I was flitting through the songs from Les Miserables on youtube. Some of my favorite songs, and I’ve always been amazed at the dramatic presentations these actors could impart. Hugh Jackman, Eddie Redmayne, Anne Hathaway have all put out such impactful songs as to bring ache to my heart, but never did I hear one that brought me tears until this one.
I remember when I was young I asked my grandmother how Hitler was allowed to do what he did. She was so hurt by the question. She just looked at me, ache in her eyes. “Randy, we didn’t know. We didn’t believe it could be real, we didn’t think someone could do that.” To my sorrow, I will be forced to answer similarly when someone asks me about Sandy Hook, Uvalde and oh so many more. I am going to have to look someone in the eye and tell them that somehow having the freedom to buy guns was worth more than the lives of our greatest treasures. I’ll have to tell them that I had no idea how to stop it.
When November comes, please remember the lives lost and the politicians who put guns before kids.
As you start this video, please scroll down to the pictures below.
This goes along with my last post, Christian take over of the US pushed by Churches, leaders with money, and wealthy older people who see it as a way to enforce their bigotry to remain a white cis straight 1950s society. I really want to emphasize the hard right bigotry and hate these billionaires have and the changes they are making to society. They fund the very rabid right wing media that is trying hard to change all of our society and political leanings, increasing hate for LGBTQIA and hate against blacks / brown people. They push a pro Christian white cis straight male in charge of society. Dunn & Wilks also control influential legal, policy, & advocacy organizations. One of those orgs argued in court that pharmacies shouldn’t sell birth control. The lawyer who argued that case later became a federal judge. He banned the abortion pill. And they’ve even created their own right-wing media bubble. Dunn & Wilks fund Texas Scorecard, the top far-right publication. Wilks owns the Daily Wire and bankrolls PragerU, a right-wing “education” platform they’re trying to force into our schools. Prager U is now being used in red state public schools as instruction materials. Florida pushes their message hard. There is a serious push by really wealthy old Christian bigots to turn the US into a Christian Iran, a Christian Saudi Arabia, a Christian Afghanistan. Do we the poor majority want to allow this? Hugs. Scottie
For more than three months, Republican Party of Texas Chair Matt Rinaldi has vigorously attacked critics of Defend Texas Liberty, and rebuffed calls to distance the state party from the powerful group over its ties to white supremacists. As he did so, Rinaldi was also working as an attorney for one of the group’s two billionaire funders, Farris Wilks, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Since 2021, Wilks has given nearly $5 million to Defend Texas Liberty, which last year was the state party’s largest financial supporter. With Rinaldi’s help, the group has sought to purge the Texas GOP of more moderate voices by bankrolling far-right causes and primary candidates. Publicly, Rinaldi has also been silent about Defend Texas Liberty as the Tribune extensively reported on ties between the group and other white supremacists and Nick Fuentes acolytes.
Read the full article. There’s much more. Give the tweets below a minute to fully load because they illuminate how deep this goes. The final tweet links to a grimly fascinating deep dive into Defend Texas Liberty’s leader.
Texas GOP Chair Matt Rinaldi backed a group with white supremacist ties — while working for its billionaire funder https://t.co/2h63antXz5
These two billionaire-pastors are spending their fortune enacting an extreme Christian nationalist worldview in the second-largest state in the country.
In his teens and his 20s, Jonathan Stickland was a prolific internet troll.
He later made a career of it — ascending to the role of a conservative Texas powerbroker, before taking heat for hosting a meeting with white supremacist Nick Fuentes. https://t.co/vvMwzjDh22
Y’know that old saw that goes, “If you enter a room and there are 12 Nazis having dinner at the table and you sit down to join them, there are now 13 Nazis at the table”?
Rinaldi, Dunn, Wilks, Strickland and the rest of these guys are the ones who catered the meal.
Two billionaires funding right wing hate groups and Nazis. And both are pastors.
Who said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle then it is for a Richmond to enter the kingdom of heaven?
Who said the greatest commandment after loving God was loving your neighbor?
Who said not to store up treasures on earth?
no one of any importance whatsoever to modern fundamentalist Christianity. One could almost wish that they succeed turning Texas into a theocracy and the right wing state. Maybe they can leave the union.
I think it reveals that they don’t even believe their religious nuttery. They just want to use superstition and money to control EVERYTHING, and they also think they’re so smart that no one will pick up on the hypocrisy
Actually, they are heretic “Christians”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… Wilks’ parents founded their own church (cult?), which denies Christian doctrines like the Trinity and the divinity of Christ, and gives primacy to the Hebrew Scriptures. While they seem to recognize Jesus as a prophet of some sort, they don’t seem to be bound to follow his teachings.
