truth truth anymore? Media companies now control what we see, hear, and read, shaping public opinion to suit their agendas and profits. The problem is that independent journalism is on the decline and dissenting voices are drowned out by the din of manufactured consent.

Our liberties are being strip away slowly but slowly and we the people spend our time worrying about bathrooms while you focus on silliness you are losing your rights and liberties.

Don’t blame Trump completely for the Dems have done little to change the direction of this downward spiral…..they promise but their actions are far from proof.

This vote will be a joke told by our great-grand kids and you spend your time worrying about bathrooms.

I hope you get what is coming to you for cultivating ignorance.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“cognito ergo me agitare”

Assault On Free Speech

We hear a lot of this stuff these days….it seems that everyone is ranting about the loss of of our right to freely speak our minds.

The TikTok thing is said to be a loss of free speech and so……

Take for instance this AntiSemitism Awareness Act that will come up for a vote soon.

Totalitarianism rarely shows its true face when it arises. Instead, it often pretends to stand for good and decent values. A new bill claims to fight anti-Semitism, something all decent people oppose.

But anti-Semitism — that is, bias and discrimination against Jews because of their religion or ethnic identity — is already barred under civil rights law. The real goal of the so-called “Antisemitism Awareness Act” is to suppress free speech.

This dangerous bill was passed by the House of Representatives and now awaits a Senate vote. It outsources some of our constitutional rights to an outside organization, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, whose arbitrary definition of anti-Semitism poses a threat to civil liberties.

It could be used to crush legitimate debate about Israel, its policies and American policies toward it — policies that have given rise to one of the greatest acts of genocide since the Holocaust.

This bill could suppress historical research and ban the mention of facts that have been verified by international organizations. It could initiate lawsuits, funding cuts and disciplinary action across all American “education programs or activities, and for other purposes.” (Those “other purposes” are not defined.)

Student protesters, professors, writers and even elected officials could face political repression and become legal targets.

The Dangerous ‘Anti-Semitism Awareness’ Act

I bring this up because according to this pack of manure flies I am an anti-Semite….which is total bullshit.

My dislike of the state of Israel has not a damn thing to do with religion….I personally could care less where or what they choose to worship that is their problem not mine. I dislike Israel goes way back to 1967 and the murderous attack on the US naval vessel, the USS Liberty, where they, Israel, was allowed to attack an unarmed ship killing and injuring American sailors without any retaliation.

My nation may have forget this dastardly deed but I have not.

If I criticize the bastards I will be labelled an anti-Semite….I say so be it I refuse to give up my right to free speech and criticism.

First I was banned from a boycott of Israel and now I cannot criticize the state of Israel and their barbaric ways….this from a government that is in the deep pockets of AIPAC.

Apparently with enough ‘grease’ you can get anything you want from our corrupt officials…..like Congress and the White house.

You may be silent but I shall not and will never until I am dead.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is US Devoted To The Constitution?

The recent rulings by the corrupt Supreme Court got me to thinking about the Constitution…..is the US truly devoted to the document?

Let me tackle the question….I think the people of this nation is all caring about the Constitution and the people we elect could care less about the document.

The people warp themselves in the Constitution as some sort of misguided patriotism but once you get pass amendment 1 and 2 they know nothing.

In reality….it shows up often in political discourse as some sort of symbol of freedom and then quickly disappears until it is needed in some sort of explanation for a particular political action.

In a new book it is surmised that the worship of the Constitution has warped our politics……

Which version of the Constitution will shape America’s future? Emboldened coalitions on the right purport to tether the country’s tomorrows to the original meanings of an eighteenth-century Constitution—or to so-called natural law principles that are even older. Anxious liberals, by contrast, hold out frayed hopes that a living Constitution will be able to translate the nation’s constitutional history into a new century. An increasingly vocal cadre on the left proposes something altogether different—to scrap the whole arrangement, to make a clean break from a tarnished constitutional tradition by marginalizing the Supreme Court and doing away with the project of the Constitution entirely

In his new book, The Constitutional Bind, lawyer and political theorist Aziz Rana adds his voice to this swelling chorus, urging that a truly emancipatory politics requires breaking free from the U.S. constitutional project. Rana takes aim at what he calls the worship of the Constitution. U.S. politics today, he contends, idealizes the Constitution to its own detriment. Our political formations—especially those on the left—trim their sails in advance of doing battle by accepting the charter’s historical compromises. But such compromises, Rana says, come at a galling democratic cost. They grant unelected justices on the Supreme Court unwarranted authority over the basic terms of our social life. And they sustain voting inequities in the Electoral College and the Senate, which confer unwarranted representation on rural states with disproportionately white and conservative populations.

