“School shootings are a fact of life.” — J.D. Vance

No it’s not. It’s just not. I hate to go all old man on everyone here, but these things didn’t happen when we were kids. I graduated from high school in 1993. I think there was a famous school shooting at the University of Texas back in the day, but that’s pretty much it. In 1999 Columbine happened. In the last 25 years it is has been like shooting fish in a barrel.

So, maybe logic is the way to go about it. I feel like the conservative response is to point to things we know we can’t fix. It’s a whole generation of kids raised by single parents. It’s the violent video games. It is the lack of God in our culture. It’s the ramping up of hate on social media. It’s the mental health.

These things might be true to a greater or lesser extent and I am not here to discount any of those things. However, school violence is a choice. Gun violence is a choice. Every other industrialized country on the planet has figured this out better than we have. It’s not a fact of life. It is what you have chosen to accept.

One of the things I’ve noticed with a child going into the college process is that I wouldn’t have gotten into the institution I went to with the grades I had. My SAT score wouldn’t have been enough. We are loading up our kids with AP courses, college essays, internships, and part-time jobs. These kids aren’t soft like we are accusing them of. They have a lot more on their plate than any of us had.

Now, what does this have to do with the issue at hand? Someone that shoots up a school, mall, movie theater, or anything else by definition is mentally ill. That by definition is someone in distress and is not exercising good coping skills. Mentally ill doesn’t have to mean being in a straight jacket. It doesn’t mean needing a padded room with no sharp things. It doesn’t mean they need copious amounts of medication and therapy.

It is so much more than that. We are increasingly creating an entire generation of people without coping skills. We heap all of this stuff on them, tell them they will have to pay for college for the rest of their lives, won’t be able to ever afford a house of their own, and we provide them with few ways to manage this stress. We tell them they have to choose a path early in life. They need to spend all of their free time either studying or getting better on that path. What stress relief strategies are we providing?

Guns are not necessary for the survival of 99 percent of us. Your little pea shooter is no match for the military might of the largest and most powerful armed force in the history of the planet. I want people to be able to do what they want in their free time as long as it doesn’t endanger me or my family. You can do that without an AR-15. You can do that by simply waiting a week to make sure you don’t have a history of domestic abuse, mental illness, or criminal behavior. Registering your gun is not going to seriously infringe on your rights. Heck, having a license to carry it won’t either.

It must be hard to be a paid campaign staffer on the team trying to pull off a political miracle to re-elect a rapist, a felon, and an overall odious person – especially if that is all one and the same odious person.

LaCivita and Wiles showing leadership

Witness this leaked email message from the two highly paid heads of the TFG team, Chris LaCivita and Susan Wiles, transcribed below:

Team –

Susie and I have always said this is the best team in politics. And each day that passes, we are all reminded how true that is. Everyone has made sacrifices and put in the time and effort to help elect President Trump, Senator Vance, and all Republicans running for office.

Throughout this campaign, we have sent periodic reminders of our communications and press policy when interacting with reporters and media members. Unless you have been authorized by Senior Leadership or have received permission from an authorized member of the Communications Team, you should not be speaking or communicating with any member of the press, on or off record.

We have done a great job of preventing leaks and that has been because everyone knows what the policy is and what we expect from everyone. Information is power – and the press doesn’t give a damn because you lose your job because you spoke out of school.

As this team moves forward with only 61 days left until victory, please do not deviate from this policy. Success requires buy-in from everyone. If just one of us goes off-course, it jeopardizes not only the team but also President Trump and Republicans up and down the ballot.

Onward to victory!

Imagine writing that message to your campaign staff and then seeing that very message posted on the internet one hour later.

I guess someone on the paid staff didn’t take that that very heart-felt communiqué seriously.

Or more likely, maybe they did.

One of our regulars posed a question to me following yesterday’s piece on low information voters. I felt like it deserved an answer. Normally, I might do this in the form of a reply comment, but this answer is a little longer and deserves a little more attention. However, I’m hoping it won’t be my normal 600 word screed either. The question was what we can do about low information voters and dubious media sources that propagate nonsense.

Following Citizens United, it has become more and more clear that money is more powerful than speech. Following 2016, Ms. Carraway and I decided to subscribe to the New York Times and Washington Post. We wanted to support a cause that would fight the coming tyranny and felt that the fourth estate was an important part of that. The tag line “Democracy dies in darkness” was particularly powerful given Trump’s attacks against the media. I am no longer supporting those two particular publications.

