In New Hampshire yesterday, Biden was asked if he would pick a Republican as VP.  Here’s his answer, ALL of his answer:

As the details began emerging about the church shooting on Sunday, gun zealots immediately began boasting and calling for even fewer restrictions on gun ownership in Texas, which already has some of the worst gun laws in the US and is experiencing an explosion of gun violence as a result. Why?  The shooter was taken down by a “volunteer” security guard, and about a half a dozen other parishioners were also carrying guns. Bolstered by this fact, idiots like Jonathan Stickland, the goofball state rep from Bedford who actually wants to loosen gun laws even further, boasted how “constitutional carry” (translation: no licensing, no training, no ID confirmation)  would save lives.  Ken Paxton, who has now avoided trial for almost 5 years for multiple felony charges, chimed in, “We can’t prevent mental illness from occurring, and we can’t prevent every crazy person from pulling a gun.  But we can be prepared like this church was.”

Both Stickland and Paxton are wrong on both counts.  Objective data-based research has proven over and over that more guns equals more gun violence, everywhere, every time, all the time.  Unlicensed carry and unregulated gun sales is not only bad public policy, it’s just downright stupid, and it’s stupid by the numbers.  But there are lessons that can be learned here.  Here’s how I see it:

First, the “volunteer” security guard is Jack Wilson, a firearms instructor who owns a gun range in Hood County.  He trains and coordinates the security team in the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement where the shooting occurred.  He took out the gunman with ONE SHOT to the head at what looks like a distance of about 10 yards.  That is very difficult to do, and only someone who is highly trained can do that, especially in a live fire situation.  The rest of his team coordinated together to protect the other parishioners and begin evacuation.  The result here proves that guns, in the hands of highly trained experts, can save lives.  It also demonstrates that guns, in untrained hands, can have unintended consequences, like killing other innocents.

Second, the shooter had a rap sheet as long as your arm, including illegal gun possession and felony assault. He had no business with a gun. How did he get his hands on the shotgun he used?  We don’t know yet, but Texas, like many other states, allows private gun sales without a background check.  This is one of the most stupid laws we have which allows a private transaction between two people, with no intermediary like a licensed gun dealer to check for criminal record.  Also, the NICS background check system has more holes than Swiss cheese, including making it VOLUNTARY for states to report criminal records and mental health adjudications.  Some local police agencies inconsistently report, some don’t do it timely.  Even the Air Force has failed to report to the NICS system, which is how the church shooter in Sutherland Springs got his hands on the AR-15 he used to massacre the congregation there.

Third, one of those killed was a trained security guard for the church.  One thing the FBI found in it’s active shooter study in 2014 was that armed people trying to stop a shooting are themselves shot almost 47% of the time.  Think about this – almost HALF of trained law enforcement officers who engage an active shooter are themselves shot.  A much better result is to keep guns out of the hands of potential shooters than to put police and armed civilians in harm’s way.

Fourth, the security team identified that guy as suspicious when he came in and were on high alert.  Wilson even said he was wearing a wig and a fake beard, and was in a long overcoat.  Had they approached him earlier, they could have prevented the two deaths he caused before Wilson killed him. The lesson here?  Even highly trained people make mistakes, and when the bad guy has a gun the results are deadly, even when the good guys are armed, too.

Overall, we know that more guns do NOT equal more safety; in fact the opposite is true by the numbers. However, highly trained people (like the police) can prevent gun deaths, even though those occurrences are rare.  Instead of crowing about undoing more gun laws, our politicians should be working to fix them.  I’m not holding my breath.

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Eddie Gallagher is a psychopath.  The horrors he committed while wearing the uniform of honorable men and women amounts to real flag burning at its most visible. But, he struts today standing on the murdered bodies of women and children non-combatants.

Gallagher is real good at killing unarmed people but not so good at performance during combat.  Kinda like Trump putting refugees and children in cages.  That’s not heroic. That’s chickencrap.

We end this year of Trump with another brutal thuggish stain on America, all because our Commander in Chief is vicious but is too cowardly to fight with anything other than juvenile name-calling behind a glass screen.

He’s trying to prove to Putin and Kim that he’s just as evil as they are.

My héros are people I would share a tent with on a camping trip.  I hope Trump feels the same way about Gallagher.

The NY Times published an explosive report yesterday tying the facts in the Ukrainian scandal together through thousands of pages of testimony and documents and from interviews with dozens of former and current administration officials.  In short, the story tells us that knowledge and assistance of Trump’s effort to extort Ukraine to announce a sham investigation of the Biden’s was much broader and deeper than anyone to this point has been willing to admit.  Also, it shows that alarm of career staffers to Trump’s and Rudy’s plan was high and ongoing.  This report really should be Trump’s Oh Shit moment.

As evidence piles up confirming everything and more that the whistleblower reported it’s becoming more and more important that the media keep Trump’s and his enablers’ feet to the fire, especially Mitch McConnell.  As Greg Sargent said in the Washington Post this morning, it is critical that the media stop equivocating and saying that this is just another political standoff and call what the Republicans are doing what it really is…obstruction and a cover up of corruption and criminal activity by Trump.

And that’s not the only thing they should be reporting; they should be reporting and amplifying EVERY crime Trump commits and every time he violates his oath of office.  And I don’t mean adding to the list of thousand of lies he’s told, but reporting them on the front page in a continuous stream.  Like the speech Bolton gave last month at a Morgan Stanley client conference where he admitted that Trump made national security decisions simply to benefit himself, especially in Turkey where he walked away from the Kurds to protect his hotels in Istanbul from Erdogan’s retaliation.  That’s goddam blackmail, and Trump is vulnerable to that from every country where he has properties and where he’s beholding, like Russia.

Sargent goes on to say that Trump is blocking the very people who were active in, and had direct knowledge of, the very wrongdoing for which he is being impeached and the risk for blowback when hard evidence comes out later (and it will).  So, if McConnell succeeds in holding a sham trial, calling no witnesses, and acquitting Trump, the stink will be on him and every other enabler who aided in the coverup.  The courts and federal agencies will eventually force the evidence out; that is a certainty, and could lead to a second impeachment if Trump wins the 2020 election when hopefully the House and Senate would be in Democratic hands.

I’ll be popping popcorn for that.

So Trump, who has as much control when it come to talking as your average gag reflex, decided to name the whistleblower on his Twitter diary.  He’s spilled it twice and soon erased it both times.

As dangerously goofy as that is, it’s nothing compared to how he got the name of the whistleblower. Both times he retweeted the name from an account held by @Surfermom77.  That account shows all the signs of being a Twitter bot … uh, Russian disinformation.  The account uses stock photos.

Surfermom77 has also tweeted far more than typical users, more than 170,000 times since the account was activated in 2013. Surfermom77 has posted, on average, 72 tweets a day, according to Nir Hauser, chief technology officer at VineSight, a technology firm that tracks online misinformation.

“That’s not something most humans are doing,” Hauser said.

While many bots only repost benign information like cat photos, others have been used to spread disinformation or polarizing claims, as Russian bots did in the lead up to the 2016 election.

In past years, Surfermom77 has described herself as a teacher, historian, documentary author and model.

I guess she forgot astronaut, notary public, and handsome race car driver.

I have an idea. Kick Trump off Twitter but give him a box of chalk and he can write on sidewalks when he has something to say.