Joé McKen is a progressive civil libertarian and third-wave atheist stuck in suburban Québec, Canada, where he spends his time composing, writing, drawing, nursing a layman’s passion for science and technology, speaking out for social justice, and poking idjits with a sharp pointy stick. Owner of a Nize Hat!, a persistent SIWOTI syndrome and an itchy snark finger.
Having recently seen and adored Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, I approve of this:
"Slaughtered in school"
"And still no gun control?"
"How come, Marco Rubio?"
That's the message scrawled across three mobile billboards seen Friday near Sen. Marco Rubio's office in Doral, Florida.
(via Joe.My.God.)
Religious-Right loon Bryan Fischer has a new spin on the “thoughts and prayers” people (especially NRA-bought politicians) like to offer in lieu of anything substantive:
Hey, here's an idea: why don't we pray in schools BEFORE these shootings happen instead of waiting until we have dead students? Why does somebody have to die before even start talking about prayer? This is the 19th school shooting this year. What do we have to lose?
— Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer) February 14, 2018
Wait a minute. I thought God was all-seeing and all-knowing. Shouldn’t he already know that students don’t want to get shot up in their classrooms without them having to tell him? Unless … is Fischer implying that God isn’t actually omnipotent or omniscient, or that he’s so desperate for praise that he’ll let kids get slaughtered if they don’t show sufficient fealty to him every morning?
No matter how you slice it, God doesn’t come off looking good in this tweet, does he.
(via Friendly Atheist)
I’m taking a leaf out of The Onion’s book and sticking with an evergreen post title, because there’s no point in writing a new one every time this happens.
The New York Daily News correctly diagnoses the United States:
More than a dozen shot dead in a South Florida high school on Wednesday. Many more wounded by the gunman.
Mourn though we do, mourn though we must, it is time to admit a painful fact: As a nation, we do not care.
If we cared, we would make at least an honest effort to fight the corrosive culture of violence that infects so many of us.
To attack mental illness as the scourge it is.
Most of all, we would try to change laws that, based on a delusional and suicidal interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, let anyone wield the power to kill in bunches.
In the real world, where we don’t care, the horror stories and the pictures of the dead and wounded will sear our minds and hurt our hearts for a short time.
Then we’ll get ready to do this all over again soon enough.
We have collectively decided this is the way we wish to live. This perverse form of American carnage is not our scourge but our brand.
I’m reminded of Jeremy Scahill’s equally apt summation: A sick country filled with guns. “A country where a cabal of high-powered lobbyists, bought-off politicians, and gun manufacturers profits off of massacres, where the meaning of the Second Amendment has been twisted so intensely that it no longer matters why it was written or what it was actually intended for.”
It’s also a country where 16-year-olds are smarter than the adults who run it.
“As our legislators and leaders, they shouldn’t be offering prayers and words because those mean nothing,” [shooting survivor Lyliah] Skinner said. “We need action, because action’s what’s going to change what’s happening.”
[…]
“If kids aren’t even allowed to … purchase their first drink of alcohol, then how are we allowed to buy guns at the age of 18 or 19?” she said. “I feel like that’s something that we shouldn’t be able to do.”
Don’t worry, though: The grown-ups in charge have already decided that any talk of curbing the obvious causes to the country’s most predictable and easily preventable problem is premature until we have “all the facts” and that anyone who wants to take guns out of the wrong hands, or restrict the sale of military-style weaponry to civilians, is “politicizing” the issue.
So as always, absolutely nothing will happen. But you already knew that. An eternally rising pile of dead students, nightclub patrons and music festival tourists is the price the US has long resigned itself to pay to ensure that gun-fondlers can stockpile assault rifles.
(via Joe.My.God. & @cnnbrk)
It’s another Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal in … *slot machine sound* … Australia.
Last Week Tonight host John Oliver goes off-script at a movie screening to grill Dustin Hoffman about the sexual harassment accusations against him. As writer Kirsty Strickland notes: Given how uncomfortable Oliver was during this as a fellow powerful man, imagine how much harder it is for women.
(via @donttrythis)
MSNBC reverses their decision to fire contributor Sam Seder after originally falling for manufactured outrage led by fringe-Right rape apologist and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich.