The idea of “cancel culture” is quite hilarious to me given that conservatives have mastered the art of cancellation. They do this by withholding money. Sure, there is some sound and fury in there, but companies like Budweiser quickly changed their tune when their bottom line was effected. We must do the same in order to fight back against media sources that either purposefully mislead the public or whitewash the news in order to create a horse race that should never exist.

There is only one reason why anyone would do such a thing and so there is only one way to combat that. If they see that there is a financial risk in not reporting actual news then suddenly they may grow a backbone and report the news. If companies see a risk in supporting a racist jackass then maybe they will stop doing it. They bend to where the money is going and it is high time we use whatever financial muscle we have to exert that pressure.

As far as this is concerned, it is really very simple. We should financially support media sources and companies committed to reporting facts and supporting truth. Is there a script we can use? I suppose that is up to everyone. If you are the kind of person that wants to tell people why they are no longer getting your money then by all means let them have it. Otherwise, the money is the key. So, the Washington Post and New York Times feel it is in their best interest to keep Donald Trump’s political career alive. Let’s show them that its not. Let’s show them that their fiduciary interests and journalistic interests are one and the same. Report the news. All of the news. Report the news or our money goes away. Period. The same goes for any other media source and any other company. If you want to cozy up to MAGA you can do it without my dime.

One of our favorite lessons from English is when we get to talk about different forms of figurative language. One of those forms is the euphemism. A lay person might define a euphemism as a more gentle way to say something unpleasant. For instance, when someone has died we say “she passed away.”

Let’s peel back the layers of stupidity here. For one, a capital gains tax is always issued upon the sale of the stock or property. Jackbooted thugs are not busting down grandma’s door and evicting her for not paying taxes on a home she has not sold. She has not reaped any capital gains until she actually sells the home. Therefore, she would not owe any money under any circumstances.

I know the punch line to this argument, but let’s focus on the stupidity a little longer. A capital gains tax is levied on the profit from the transaction. So, their math doesn’t even math. The tax would be levied on 25 percent of the profit and not 25 percent of the total sale value of the home. So, it is 25 percent of 450,000 dollars. Sorry, to geek out on everyone there for a second.

The punchline? Only people worth 100 million or more will pay the tax. The general response to these memes have been to congratulate grandma for being worth 100 million dollars. Suddenly, the threat of bankruptcy over that 125,000 grand doesn’t seem so real.

The story of Donald Trump’s lunacy over transgender reassignment in schools has been well documented. Jeff Tiedrich did this earlier and it was a lot more hilarious when he did it. My concern isn’t with one candidate that’s a lunatic. My concern is with all of the folks that seem to think this is actually happening because he said it.

To hear Trump tell it, schools are actually taking it upon themselves to give individual students gender reassignment surgery. Granted, Trump has never been a details guy. He has other men and women to work that stuff out. I haven’t seen any equipment in the nurse’s office that would get that done, but maybe I just wasn’t looking hard enough.

Maybe, a bus whisks them away during the school day. It’s a field trip to the OR. Maybe parents are extremely self-absorbed these days, but I think at least one would notice that their son had become a daughter during their time at school and alert the mainstream media.

Some idiot is going to come up their neighborhood school and “demand answers.” What we are really talking about is the abandoning of common sense. That’s what low information voting is all about. You could be talking about people that are otherwise intelligent people, but they don’t pay attention to the news or they get their news from dubious sources. Instead of fixing these misconceptions, these dubious media sources are profiting from it. Why wouldn’t they?

Maybe euphemisms aren’t getting it done. Maybe it is time to call it what it really is and shame the devil. If you believe any of this crap you are a dumbass. If you know it’s a bunch of crap and forward it anyway to rile up the dumbasses then you are evil. Period.

E. Jean Carroll’s first defamation case against TFG – where a jury awarded her $5 million – has just gotten an appeals court date for oral arguments: Friday, September 6th, 2024.

That’s this Friday.

That’s the day after tomorrow.

Apparently, Don Von drew a terrible panel of three appellate judges. Terrible for him, that is.

The three judges to hear oral arguments this Friday are:

Denny Chin, appointed by Bill Clinton to the New York Southern District Court in 1994, then by Barack Obama to the 2nd Circuit in 2009.

Susan Carney, appointed by Barack Obama to the 2nd Circuit in 2010

Myrna Perez, appointed to the 2nd Circuit by Joseph R. Biden in 2021.

That’s a good panel.

And, oh by the way, recall that Lewis Kaplan, the judge in Carroll’s original case, has clarified that TFG committed rape.

That was rape. He raped her.