All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[kidfresh512]

The Mass Shootings Where Stricter Gun
Laws Might Have Made a Difference

If the key gun control proposals now being considered in Congress had been law since 1999, four gunmen younger than 21 would have been blocked from legally buying the rifles they used in mass shootings.

At least four other assailants would have been subject to a required background check, instead of slipping through a loophole. Ten might have been unable to steal their weapons because of efforts to require or encourage safer gun storage. And 20 might not have been allowed to legally purchase the large-capacity magazines that they used to upgrade their guns, helping them kill, on average, 16 people each.

Taken together, those four measures might have changed the course of at least 35 mass shootings — a third of such episodes in the United States since the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, a New York Times analysis has found. Those 35 shootings killed a combined 446 people.

But in a nation awash with guns, the majority of mass killings might have been unaffected — either because assailants obtained their guns illegally or because they were older adults using weapons that wouldn’t have been subject to any proposed restrictions.

Another proposed measure, a ban on the sale of military-style semiautomatic guns known as assault weapons, could in theory have had greater impact. But it faces even tougher opposition than the other proposals. Congress banned the sale of such guns in 1994, but the law expired 10 years later, and the weapons have since surged in popularity. Weapons covered under the expired ban were used in 30 percent of the shootings in the data, causing nearly 400 deaths. In a speech Thursday, President Biden asked Congress to renew the ban.

It really does highlight the stupidity of not enacting basic laws. Or even discussing them. This clearly lays out the possible benefits and lives that could have been saved.

And none of these laws is taking away people's rights to protect their homes or go hunt legally. The assault weapons ban would piss people off but who cares there is no reason those are needed to hunt any animal its ridiculous. They like them because they are "cool". Thats it.

[Catlady in training]

Right. Leave an expert's job to an amateur.

But adequate training might not be enough. What the teachers also need is courage. Polices of Uvalde and Parkland or Broward County had proper training but lack courage.

I'm not sure if this was meant as sarcastic, but I think that teachers in general have already quite a lot of courage for being villing to teach large groups of kids for usually shitty pay. Not to mention having to deal with some parents who seem to get crazier and crazier, from wanting to dictate what their children can and cannot be taught to dictating safety measures during a pandemic.

If anyone is lacking courage, it's politicians who have power to do something about gun regulations but are too afraid either of political repercussions or NRA lobby.

[The Cool Thatguy]

What is the health report on the NRA today anyways?

I remember reading they were bleeding money a year ago, have they recovered?

[kidfresh512]

How the White House lost Joe Manchin, and its plan to transform America

A breakthrough seemed close. It was mid-December, and President Biden had been negotiating for months with Sen. Joseph Manchin III over Biden’s sweeping plan to reconfigure the American economy. House Democrats had already approved $2 trillion for Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, and pressure was mounting to push the measure through the more narrowly divided Senate.

But first Biden had to overcome resistance from Manchin (D-W.Va.), the Senate’s most conservative Democrat.

On Dec. 14, the pair seemed to make progress. Manchin had offered to support a $1.8 trillion package, a step toward the White House position, while Biden agreed to jettison a budget gimmick that Manchin believed disguised the true cost of the plan. The tenor of their conversations was “peachy,” according to one person briefed on the talks, and the two sides agreed to put out a statement saying they would continue talking.

And then, incredibly, it all fell apart.

The statement drafted by White House aides two days later named Manchin as the focus of negotiations. White House aides sent a draft of the statement to Manchin’s office ahead of its release. Manchin’s chief of staff responded by asking the White House legislative director either to remove the senator’s name, or to add Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).

This is actually interesting I think. I have seen comments on Democrats should do more about Manchin etc. Like they can hold him at gunpoint and make him sign off on policies. I mean this goes into quite a lot of detail in the months and months of negotiations and trying to appease him as the crucial vote. If he was so pissy about being named as the last holdout with Sinema and he was it wasn't like that was secret. That he would just say screw it, who cares about the agenda and he doesnt even offer plans of his own. Thats the real kicker. If Sinema and Manchin are going to hold up almost everything other than judge appointments, the infrastructure bill then they should be leading the charge with bills of their own that they would support.