And look! Wilks is the pastor of his own church cult. Currently the Assembly of Yahweh (7th day) is a conservative Jews for Jesus-type congregation. It teaches that “the true religion is Jewish (not a Gentile religion)” and its members celebrate the Old Testament holidays rather than those related to the New Testament. The congregation considers the Old Testament historically and scientifically accurate.
This is nuts! What a pandering liar. No one who ever went to a public school thinks that kids walked the halls and sat in classes armed. What crazy hillbilly fever dream is this. Think of the hormones of kids raging, fights happening all the time, now add guns. Oh yes it would be like it is today with angry upset kids having too much access to guns. Hugs. Scottie
'The media doesn't want to talk a lot about that because it doesn't fit their narrative.'@RonDeSantis says Iowa school shooter was 'hopped up on gender ideology'
Check out this impressive new ad — or you don’t have to — from Mothers for Democracy, a 501(c)(4) political group that got its start in Texas with grassroots protests against Gov. Greg Abbott’s rightwing extremism (just as a reminder that Texas progressives are still as pissed off and active as iconic Texas Dems like Ann Richards, Molly Ivins, or Barbara Jordan). They’re very definitely positioning themselves as the polar opposite of that other bunch of moms who say they’re for liberty but want to ban books — and certain people too.
The ad, “Thoughts and Prayers,” debuted on social media yesterday to mark the 11th anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. It’s a fresh indictment of the cliché the Right has offered instead of action following mass shootings, from Newtown to Uvalde and since.
The ad begins with a little girl at the edge of a backyard swimming pool reaching for a pink flamingo floaty, priming you to think this is going to be another safety PSA. Which it is, just not about pools, because as the onscreen text explains,
The number one killer of children in the USA … [girl yelps and tumbles into pool]
is not drowning
or car wrecks
or cancer
The girl’s distraught mom arrives on the scene, but instead of jumping in to rescue her daughter, kneels at the edge of the pool and prays, “Please, please, God, save her! Do something! Save her!” [camera cuts to a close-up of the mom’s praying hands, the blurry shape of the girl at the bottom of the pool] “Please save her, please!”
Then neighbors show up to say their “thoughts and prayers” are with her, including one couple relaxing in the pool’s attached hot tub, in swimsuits and enjoying beverages (in pool-safe, nonbreakable containers, for safety). “Thoughts,” she says, finishing a drink. “Prayers,” he adds, nodding at Mom.
Onscreen, we’re shown the statistic that many of us have known for far too long:
The #1 killer of children in the US is
GUN VIOLENCE
The ad closes with an overhead shot of the backyard, the scene centered on the blurred image of the little mannequin in a red dress at the bottom of the pool, over which the final text unscrolls:
THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS
ARE MEANINGLESS
WHEN YOU CAN ACT
The scene blacks out and transitions to a white screen and the words “Act Now. Demand Gun Reform,” with a link to Mothers For Democracy’s gun reform page, which calls out “the hypocrisy of people who say ‘thoughts and prayers’ while going on with their lives as if nothing has happened.”
For the ad, Mothers for Democracy partnered with gun safety groups Newtown Action Alliance, Lives Robbed (founded by parents of victims and survivors of the mass shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School), and Change the Ref, the group founded by the parents of Joaquin Oliver, who was murdered in the massacre in Parkland, Florida. That group also brought us that devastating ad where they invited prominent gun advocates to address an empty “graduation” ceremony for the “lost class” — all the kids killed by guns, who’ll never see their own commencement ceremonies.
The ad is the first of what Moms for Democracy hopes will be six for the 2024 campaign season, on “crucial issues that directly impact families” that also include “quality public schools, climate action, healthcare access, LGBTQ+ rights, and voting protections.” Yep, they have an ActBlue link if you want to help; I gave a few of my Ameros just to find out what with they come up with for climate. On Xitter, the group noted that it didn’t use an ad agency, but rather that it (and we assume the partners?) developed the ad with an in-house team, which is pretty cool, too.
As the circle of Americans directly affected by gun violence expands, year by year, there are more and more people who desperately want the madness to end. They include some impressively talented communicators, like Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Florida), who started campaigning for gun control when he was 15 and horrified by Sandy Hook — and is a survivor himself, having witnessed a 2016 shooting in Orlando. Together, we can all make sure we’re heard.
