In Many Ways a Miracle

You Can Never Have Too Many Firearms

Police officers found 23 firearms in the Mandalay Bay hotel room Paddock occupied, Assistant Clark County Sheriff Todd Fasulo said.

Also, investigators now say that 19 firearms have been found at the man’s Mesquite, Nevada home.

  RT

May I ask how many hands this person had?

Or were those guns not reliable, so he needed backups?

Always, we look for a motive. Something to tell us this is an aberration and can't happen with the alarming frequency that it does and will continue to do. We are obviously daft.  We're a violent, aggressive nation that glorifies gunslingers and military action. And we have easy access to firearms. Not too difficult to understand the results.

I don't want to ban guns. An unarmed citizenry is a citizenry easily subdued and oppressed by its governors. But, as long as our culture is a shoot-em-up, warrior-worshipping, shit-talking, racist, female-disparaging culture, and we insist the sale of military grade weapons - and the USE of them by our civilian police forces - is our Constitutional right, and refuse to approach drug addiction and mental illness (and "patriotism" and domestic abuse and police brutality) as national epidemics that require, at the very least, a finessed and medically-oriented solution, and think the death penalty and harsh punishment is the answer, this is our national life.  

USA! USA! USA!  

Stop pretending we want peace.  We spend all our money on war.  What's that old saying?  Put your money where your mouth is.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

To Las Vegas, We Send Our Thoughts and Prayers

Roy Zimmerman from June 2016
(and forever in America)

And, No, Trump's Endorsement Didn't Raise Support for Luther Strange

The White House pointed us to a news release from Emerson College’s polling unit, which conducted several polls of the Alabama contest.

[...]

The lines from the news release don’t provide as much support as Trump seems to think they do.

For starters, there’s some question whether a four-point gain merits the label "MANY" -- or whether it’s even mathematically significant, given that the poll had a five-point margin of error.

  Politifact

If it had a 5-point margin of error, 4 points equals zilch.

Indeed, if you look at the actual ballots cast -- the only vote that really counts -- Moore ended up outpacing Strange by an even wider margin in the runoff.

"Moore’s edge over Strange grew from six points in the first round to nine in the second, so the actual votes suggest that Trump did not help Strange close the gap on Moore," said Kyle Kondik, an analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

Another brag that was just a lie.

And after that, he whine-tweeted that the networks weren't reporting that "alternate fact" when they reported on the election.



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Rand Paul Hits the Tax Plan

President Trump recently said that he would not benefit from his own tax plan, despite the fact that said plan cuts the Trump Organization’s tax rate by nearly 15 points, while abolishing the tax on multi-million-dollar estates. Instead, Trump insisted that his plan was a “middle-class tax cut” that would deliver the bulk of its benefits to ordinary, hardworking Americans.

When nonpartisan research institutes, like the Tax Policy Center, began highlighting the fact that this is not true, conservative politicians and media outlets quickly set about reinforcing the GOP base’s epistemic barriers. “Tax Policy Center? More like Joe Biden’s National Tax Center!” budget director Mick Mulvaney basically said on Fox News Sunday. The Wall Street Journal editorial page proceeded to assure conservatives that the think tank’s analysis — which showed that 80 percent of the benefits of Trump’s tax cuts would accrue to the top one percent, while a significant swathe of the middle class might actually see a net tax increase — was mere left-wing “propaganda.”

  NY Magazine

They didn't get it voted on fast enough.  The truth is being published.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Platitudes for Las Vegas

Speaking in the Diplomatic Room of the White House, Trump said: “Our unity cannot be shattered by evil, our bonds cannot be broken by violence and although we feel such great anger at the senseless murder of our fellow citizens, it is our love that defines us today and always will forever.”

He added: “In times such as these, I know we are searching for some kind of meaning in the chaos, some kind of light in the darkness. The answers do not come easy. But we can take solace knowing that even the darkest space can be brightened by a single light, and even the most terrible despair can be illuminated by a single ray of hope.”

The president, who is not known for public expressions of faith, went on to read a line from Psalm 34: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

  Guardian

'This is a country-western bunch. Gimme something from the Bible.'