As late as the first decades of the twentieth century, Rana proposes, Americans took part in a more robust debate over the Constitution, one that nurtured a wild profusion of alternative political visions. The most promising of those visions, in Rana’s eyes, chafed at and often even rejected the Constitution as a parochial and limiting framework. In the middle third of the twentieth century, however, U.S. politics marginalized the political formations that were most critical of the Constitution’s basic terms. And since the middle of the twentieth century, Rana argues, constitutional politics has shape-shifted into a kind of idolatry. Constitutional devotion has sustained American global empire, supported white ethno-nationalism, justified security panics, and cabined real democracy. Constitutional fetishism, according to Rana, sustains “a fundamentally undemocratic order” by granting the Constitution undue “immunity from challenge”; it produces an anti-democratic “cultural genuflection” before a Supreme Court that supports the interests of elites over the liberation of the masses. We are, Rana tells us, bound “by a narrow constitutional narrative” that constrains our collective life and imposes severe limits on our aspirations for true freedom and equality.

https://newrepublic.com/article/182334/united-states-devoted-constitution

My question now is….given all the stuff happening is this the society that the Founders envisioned with the Constitution?

Now what do you think about the question?

I know there are some great thoughts out there….voice them here and now.

I Reads, I Write, You Know

“cognito ergo me agitare”

Christian Bullshit At Its Best

The nation is confronted with the rise of what some called ‘Christian Nationalism’….a forceful attempt to make all American conform to their warped sense of country.

And yes I wrote about it (go figure)….

Does Theocracy Approach?

It began many years ago when the Right started with their opposition to the freedom of choice (abortion) and when Roe v Wade was overturned by SCOTUS it opened a door that had been closed for about 200 years.

Now states are flexing their misguided religious muscle…..fist with Louisiana….

Under a bill signed into law by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, Louisiana has become the first state to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom. The GOP-drafted legislation mandates that a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font” be required in all public classrooms, from kindergarten to state-funded universities, the AP reports.

The displays, which will be paired with a four-paragraph “context statement” describing how the Ten Commandments “were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries,” must be in place in classrooms by the start of 2025.

The posters would be paid for through donations. State funds will not be used to implement the mandate, based on language in the legislation. The law also “authorizes”—but does not require—the display of the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and the Northwest Ordinance in K-12 public schools.

Opponents question the law’s constitutionality, warning that lawsuits are likely to follow. Proponents say the purpose of the measure is not solely religious, but that it has historical significance. In the law’s language, the Ten Commandments are described as “foundational documents of our state and national government.”

The Tennessean reports that Landry boasted about the bill at a Republican fundraiser in Nashville on Saturday. “I’m going home to sign a bill that places the Ten Commandments in public classrooms,” he said. “And I can’t wait to be sued.”

This is a bad idea and should not be allowed to stand.

After Louisiana’s assault the great state of Oklahoma had to inject its brand of ignorance…..

Coming to classrooms in Oklahoma: the Bible. The state’s superintendent has ordered the religious text be taught in Oklahoma’s public schools, reports the New York Times, which calls it “an extraordinary move that blurs the lines between religious instruction and public education.” “Every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom, and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom,” Ryan Walters said on Thursday, though the AP notes that the directive from Walters, a 39-year-old conservative Christian and ex-AP history instructor, applies to classrooms from fifth grade through 12th.

“Immediate and strict compliance is expected,” the order reads. It comes about a week after Louisiana ordered the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools, a move that has already been hit with legal challenges. This, too, will likely face pushback in the courts. “Public schools are not Sunday schools,” Rachel Laser, head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, tells the Times, adding to the Wall Street Journal that the decision is a “transparent, unconstitutional effort to indoctrinate and religiously coerce public school students.”