[CSTowle]

I think the discussion of the employment rate has come up once or twice before, so for those reflexively defending Biden (and I get it, things look grim for the Party right now so it probably seems like a lifeline to find something positive to say) I'm curious: do you really believe that employment wouldn't have gone up largely as it has after the worst of the pandemic just given the economic reality of the shutdown and the need for businesses to ramp back up, and that Biden had specific policies that are largely responsible for the rate of employment over the past year or so? And if so, which ones?

Under a Trump or a Warren or another centrist like Biden do you think employment would be at or near pandemic levels right now? Would businesses continue to be shut down as they were in 2020? On another topic, do you think the stock market gains and pre-pandemic rising economy under Trump meant his policies were the right ones to enact, and what Trump policies would you like to see Biden adopt in order to further economic growth? Tax cuts? Deregulation? What did Trump do to keep gas prices down, that Biden again could adopt, given a feeling that an Administration's policies are closely tied to economic conditions?

Or are you aware that this isn't the case, under Trump or Biden, and trying to claim a victory where it's at best partially warranted is dishonest and attacking someone because they're not 100% "rah rah" on anything Team Blue is also dishonest?

[Jack Dracula]

What Joe Manchin wanted wasn't a secret, but his fellow Democrats didn't go for it, except with gimmicks.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/175-tri...f-money-to?s=r

There is no confirmation that problems at Abbott's plants are why two babies died.

Again, the argument is that Democrats didn't just "Shrug shoulders/Throw towel in". That didn't happen.

The other argument isn't over confirmation that Abbot is responsible for the deaths. Several babies became ill and two died after eating Abbot's product prompting a recall. The company was already being investigated for violations and was shut down. The deaths and illnesses point to the importance of regulations and what can happen if they're not followed. Not sure why you don't understand that.

[Tendrin]

Tech investor and Arizona Republican Senate hopeful Blake Masters acknowledges that the United States has a gun violence problem. But he also has a theory about why there’s a problem—it’s “Black people, frankly.”

Masters boiled the issue down in an April 11 interview on the Jeff Oravits Show podcast, telling the host that “we do have a gun violence problem in this country, and it’s gang violence.”

“It’s people in Chicago, St. Louis shooting each other. Very often, you know, Black people, frankly,” Masters clarified. “And the Democrats don’t want to do anything about that.”

I'm sure he's already in the queue but geeze, back here again.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, we profiled Jerry Bergevin, a former member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives who advised against teaching evolution in public schools because he believed it led to the rise of Nazi Germany, and was the motivation for the shooters in the Columbine Massacre. Alternately, he has tried making Bible Studies a mandatory course in schools. Bergevin also released one of the country's first "religious freedom" bills back in 2012. Upon the state legislature in New Hampshire voting to legalize medical marijuana, he completely lost his damned mind, and sent out an email decrying that, calling his colleagues "Potheads who legalized the rectum as a sexual organ." Bergevin has been voted out of office for three years now, and we’re fine with that.


In both 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and in 2021, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” presented profiles of the U.S. House Representative for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, Mike Kelly, who was first elected in the Tea Party Wave back in 2010, defeating Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper by double digits with the benefit of GOP turnout that year, and after gerrymandering has turned the Cook Partisan Voter Index for his district from +2 Republican lean, all the way to +8 Republican, he’s now in his fourth term in office. Of course, in 2016, that was likely because nobody even bothered to run against him. Mike Kelly has raised some eyebrows since heading to our nation's capitol, with his first foray into the spotlight coming in August of 2012, when at a press conference, he compared the birth control mandate of the Affordable Care Act to "Pearl Harbor or 9-11." Certainly there was no hyperbole there, comparing the deaths of thousands in a surprise attack to employers having to cover contraceptives women might need to help regulate irregular menstrual cycles. No sir.