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Last night was the big debate between Govs. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Gavin Newsom (D-CA). We’d like to give you a link so that if you missed it, and would like to watch, you could do so. However, at Fox, the news is a business and not a public service, and this was (technically) a regular episode of Hannity. So, if you want to watch it, you have to pay for Fox’s streaming service. Sorry. That said, here’s a pretty good 3-minute rundown of the highlights.
We watched it, of course, because that’s part of our responsibilities. And we’re going to give you our assessment by focusing on the four entities that were (or, in one case, were not) a part of the debate:
Newsom: Newsom may have been going into hostile territory, but he almost certainly had the easier task, which was to establish himself as a credible candidate of national stature. And he managed to achieve his goal.
Newsom would love, love, love to be butter-smooth, like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan, but he’s not that. It’s probably not a coincidence that all three of those men were either college professors or actors; two jobs that force you to learn how to read and respond to an audience. Newsom is also not a passionate, fire-breathing true believer, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT); not that the Governor is shooting for that.
No, Newsom is a wonky debater, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). That’s not an insult; Warren was a champion debater who was good enough at it to earn a college scholarship. Being like Warren means that Newsom had strong command of facts and statistics, that we was well-prepared for DeSantis’ lines of attack and was generally able to parry them, that he generally was capable of thinking on his feet and adapting when needed, and that he got off the occasional bon mot. Certainly the line of the night (which was undoubtedly pre-written) was when Newsom looked at DeSantis and said that “[what] we have in common is that neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024.”
DeSantis: DeSantis, meanwhile, had de facto home field advantage, but he had the harder task, namely to try to change the trajectory of the 2024 GOP primaries. The Governor did not come within a country mile of doing that.
To start, DeSantis showed once again that he has exactly one facial expression, which is “grimace.” And he has one tone of voice, which is nasal/whiny. No matter what he says, whether it’s pro-Democratic or pro-Republican, it’s going to be kind of a turn off because he is kind of a turn off.
Beyond that, however, DeSantis’ remarks and responses had three themes: California sucks, Democrats suck and Joe Biden sucks. If you can explain how any of those three messages help explain why you should vote for DeSantis instead of Donald Trump, then you are cleverer than we are.
It is also the case that DeSantis seems to live in a fantasy world (but definitely not in Fantasyland, where he’s not welcome). Most obviously, his version of California is that it is a dystopian hellscape. This comports with Republican talking points, but not with reality. At various points, DeSantis claimed that California has made it legal for unhomed people to defecate on the sidewalk (he even held up a map of defecation hotspots in San Francisco) and to light their own encampments on fire, that it takes twice as long to shop in California because everything is under lock and key to prevent theft, and that women in the state can never wear jewelry in public because they are certain to be mugged. The Governor shared similar fantastical ideas about Democrats and about Biden.
This is not to say that everything that came out of DeSantis’ mouth was a lie or an exaggeration, or that some of his ideas about California don’t have SOME basis in reality. For example, (Z), who walks around Los Angeles a lot, has seen human feces on the sidewalk… twice. At his local drug store, the razors, baby formula, cigarettes and liquor are under lock and key… while 95% of the inventory is not. And he knows a couple of women who turned their wedding rings around while in downtown. On the other hand, he’s been to Florida, and he’s seen most of these things there, too.
Maybe there are people out there who accept everything DeSantis says uncritically. Probably there are. But anyone watching with even a sliver of an open mind surely has to be left with the impression that he’s as truth-challenged as Trump is, while being considerably less effective at selling his lies and exaggerations.
Hannity: Hannity made clear that he should never, ever, ever be allowed to moderate a real debate, even if it’s candidates for assistant dogcatcher of East Cupcake. The first problem is that despite the fact that it was his show, and his studio, with microphones ostensibly controlled by his staff, he had absolutely no ability to enforce discipline. The candidates constantly talked over each other. Not only was Hannity unable to control it, but he eventually became petulant and whiny, at one point complaining that “I’m not a potted plant here!”
The second problem is that a disproportionate number of Hannity’s questions were, to be blunt, stupid. For example, he asked the two governors to “grade” Joe Biden, while not allowing them to explain their choice of grade. Surprise, surprise; DeSantis gave Biden an “F” and Newsom gave an “A.” What on earth was the point of that exercise? What could possibly be learned from that? And there were a lot of questions of that sort, that basically boiled down to: “Please give me your talking point on [Subject X].”
And the third problem is that Hannity started the debate by promising to be a neutral arbiter, but then spent the entire debate putting his thumb (and the rest of his hand, and arm) on the scale for DeSantis. To take one example, Hannity’s staff had a pre-prepared graphic that revealed that since 2019, California has had 19 mass shootings that killed 4 or more people while Florida has had 9 such shootings. This was part of the discussion of gun-control laws (California) or lack thereof (Florida), and was meant to help DeSantis make his point that gun-control laws don’t work.