Her group is also challenging the Louisiana Ten Commandments mandate. Some aren’t even sure that Walters has the authority to make such a sweeping order, as state law leaves such authority on instruction and curriculum to individual school districts. The superintendent, however, is adamant that the Bible be a required study topic in his state. It’s “a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system,” Walters says, per the Times.

Both these will make it to the Supreme Court and I have NO faith that the judges will even take the Constitution into consideration before the make their ruling. After all only the First Amendment is at stake….no big deal.

I am truly sick of these lying assholes about the history of this nation.

The sooner we can pull the plug on this mindless twats the better.

I personally do not want to0 live in the theocracy….do you?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“cognito ergo me agitare”

The Political Cancer

We are well aware of what a cancer is…..our country is infected with a political cancer….a practice or phenomenon perceived to be evil or destructive and hard to contain or eradicate.

That cancer has a name….greed.

Because of greed the Democrats have lost the very foundation of this once proud party….the working class.

Much of today’s Republican Party is treacherous and treasonous. So why are Democrats facing midterm elections that, according to most political observers, they’re likely to lose? Having been a loyal Democrat for some seventy years (my father liked Ike but my mother and I were for Adlai), including a stint as a cabinet secretary, it pains me to say this, but the Democratic Party has lost its way.

How? Some commentators think Democrats have moved too far to the left — too far from the so-called “center.” This is utter rubbish. Where’s the center between democracy and authoritarianism and why would Democrats want to be there? Others think Biden hasn’t been sufficiently angry or outraged. Please. What good would that do? And after four years of Trump, why would anyone want more anger and outrage?

The biggest failure of the Democratic Party — a disease that threatens the very life of the party — has been its loss of the American working class. As Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg concluded after the 2016 election, “Democrats don’t have a ‘white working-class’ problem. They have a ‘working class problem’ which progressives have been reluctant to address honestly or boldly. The fact is that Democrats have lost support with all working-class voters across the electorate.”

The working class used to be the bedrock of the Democratic Party. What happened?

https://www.alternet.org/the-democrats-disease/

To illustrate what I mean by my accusation….I give you the ‘Indicted Congressman’s Club….

Well-deserved indictments keep hitting Congress. The latest indicted legislator is Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar, the politician backed by former House speaker Nancy Pelosi in his last election, against a more progressive opponent, of course. On May 3, the justice department charged Cuellar with accepting roughly $600,000 from Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company and a Mexican bank. These payoffs were for “official acts as a member of Congress.” Sound familiar? It should, because it resembles the case against New Jersey Democratic senator Bob “Gold Bar” Menendez, charged some months back with selling his office for gold ingots, a fancy car and other gifts. And then, back on October 10, New York GOP congressman George Santos was charged with conspiracy for, among other things, stealing people’s identities and making charges on his own donors’ credit cards without their authorization. What a buncha guys!

Since the indictment, Menendez has taken to the airwaves to insist he’ll fight to the finish. How is he even still in Congress, you ask? A massive case of narcissistic entitlement, that’s how; Cuellar – same problem. Instead of doing the correct and decorous thing, namely resigning, they cling to their congressional seats. The GOP-controlled House had the decency to expel Santos, but don’t expect such propriety from the Dems. They reserve their threats of expulsion for great senators, like Al Franken, guilty of making an off-color joke that riled the Me-Too fanatics. But when it comes to two congressional bigwigs like Menendez and Cuellar? The Dems may squabble about one or both resigning, but they put no muscle into it. Not like they did for the incorruptible Franken, on whom they ganged up and swarmed like a mess of angry hornets, and with about that much, insect-level, brain-power. Looking at you, Kirsten Gillibrand.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/05/24/the-indicted-congressmans-club/

These are just the most recent indictments….the sickness of greed goes well back in this country’s history.

One of the carriers of this cancer are the “Lobbyists”…..

The relationship between foreign governments and members of Congress is generating headlines and drawing scrutiny. First, on May 3, the Department of Justice charged Texas Representative Henry Cuellar with bribery, money laundering, and doing work on behalf of a foreign government. Then on May 15, the trial began for New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, who stands charged with using his office to facilitate favorable deals and agreements involving select businesspeople and the Egyptian and Qatari governments. The Menendez case has produced sensational and salacious details — ranging from stacks of cash to gold bars found in the Senator’s residence — attracting a massive media spotlight. Cuellar has said he is innocent and Menendez has pleaded not guilty.