What does all that even mean?  What single light?  What single ray of hope?  Our love defines us.  Just ask the mayor of San Juan.  Ask anyone in Yemen.  Iraq.  Syria.  Afghanistan.  Black Lives Matter.  Children who will be uninsured because Congress let CHIP expire.  Shall I go on?

Or, as Richard Wolffe of The Guardian asks:

Is this Donald J Trump by any chance related to the Donald J Trump who goes by the handle of @realDonaldTrump on Twitter? I only ask because I could have sworn that the last couple of times there was a senseless murder in London, he variously blamed ‘loser’ terrorists, the internet, and its mayor. [...] Answers do not come easy, unless we are detonating an incendiary Tweet. 

A moment of silence was held on the South Lawn of the White House. Trump and vice-president Mike Pence, accompanied by their wives, walked out the White House in between two rows of White House employees including Ivanka Trump, HR McMaster and kitchen staff. They reached the end of the rows, stood silently, and then bent their heads in prayer while a uniformed Marine tolled a bell. Afterwards, the four turned around and walked quietly back to the White House.

[...]

[Sarah Huckabee Sanders] said it was too soon to talk about policy. She said: “Before we start trying to talk about the preventions of what happened last night, we need to know facts.” She said “the only person with blood on their hands is the shooter” and dismissed the efficacy of gun control legislation by talking about the shooting rate in Chicago, a city she described as having “the strictest gun control laws in the country”.

[...]

Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a fervent advocate of gun control reform, made a passionate plea for his colleagues to take action on gun violence, saying: “It’s time for Congress to get off its ass and do something.”

The Democrat, who is from the state where 20 children and six adults were killed in the Sandy Hook shooting of 2012, said: “Nowhere but America do horrific large-scale mass shootings happen with this degree of regularity.

Only in America. But if we didn't do anything after twenty children were killed, we're probably not going to do anything.

Since Trump’s inauguration in January, there have been other mass shootings, including one in Texas last month when a gunman killed eight at a house party. But events in Las Vegas will be seen as the first major test of a president for whom the National Rifle Association (NRA) was a key part of his electoral coalition.

[...]

[Paul Ryan] said “this evil tragedy horrifies us all” and added: “The whole country stands united in our shock, in our condolences, and in our prayers.” The Wisconsin Republican said he had ordered “flags over the United States Capitol to be lowered to half-staff in memory of the victims of this tragedy”.

Shock, condolences, prayers and lowered flags. That should take care of it. It's always sufficed before.

The shooting came days before the House of Representatives was to consider legislation that would partially deregulate noise suppressors for firearms. The provision is part of the Share Act, a bill that would also remove restrictions on hunting and shooting on federal land.

The Share Act was first set for a hearing in June but that was delayed after a shooting at a congressional baseball practice in Virginia injured five people including the Republican House majority whip, Steve Scalise.

Damn. Every time we try to loosen gun control, somebody shoots up the place.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Shedding More Light on Trump's Puerto Rico Response

This story comes from BuzzFeed almost exactly a year ago...

Donald Trump claimed he had a plan to save a failing Puerto Rican golf resort: He would streamline its budget and attract new members. Those promises, repeated for years, helped the club sell a raft of government-backed bonds that it had very little chance of repaying.

Trump collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees from the resort, but he never did oversee the golf course's daily operations. He didn’t attract more than a handful of new members or reduce its multimillion-dollar annual losses. Its costly, self-dealing contracts remained in place. In late 2011, six months after selling the bonds, the club defaulted, leaving Puerto Rican taxpayers — already suffering through a major economic crisis — on the hook for as much as $32.7 million, according to an analysis by the Securities Litigation and Consulting Group.

  Daniel Wagner

Making this series of tweets even more despicable...

Continue reading.

Summarized:

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

I'm Sure It Happened Just That Way

Alternative facts, Canada style.

Image from Catalonia

This would cause heads to explode if it happened in the U.S.  People would be forced to choose between firefighters and police.

UPDATE:  Video from a polling place.

Jesus Christ.  

2017: The Year of the Mass Killings

Well, there's something for Trump to brag about. Oh, yeah, and this is the worst.