We are not experts on gun-violence statistics, but we suspect some cherry picking here. At very least, with such a small number of qualifying incidents per year, there has to be some amount of random variation here, which means that 4 years is too small a sample size. Also, the population of California is 39.24 million, while the population of Florida is 21.78 million, which means California has 180.1% of the population that Florida does. Meanwhile, 19 is 211% of 9. So, it would seem the primary difference between California and Florida when it comes to the total number of mass shootings is… California has way more people. And there were at least a dozen things like that, where Hannity and his team had chosen statistics or had made infographics clearly designed to prop up DeSantis.
The Audience: One of Newsom’s requirements for attending the debate was “no audience,” and he got what he wanted. And wow, even with the two governors yelling over each other on a constant basis, the absence of an audience was still noticeable and a vast, vast improvement. Debates are not a football game, and the viewing audience does not need to be told what to think or feel by a bunch of howling yahoos.
Who knows if this is a one-off, or if it will establish some sort of tradition? We tend to suspect that DeSantis will not be eager to repeat the experiment, once someone tells him that he did himself absolutely no good when it comes to the 2024 presidential race, but that’s just a guess. (Z)
It’s not rhetoric, but action that proves how different the two parties are. Can we PLEASE stop treating them as if they’re two sides of the same coin? It’s not only lazy, but dead wrong.
Enlarge/ Students from Launch Charter School gather for a rally for National Gun Violence Awareness Day at Restoration Plaza on June 2, 2023, in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn borough in New York City.
As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in 2020, so did another grim reality: For the first time, guns became the leading cause of death for American children and teenagers, surpassing car accidents, the long-standing leader.
In 2021, youth firearm death rates did not fall to pre-pandemic levels as hoped, but instead continued a sharp rise to hit a new record high. That’s according to a recent study led by researchers in New York and published in the journal Pediatrics. The study was based on national mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nationwide, there were 4,752 firearm deaths of American children and teens (ages 0 to 19) in 2021, translating to a rate of 5.8 gun deaths per 100,000 people. The deaths represent a nearly 9 percent increase from 2020 (4,368 or 5.4 deaths per 100,000).
The study looked for disparities and trends in the data. As before, firearm deaths were largely in older teens, with 83 percent of deaths in teens ages 15 to 19. Most were among males, who accounted for 85 percent of the deaths. Black children remained disproportionately affected, with the gap widening—50 percent of the deaths were among Black children. The death rate among Black children and teens increased from 16.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 18.9 per 100,000, the largest increase among the racial categories.
As for intent, 64 percent of the 2021 firearm deaths were from homicides and 30 percent were from suicides, with the remainder from unintentional shootings. Homicide rates increased across all age groups, which was part of a multi-year trend. Between 2018 and 2021, homicides increased 66 percent in the 0–4 and 5–9 age groups. For kids ages 10–14, homicides increased 100 percent and 62 percent in teens 15–19.
The racial disparity in homicides was stark, with the rate of deaths among Black children being 11 times higher than that of white children. For suicides, white children accounted for 78 percent of the deaths.
Regarding where children and teens had the highest rates of firearm deaths, the study found that places where baseline death rates were already high got worse—namely in the South.
Enlarge/ Pediatric firearm mortality rate by state and year from 2018 to 2021. States with absolute mortalities <20 are grayed out because of unreliable crude death rates (these include Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, and District of Columbia).
“In 2021, firearm mortalities were largely concentrated in Southern states,” the authors wrote. “Louisiana had the highest death rate per 100,000 persons (17.0), followed by Mississippi (14.8), Alabama (11.4), Montana (11.1), and South Carolina (10.2).”
The authors speculated that this could be due to “variability in social determinants of health, inequity, firearm access, legislation, and access to preventative strategies (violence intervention, suicide prevention, firearm safety).” State poverty levels were also tightly linked with pediatric firearm death rates, the study found.
In all, the authors called for more data to understand the deadly trend and develop prevention strategies.
“These findings highlight the necessity and urgency of real-time epidemiologic surveillance of this epidemic and implementation of evidence-informed strategies to prevent pediatric firearm fatalities among children and adolescents at highest risk,” the authors wrote.
Jon Stewart confronts Republican Senator Nathan Dahm on the insane record of dead children due to gun violence and the lack of gun control in America in general.
Scottie's Playtime 