Yet, while the two cases are grabbing headlines, they are far from the first time foreign governments may have courted members of Congress. Such efforts — often illegal — have long been a way to shape American policy so that it benefits other countries. Foreign governments frequently pursue a dual track strategy in which they court policymakers through lobbying and other means, while also working to shape American public opinion to limit the options for members of Congress and the President. These strategies have paid great dividends in the past, even as they have also at times resulted in scandal.

https://time.com/6981957/foreign-interference-lobbying-history/

This cancer can be mostly cured by removing lobbyists and cash from our political organism.

These reports illustrate just how deadly cash is to the health of our beloved system….we need a surgically remove the malignant parts so the system can survive.

The problem is that this sickness is entering into Stage 4 and may be too late to save the entity we say we love.

Any thoughts?

‘cognito ergo me agitare’

Playboy Gets Fined

British media regulator Ofcom has fined Playboy TV 22,500 pounds ($32,990) for airing sexually explicit images in breach of broadcasting rules.

It said on Thursday the free-to-air channel Playboy One had broadcast unencrypted raunchy, and what the watchdog deemed offensive, material until September 2008.

Ofcom had received five complaints relating to seven late night programs broadcast between September and December 2007.

Shows investigated included: “Sexy Girls Next Door,” “Sexy Urban Legends” and “Adult Stars Close-up.”

“Depending on the individual breach, the explicitness, strength and, or, sustained nature of the sexual content and language was unacceptable for broadcast on an unencrypted free-to-air channel,” Ofcom ruled.

It said Playboy TV UK/Benelux Ltd had failed to ensure adequate protection for viewers from “potentially harmful or offensive material.

First of all….HUH? What did they think they were gonna see when they tune in to a channel labeled “the Playboy Channel”? Are there people that stupid that they think a show called “Sexy Girls Next Door” was about 6 maids a milking? Absolutely no one is that flipping stupid! This is just a ridiculous story.

Vermont Joins Other States

Vermont on Tuesday became the fourth state to legalize gay marriage — and the first to do so with a legislature’s vote.

The House recorded a dramatic 100-49 vote, the minimum needed, to override Gov. Jim Douglas’ veto. Its vote followed a much easier override vote in the Senate, which rebuffed the Republican governor with a vote of 23-5.

Vermont was the first state to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples and joins Connecticut, Massachusetts and Iowa in giving gays the right to marry. Their approval of gay marriage came from the courts.

Tuesday morning’s legislative action came less than a day after Douglas issued a veto message saying the bill would not improve the lot of gay and lesbian couples because it still would not provide them rights under federal and other states’ laws.

Douglas called override “not unexpected.” He had called the issue of gay marriage a distraction during a time when economic and budget issues were more important.

The list grows longer and longer.

Sh!t Happens!

Found while surfing…..reported by the Associated Press…..

A federal judge sentenced a Sioux Falls man to probation, a fine and restitution for sending a letter containing animal feces in the mail. Jeffrey Dezeeuw, 45, pleaded guilty to a count of mailing injurious articles.

Prosecutors said he smeared the excrement on a traffic citation, a note and cash that he sent to the Minnehaha County Clerk of Courts on July 21.

Dezeeuw was sentenced to three years of probation, a $500 fine and ordered to pay restitution of $451.

There is NO humor in the court system what so ever……joking…….

About Damn Time

The Iowa Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling Friday finding that the state’s same-sex-marriage ban violates the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian couples, making Iowa the third state where marriage is legal.

In its decision, the court upheld a 2007 district court judge’s ruling that the law violates the state constitution. It strikes the language from Iowa code limiting marriage to only between a man a woman.

“The court reaffirmed that a statute inconsistent with the Iowa constitution must be declared void even though it may be supported by strong and deep-seated traditional beliefs and popular opinion,” said a summary of the ruling issued by the court.

Are you sure we are talking about Iowa? A unanimous decision? All the others like New Hampshire or California were split decisions, but Iowa?

This is a great civil rights victory for gays and will be interesting to see where it will lead. Will other states follow suit?