This is how used we are to killing kids.

A Michigan State University student who was on campus during Monday’s deadly shooting is also a survivor of the Sandy Hook massacre.

Jaqueline Matthews, 21, is originally from Newtown, Connecticut.

She was in 6th grade when the shooting happened in 2012 and is currently majoring in international law at MSU.

“I don’t ever think you ever get over something so traumatic or so tragic, even if it’s not in your community,” she said. “I think things like this, people feel and it never really goes away.”

She suffers from a PTSD fracture in her back due to crouching and hiding in a corner during the Sandy Hook massacre.

I just don’t know what to say.

Okay, we have a saying in Texas about people who are a bad shot. Mostly, we just call it hunting Dick Cheney style, but there’s also this one: Honey, he couldn’t hit the side of a barn, even if he was shooting from inside.

So here we have an airplane that cost about $30 million dollars to build and about $85,325 an hour to operate. Each Sidewinder missile cost $400,000. Each. No buy one, get one free deals on this stuff.

And this little Cloud Captain fired and freekin’ missed. (I get to call the Air Force names because my family has a service history with them going back to the Army Air Corp.)  It was pretty much a stationary target and they had been close enough to know it was octagonal.

They still don’t know where the sidewinder landed.

Aunt Thelma’s solution is looking better and better.  Crop dusting is a helluva lot more complicated than most people think. But, she wouldn’t charge you but maybe $100 an hour and that includes her plane, her ammo and delivery system, and a really cool leather aviator cap.  You don’t get to keep the hat, though. Aunt Thelma wears that – sometimes even on bad hair days.

They missed.  Holy cow.  A lot of shocking, but short on the awe.

It may seem like we are floating around these 14 markers in a haphazard way. Perhaps that’s even accurate, but there is a rhyme or reason to it all. In this case, it is much more stream of consciousness than anything else. In Florida, Ron DeSantis has decided to take on Disney and it looks like he’s won the first rounds.

Now, why is he taking on Disney? Aren’t right-wing politicians supposed to protect job creators and profitable businesses like Disney? I couldn’t even come up with a Texas equivalent to Disney. The best I can come up with is if we somehow combined Bucees, Whataburger, and HEB into a conglomerate. Even then it wouldn’t match.

However, to understand this you would have to understand the purposes of those corporations. In a traditional capitalist society, corporations are seen as the final evolution of a market economy. They’ve managed to manipulate supply in order to also manipulate demand. Good for them.

In a fascist state, everything is there to glorify the state. Religion glorifies the state. Popular culture glorifies the state. Corporations glorify the state. So, it isn’t so much that fascists support all corporations. They support the right corporations. In this case, Disney has shown themselves to be the wrong corporation.

Why is Disney the wrong corporation? Well, they had the audacity to have a pride week and support the LGTBQ+ community. Do they really support those causes? I suppose they do on some level. At least they aren’t going to turn down their money.

The last time we went to Disney it was very important for our daughter to get a “pride donut.” Smart corporations manage to walk a tight line so that they don’t alienate any customers. So, having a pride week and selling pride donuts are good ideas while they generate revenue. They probably would celebrate conservative causes if it meant earning a little more money.

Every business whether they big or small must make a similar calculation. A small town baker must decide whether baking that cake for the gay wedding will ultimately generate more revenue or create a backlash. This is why most corporations are at least publicly non-political. Why piss off half the population?

In this case, DeSantis is aiming to steer Disney the way he wants them to go. You want your tax breaks? You want all of the power you used to enjoy? It’s time for you to play ball and govern yourselves the way we are governing. We’ll scratch your back if you scratch ours. You keep getting those breaks and we get corporate sponsorship of our right wing ideals. Chick Fa La and Hobby Lobby get it. Come on Disney, how much could a pride donut really matter? It’s time to get back on message.

When you start to look at the characteristics you find the order given is not necessarily the most logical way to think about it. Last time we took a look at nationalism and how it relates to fascism. Many of these characteristics have very close relationships with one another. When one becomes fervently for the team then it stands to reason that those not on the team become our enemies.