A year after that blunder, in August of 2013, Rep. Kelly decided to comment on President Obama, explaining that actually, it was that Barack Obama "divides our country on race". Kelly went on to rant about how his "liberty and freedom were under attack" by the Obama administration, offering little explanation of how that was, exactly. But that's far from the worst thing he said about President Obama. He also discussed impeaching him for "dragging America into a Civil War" shortly after winning re-election back in November of 2014, and in a December 2015 interview with Houston conservative talk-show host Sam Malone, Kelly began questioning where Obama was born and who raised him, before ranting about how his remarks "embolden our enemies", and that terrorists could "shoot up a ballet while Obama dithers." His fearmongering about terrorism isn't a one off, as during the massive Ebola Virus outbreak in 2014, Mike Kelly was on Newsmax, calling for a travel ban (that doctors said would only make the outbreak worse) and making the ridiculous assertion that American Jihadis were going to go into Africa to deliberately infect themselves with the lethally terminal disease, and then bring it back to the states and spread it to massive numbers of people. Which is stupid, because people infected with Ebola are pretty easy to spot, and usually unable to move because they're so crippled by their organs liquifying. And to infect other people, they would have to smear blood or feces on people en masse, which is sort of a telltale sign of ill intent.

After President Obama left office, Rep. Kelly did not stop being a paranoid loon about the former president, in March of 2017, he told a crowd in his home district that President Obama was staying in the capitol not to just let his daughter Sasha finish high school, but was actually “running a shadow government that is totally gonna upset the new agenda.” Kelly never apologized for this blatant and paranoid lie, and his staffers tried walking it back, to being “frustration that some Obama holdovers within the federal bureaucracy are attempting to upset the Trump agenda”… which for a walk-back, is still pretty inflammatory. Meanwhile, President Obama took the time outside the White House to go kite-surfing with Richard Branson, because that’s exactly how shadow governments operate.

In 2018, Mike Kelly got humiliated on the floor of the House by Congresswoman Maxine Waters, after he tried claiming that he knew more about discrimination than she did as an African American woman before dropping “MAGA” into his remarks, and trying to skulk out. Waters was having none of that bulls***, and straight up torched him. A few days later, Kelly doubled down on his behavior, going on Fox News and uncorking the most outlandish take imaginable. This time he claimed it was Un-American to acknowledge and talk about the existence of racism in the United States, and that he was often prejudiced against because… before he was a Congressman, he was a car salesman. Then, he praised Donald Trump for improving racial unity. No, we’re not making that up, here’s the quote:

“We have seen the economy take off. I just think that if you come to the floor and there are 60 minutes to debate. 30 minutes on each side. But as I was sitting there, I had 30 minutes of Democrats coming down and talking about how bad automobile people are because they discriminate against nonwhite buyers. I said that’s not America. We don’t talk about those things.

We are a people of diversity, but we come together to make America great again. When I’ve seen what President Trump has done and you come in this area you can see it. It is so uplifting. Look at this, you say ‘if your only platform is hate and resistance and not about bringing the country together again’ — I mean, listen, we are still the United States of America, not Divided States of America, and if we can’t talk better than what happened on the floor the other day. I was disappointed and the Democrats that came down, every single person demagoguing and talking about how bad automobile people are. It’s just not true.”

Mike Kelly is living on Bizarro World, it seems. And still makes terrible comparisons to Pearl Harbor, evidenced in 2019 when he compared Donald Trump’s first impeachment for withholding Congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine to demand political favors to the Japanese surprise attack.

Anyway, other than all that insanity, there's the matter of Mike Kelly's partisan, conservative voting record, that includes votes for the 2013 Government Shutdown, votes against raising the debt ceiling (!), two votes to shut down Planned Parenthood and one to shut down National Public radio, votes against disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy, voting against the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, votes for banning abortion at 20 weeks, and a vote for the SAFE Act, to keep Syrian refugees from fleeing the civil war in that country.

[worstblogever]

And guess what? He’s still a bastard of a legislator:

• October 17th, 2019: Rep. Kelly is one of 60 Republicans who vote against HJ Res 77, which opposed Donald Trump’s disastrous decision to abandon Syrian Kurdish forces in Northeast Syria to the mercies of a Turkish invasion.
• October 23rd, 2019: Kelly is one of 41 Republicans who, while staring down the possibility of Donald Trump being impeached, stage a ridiculous publicity stunt in response by crashing a classified impeachment inquiry hearing for a “protest”.
• December 18th, 2019: Rep. Kelly ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
• May 15th, 2020: Kelly votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• October 2nd, 2020: Mike Kelly is one of 17 Republicans who vote against a resolution to condemn the Qanon conspiracy theory after its followers started to make death threats against Democratic Congressman Tom Malinowski.
• December 10th, 2020: Kelly signs his name to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, begging them to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The same election that she won re-election in.
• January 6th, 2021: Mike Kelly votes for the objection to the electoral college’s votes in the 2020 election, a failure to send any sort of message that he wasn’t intimidated or sympathetic to those who attacked the Capitol to attempt a violent coup.
• January 13th, 2021: Rep. Kelly votes against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, because the Republican Party no longer feels like they should be accountable for anything, including failed coups that result in the deaths of both their participants and police officers.
• February 4th, 2021: Mike Kelly votes to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments, because he wouldn’t want her to be accountable for all the bigoted remarks and conspiracy theories she’s spread online (probably because she’s a kindred spirit).
• February 25th, 2021: Kelly votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Kelly votes against HR 1, a bill created to prevent the corruption of money in politics, and protect voter access to the ballot box.
• March 3rd, 2021: Mike Kelly votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Kelly votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. Kelly votes against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
• May 19th, 2021: Mike Kelly votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
• May 20th, 2021: Kelly is one of 63 Republicans who vote against the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act.
• November 5th, 2021: Mike Kelly votes against HR 3684, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
• March 31st, 2022: Kelly votes against HR 6833, the Affordable Insulin Now Act, which would limit the cost that drug companies could list insulin at to $35 and make sure no diabetic was priced out of surviving their condition. Mike Kelly would rather they be gouged by pharmaceutical giants and/or die.
• May 18th, 2022: Mike Kelly is one of 192 Republicans who vote against HR 7790, to create supplemental funding for infant formula (while claiming to be pro- life).
• May 18th, 2022: Rep. Kelly votes against HR 350, the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, because these days, a plank of the Republican Party is ostensibly domestic terror.
• May 19th, 2022: Kelly votes against HR 7688, a bill which would help prevent gas companies from gouging customers on prices.

Mike Kelly’s seat was one of the top Democratic targets in 2020 to be flipped and further their majority advantage in the House. And he’s still in the middle of controversy. Because Mike Kelly still owns car dealerships… and has benefited from a law that allows him to sell models of cars that have been recalled by their manufacturers. And, over alll, the practice has resulted in 24 deaths around the country, including vehicles with defective airbags that kill passengers. Mike Kelly’s own dealerships have sold 17 recalled vehicles, and thus far, and luckily, he hasn’t managed to sell anyone a death trap yet.

Yet.

Mike Kelly still won re-election with 59% of the vote, regardless of that being brought to light.

What has caused far more deaths in the past year and a half than his car dealerships is of course, Covid-19. And Mike Kelly tested positive in March 2020, and during a couple weeks of debilitating infection, he managed to lose 30 pounds, but was lucky enough to never see symptoms any worse than congestion other than the weight loss. One would hope that this would motivate Kelly to make statements that would benefit the public interest and advise people to go along with “stay at home” orders. But not so much. Mike Kelly was pimping out the Trump-touted snake-oil “cure”, hydroxychloriquine as a treatment, and while he admitted he couldn’t prove it helped him recover, he still seems to promote the dangerous drug that kills more people than it saves. Because this man is a moron who will put coal in the train engine that is Donald Trump’s stupidity whenever he can.

Speaking of, when the final assessment of who contributed to The Big Lie that fomented a violent coup attempt against Congress, one of the most irresponsible douchebags involved in the Republican Party was Mike Kelly, who actually personally filed lawsuits against the state of Pennsylvania on November 20th, 2020, to try and overturn the results of the election. He continued to bang on about it not just until 1/6/21, when his paranoia helped lay the seeds for a violent coup attempt to be carried out in the Capitol by Trump supporters but kept pushing his lawsuits until they were laughed out of court a month later in February of 2021. All in all, Mike Kelly ended up wasting millions in taxpayer dollars on the fruitless effort to make Trump a president-for-life.

And, if being brought up on charges of sedition weren’t enough to have a resume of being a wanton criminal, Congressman Kelly and his wife both were announced to be under a House Ethics Committee investigation in February of 2022 for violating the Stock Act. But y’know, he feels like crimes like insider trading, much like staging an insurrection, don’t apply to him.