Former cop Michael Slager, who murdered unarmed Black man Walter Scott as he was running away, gets sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The NRA and Roy Moore are in bed together. Don’t worry; they insist it’s no homo.
Finally, you know how Trump has a huge chip on his shoulder about Obama? And how everyone considers Trump the King of Twitter? Well, get ready for the raging tweets once he hears about this.
(via Joe.My.God.)
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
NSA: You can trust us with national security secrets and all our (il)legally collected surveillance data. Also NSA: We just suffered the nth leak of classified data this year.
Hawaii requires that medicinal marijuana users be registered. It’s also the only state that requires registration for gun owners. Oh, and it bans marijuana users from owning guns. Guess what happens next.
(via RT by @Popehat)
The American Family Association wants Republican leaders to “quit protecting perverts in Congress”, focus instead on protecting perverts running for Congress.
(via Right Wing Watch)
Radley Balko has another roundup of criminal-justice- and civil-liberties-related stories in the age of Trump, including a couple already mentioned here.
Finally, I had a little exasperated meltdown on Twitter on Facebook over all these celebrity creeps.
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
140 characters is dead. Long live 140 280.
Civil liberties and religious freedom advocates are going to court over Québec, Canada’s bigoted new face-covering ban. [pictured]
Justice Department drops prosecution of woman who laughed at Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing.
(via Joe.My.God.)
Explaining why he’d rather do nothing about guns, Paul Ryan says “prayer works” in response to a mass shooting where 26 were murdered whilst praying in a church.
Trump is becoming toxic for Republican candidates and they know it.
Finally, Australia’s voluntary, non-binding, basically useless postal plebiscite on same-sex marriage is ending, with a predicted majority voting in favor.
(via Joe.My.God.)
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
It took all of one day for the World Health Organization to appoint Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe [pictured] as “goodwill ambassador” and then reverse course. In other news, wait what
Indiana’s Lawrence County ends proven-to-work, life-saving needle exchange program … because Jesus.
Cub Scout asks senator why she sponsored a bill to allow domestic abusers to own guns, gets kicked out of his group.
(via Pharyngula)
The sitting President of the United States can’t get enough of his favorite pastime of arguing with war widows.
(via Joe.My.God.)
Finally, pro tip for Bill O’Reilly: A good way not to put your family through a “horror show” with a sexual harassment scandal is to not sexually harass anyone.
(via Joe.My.God.)
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
Spent all day having a buggy DVR replaced, so have a quick links dump.
Indiana pastor [pictured] charged with luring little girls with candy and molesting them. News at 11.
(via Joe.My.God.)
Not a joke: ICE attacks California sheriff’s office for debunking ICE’s lies about how the wildfires were caused by an undocumented immigrant.
(via @fark)
Another crime lab scandal: Staff withheld exculpatory evidence in thousands of drunk-driving cases.
After protests, New Mexico reverses decision to remove basic education from its schools.
Finally, Dana Loesch and the NRA are too deranged to even pass for satire anymore:
(via Right Wing Watch)
“We are witnesses to the most ruthless attack on a president & the people who voted for him...in American history." -@DLoesch #NRA pic.twitter.com/rcPAKMVJI0
— NRATV (@NRATV) October 20, 2017
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
Indiana state Representative Jim Lucas (R) loves guns and hates the media. Specifically, he loves the idea of not forcing gun owners to obtain a permit, and hates the local media’s coverage of his efforts to abolish the state’s handgun licensing law. And he’s drafted a bill that’ll really show ’em, so he thinks:
An Indiana state lawmaker wants to see journalists obtain licenses with state police the same way handgun owners are required to do in the state, the Indy Star reported.
Rep. Jim Lucas (R-IN) wrote the bill earlier this year and said he may file it soon to make a statement about gun rights.
“If you’re OK licensing my Second Amendment right, what’s wrong with licensing your First Amendment right?” he told the Indy Star.
Such genius reasoning. It’s not like the latter protects basic civil rights whilst the former concerns lethal weapons or anything. (Wait, what am I saying? To Second-Amendment-worshippers, running around with lethal weapons is a basic civil right.)
Lucas basically admits this is just a stunt, and it wouldn’t have a ghost of a chance of passing anyway. That said, we may have found another thing Rep. Lucas loves: getting everyone with a functioning brainstem to laugh at him.