A couple of weeks ago the House of Representatives voted to condemn socialism in a resolution. The Senate certainly didn’t touch that, so what exactly was the point? Well, this made it easier for them to highlight representatives that did not vote for the resolution. They must be socialists so therefore they must be the enemy.

This is one of the go to moves for fascists. They identify things and concepts that people can’t define. They can’t tell you what socialism is and when they point to examples they are usually extreme and have nothing to do with the aims of people that might subscribe to. No one really wants Venezuelan socialism, but suddenly that becomes the standard for socialism. Straw men should be so lucky.

Fascists usually don’t create hate where it did not exist. They simply take the hate that is there and make it palatable. It is not good to hate to people of color. It is not good to hate those that are LGTBQ+. It is not good for men to hate women. Yet, if we can attach a sinister motive to them like BLM, CRT, or grooming drag queens then it suddenly becomes okay to hate them. After all, if they just understood their place then we wouldn’t need to hate anybody.

There has been no magic trick quite as pervasive and bewildering as the treatment of Ukraine. This is a pretty simple situation. One country invaded another sovereign nation because they want to take it over. We used to understand these things. After all, there really isn’t anything to understand. There aren’t difficult geopolitical issues here. There is no nuance.

Yet, somehow the fascist elements in our society and politics have somehow turned this around. Fascists give a head nod to other fascists after all. Somehow the Ukrainians are the horrible party. There has been talk of Volodymyr Zelenskyy being a Nazi sympathizer. So, it is okay for Russia to invade. Even if we can just muddy the waters some then it becomes easier to oppose intervention or assistance.

Of course, this isn’t to say that we definitely have to support Ukraine financially. Those that claim we can’t support everyone and should focus on our own problems aren’t necessarily fascists. The key is to listen why they say what they do. If they are worried about the fiscal burden I suppose that can defended. If they are crushing Ukraine as some kind of rogue state then you know they are horrible and are gaslighting you.

Last month, TFG’s document problem went from bad to worse.  Breaking over the weekend, multiple news organizations are reporting that TFG’s attorneys have turned over more documents marked Classified to the FBI.  Along with those documents, they also turned over a laptop and thumb drive that contained classified documents scanned by a TFG aide who worked for the Save America PAC.  There’s only one reason for a non-government employee (especially one who works for a political PAC) to be scanning classified documents onto privately owned digital media – to sell it or use it for political leverage.  Of course, TFG’s lawyers said that the scanning of those documents was “inadvertent” and that the aide wasn’t aware the documents were classified, which doesn’t pass the straight-faced test.  Of course he/she knew they were classified, but in the end, that doesn’t matter…possessing and copying ANY government document not rightfully possessed or public is illegal.

To me this is the smoking gun that shows intent.  TFG stole, hoarded, hid, moved, and lied about the government documents that were recklessly taken and then mismanaged for over a year and a half.  Now that we know that he had an aide copying those documents clearly shows what he intended (or already did) to do with those documents – use them for his own benefit.

C’mon, Merrick, how much more evidence do you need?  Let’s get on with it.

We all know that George Santos (or whatever his real name is) is a lying shitbag who has no business being anywhere near the seat of government, much less occupying a seat in the US House of Representatives.  To be fair, there are a lot of lying shitbags in Congress, but this particular shitbag is singularly accomplished in his volume of lying about everything from his ethnicity to his education to…well, just about everything.

But he’s worse than that – he’s a dog napper and abuser, and that’s where I draw the line.  We already know how he raised money to save a veteran’s dog that had cancer and then absconded with the money while bragging about “saving 3,000 dogs”.  It doesn’t stop there – in the Washington Post this morning there is a story about how Santos stole 5 Labrador Retrievers from an Amish farmer in Pennsylvania.  He promised to “wire $5,000” to him, but vanished.  He finally wrote checks to the farmer that bounced.  According to the farmer, he filed charges against Santos, but the charges were later dismissed after some kind of settlement.  Santo apparently did this to several breeders, writing over $15,000 in hot checks and then putting the dogs up for “adoption” and pocketing the money.

So, Santos screwed over a lot of people before lying his way into Congress; that makes him a shitbag and shame on those people for believing him.  But doing it to dogs?  That’s unforgivable and the last straw.  This guy has to go.

NOW.