With Pennsylvania’s Congressional map being reconfigured in 2022, Mike Kelly is attempting to prolong his career as a partisan s***heel by running for re-election, this time in the new PA-16 against Democrat Don Pastore. We hope voters in the district watch the January 6th hearings this month, and remember exactly who they’re dealing with in November and send Kelly packing. And then, we look forward to the cuffs being slapped on him for a variety of reasons.

[Kevinroc]

I'm sure he's already in the queue but geeze, back here again.

Our media is so pathetic.

It's unclear why Masters—who has pushed the baseless "great replacement" conspiracy theory narrative—felt compelled to single out Black people

Oh, it's pretty clear what that reason is. And our media is too pathetic to call this piece of trash out for the racist he is.

Once again, it must be asked. What liberal media?

[worstblogever]

In 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and as well as 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published profiles of Iowa State Senator Brad Zaun, a man with a record of stalking an ex-girlfriend, by banging on her windows to call her a slut, and a reputation for being so obnoxious that in spite of him winning the primary for Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District in the 2014 elections, the GOP used a rare technicality that he did not exceed the 35% threshold of votes, so they just gave the win to current Congressman David Young, who finished in fifth. Zaun believes life starts at conception, that climate change doesn’t exist, that gay couples shouldn’t marry, and somehow presents terrible math to claim the Affordable Care Act costs double what it actually does. Brad Zaun also turned heads when he defended his carrying a firearm into the Iowa state capitol, saying that he “didn’t want to end up like Gabby Giffords”, which is a really distasteful comparison (especially because Giffords wasn’t shot in a capitol building).

In 2018, Brad Zaun voted for two separate fetal heartbeat bills, which would effectively ban abortion at six weeks, a time when most women don’t even yet realize they’re pregnant. That’s right, not once, but twice.

Zaun won re-election in 2020 with but 51% of the vote, and since doing so, the only real headlines we have are that this nitwit tried to bring his gun on a plane, getting cited for having a .22 caliber handgun while trying to board a plane at the Des Moines airport.

Just… how many places is this idiot going to get caught trying to bring a gun before he ends up shooting himself in the foot literally, rather than figuratively?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I've read numerous comments from people on Twitter who are adamant that if the door at that school in Ulvade had been closed and locked, the shooter wouldn't have gotten in. As if a madman with an assault rifle intent on getting in that building would've been stopped by a door which he could've blasted to pieces, or shattered a window for entry instead. Such arguments are ultimately foolish, even insulting to anyone with a fully functioning brain.

[Tendrin]

I've read numerous comments from people on Twitter who are adamant that if the door at that school in Ulvade had been closed and locked, the shooter wouldn't have gotten in. As if a madman with an assault rifle intent on getting in that building would've been stopped by a door which he could've blasted to pieces, or shattered a window for entry instead. Such arguments are ultimately foolish, even insulting to anyone with a fully functioning brain.

The idea that schools should not be/are not prisons is lost on some people.

[Mister Mets]

I've read numerous comments from people on Twitter who are adamant that if the door at that school in Ulvade had been closed and locked, the shooter wouldn't have gotten in. As if a madman with an assault rifle intent on getting in that building would've been stopped by a door which he could've blasted to pieces, or shattered a window for entry instead. Such arguments are ultimately foolish, even insulting to anyone with a fully functioning brain.

This would also not prevent school shootings committed by students, who are allowed to be there.

[Zelena]

I've read numerous comments from people on Twitter who are adamant that if the door at that school in Ulvade had been closed and locked, the shooter wouldn't have gotten in. As if a madman with an assault rifle intent on getting in that building would've been stopped by a door which he could've blasted to pieces, or shattered a window for entry instead. Such arguments are ultimately foolish, even insulting to anyone with a fully functioning brain.

Against a heavily armed and single-minded man, doors look paltry. But I don’t know why these people are doing such things and I don’t know what could prevent them to do these things. It looks like they don’t think twice: they can’t believe they will get away with it…

Some things encourage them: an easy target, a culture of violence and a lot of wepons easy to access…