(via @fark)
17-year-old [pictured] sues high school that expelled her for refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. She needs to win, and every adult responsible needs to lose their job.
Mike Pence walks out on an NFL game in a staged protest when some players knelt during the National Anthem as literally everyone knew they would.
(via Joe.My.God.)
To be clear: The Vice President wasted a quarter-million in taxpayer dollars to visit a sports game where he knew there would be an Anthem protest so that he could pretend to be spontaneously offended.
(via Joe.My.God.)
Meanwhile, it seems Trump got his way: NFL’s leadership now demands all players stand during the Anthem or they don’t play.
(via @ggreenwald)
Finally, the Dutch version of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver examines the US’s National Rifle Addiction problem:
(via Joe.My.God.)
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill is blunt about the US’s gun pathology: A Sick Country Filled With Guns.
University of Wisconsin wants to protect speakers’ free speech rights by banning protestors from exercising their free speech rights.
(via @studentactivism)
There’s nothing wrong with sex work. There’s something very wrong with how society treats sex workers.
US Creationist group Answers in Genesis wants to infect Canada. I hope we give them the same reception we gave “Fox News North”.
Finally, I consider myself a reasonably imaginative guy, and I still can’t conceive of how this teacher possibly thought having sixth-graders draw Nazi mascots was a good idea.
(@fark)
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
Most people might look at the almost-daily mass shootings in the US and think the gun industry and its enablers ought to be held accountable for the massacres caused by their products and policies. Gun lobbyists take a different approach:
The National Rifle Association has gone dark, but other gun-rights groups say they're keeping close tabs on Republicans to make sure that any new legislation doesn't see the light of day after the shooting massacre in Las Vegas.
"Given the spinelessness of so many of the Republican caucus, the best thing would be to get the leadership not to let it come up," Larry Pratt, co-founder and executive director emeritus of the Gun Owners of America, said in an interview with NBC. "If it comes to a vote, they are going to be held accountable."
The fight is less about particular gun-control measures — like a new bill by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., banning devices that allow semi-automatic guns to mimic fully automatic weapons — and more about what gun-rights advocates see as a slippery slope to more restrictive regulations on firearms.
Some of them worry that the NRA's playbook, which includes laying low in the immediate aftermath of mass shootings and sometimes giving lawmakers a pass to vote for limited regulations, amounts to a bad strategy for gun owners.
At this point, I don’t think the US has a gun culture so much as a gun pathology. It takes quite a twisted set of priorities to see an epidemic of gun violence, where your country has several times more gun-related deaths than the next two dozen developed nations combined, and react by doubling down on preventing any kind of legislative attempt to alleviate the problem.
It’s funny; the US also has a pretty vibrant car culture, with millions of avid fans of flashy and speedy vehicles. Yet somehow, no-one’s complaining about all the road safety laws and regulations in place. There are no media figures arguing that seatbelts and airbags are unnecessary, no politicians declaring that crash test ratings are an imposition upon car manufacturers, no lobbyist groups trying to do away with driver’s licenses and insurance. The nation has an expansive system governing road safety that must be strictly obeyed under penalty of severe fines, loss of driving privileges and even imprisonment, and everyone goes along with it because it’s seen as perfectly reasonable.
There must be something truly magical about guns that they deserve such uniquely special treatment.
(via Joe.My.God.)
![Tweet by Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer): “Hey, here's an idea: why don't we pray in schools BEFORE these shootings happen instead of waiting until we have dead students? Why does somebody have to die before even start talking about prayer? This is the 19th school shooting this year. What do we have to lose?” [@ 02/14/18 5:57 PM]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY-mitfFkvgJsetJHG4nnd6hE3S8Pj1H6U4J3Yhr3UXOmj7-j7MOKe8jeuTqpVXnUlofL84Uemgtk5cnot5d8rTqMvc2aASnvuavBaJdNri_Zh7tYYV74Sz2F36AbgLntoSkSX8hPgp9Ps/s1/bryan_fischer_tweet_school_shootings_prayer.jpg "Tweet by Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer): “Hey, here's an idea: why don't we pray in schools BEFORE these shootings happen instead of waiting until we have dead students? Why does somebody have to die before even start talking about prayer? This is the 19th school shooting this year. What do we have to lose?” [@ 02/14/18 5:57 PM]")