In which I make a responsible decision, for once.

There’s a piece from last week’s Atlantic that’s been going around, about the MSU situation. It’s well-written of course, but I thought it was way, way too sentimental; I mean, if the time for thoughts and prayers is over, so too is the shocked I-never-thought-it-could-happen-here-in-this-very-special-place piece. I mean, how many times does this have to happen before we stop being shocked? And I wrote a long-ish blog about it. However, I decided #toosoon, and decided to, what’s the word, extend some grace to people who are truly suffering, and spiked it.

See? I do have a heart. And that’s why no third blog last week.

But I will save this one paragraph toward the end, more or less as I wrote it five days ago:

Every teary tribute to the Specialness and the Majesty of MSU or any other institution struck by violence or sexual assault or another tragedy puts it in a unique category, i.e., one that is so special to so many that it must be protected at all costs. Then, when someone like Larry Nassar comes along, the people charged with defending it promote the interests of the institution over those of the people who suffered in it. How many times have we seen this in the past 20 years? Many. Many-many-many.

And I also want you to see two images that received lots of play last week. Like many campuses, MSU has a boulder that students paint for various occasions. Here was the MSU boulder the day after the shootings:

And here it was a day later:

College Republicans, a raiding party up from Hillsdale or townies? You tell me.

And one final note: It turns out I had a brief encounter with one of the Grosse Pointe MSU kids who died, on New Year’s Eve, 2020. Five of us had gathered for a pod celebration at one couple’s house. Their teenage daughter was having her own celebration in the basement. There’s a bathroom down there, but it must have been occupied, because one of the boys came upstairs and very politely asked to use one on the first floor. We were having a really good time, and the host said, “Only if you can name one of the Beatles.” He waited a beat, and blurted out, “John McCarthy.” We laughed and laughed and directed him to the loo. His name was Brian, but I’ll always think of him as John McCarthy. Gone at 20 years old, our sacrifice on the altar of the Second Amendment.

But life goes on, and a new week begins. Hope yours is swell.

Posted at 10:12 am in Current events |
 

67 responses to “In which I make a responsible decision, for once.”

  1. Alan Stamm said on February 20, 2023 at 11:16 am

    That kicker is a gut punch. Hope most of us aren’t likely to be zero degrees of separation from a mass shooting victim, though that possibility seems sadly real.

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  2. Jenine said on February 20, 2023 at 11:19 am

    Oh – Brian. godamighty

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  3. ROGirl said on February 20, 2023 at 11:24 am

    He’s a better writer than Mitch Albom, but it has the same oleaginous characteristics

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  4. Jeff Borden said on February 20, 2023 at 11:33 am

    Sometimes I picture the amazing image from the silent film “Metropolis,” where faceless workers are fed into an enormous machine, which is depicted as human sacrifice to the company. We do the same thing with our citizens by feeding them into the enormous killing machine made up of the 400 million or so firearms in this wacky nation of ours. Clearly, it is a small price to pay for Cletus to carry his AR-15 to Dunkin’ Donuts. Sorry, kid, but you got your 20 years on this earth and that’s plenty.

    Meanwhile, the surprise visit by Joe Biden to Kyiv has the usual chorus of flying monkeys shrieking about how he favors Ukraine over our souther border, the train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, etc. Or, as the trashy loudmouth CrossFit loon from northwest Georgia says, “America last.” Jesus, I despise these people.

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  5. Mark P said on February 20, 2023 at 12:24 pm

    MTG is so bad she’s off the scale. She’s like the offspring of T***p and a rabid hyena. I can’t think about her without thinking of Confederate flags and pickup trucks filled with empty PBR beer cans, the ones not thrown at mailboxes as they drove by. If she weren’t in Congress she would be talking loud about Mexicans in the checkout at Walmart. Her photo is in the dictionary at the entry for “white trash.” I’m on her email list. I asked that they remove me, but of course they didn’t.

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  6. Suzanne said on February 20, 2023 at 12:47 pm

    I am well on my way to sheer hate for the second amendment types. When I enter a store, I look for the exits. Last week, we went out to eat to celebrate that it’s been a year since my cancer diagnosis. Although I am not completely out of the woods yet, (it’s cancer so I never will be), I am still around to celebrate so we did, but I picked a seat facing the entrance as is my new habit, so I could see if some lunatic came in with a gun. The thought of visiting a mall or any other large area where people gather brings anxiety. Is an armed madman out there? Could be. And half of my fellow countrymen don’t see a problem with that.

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  7. Deborah said on February 20, 2023 at 1:25 pm

    I’m going to try to be optimistic about this, maybe the fewer degrees of separation there are between regular citizens and victims of gun violence the tipping point may arrive and something will be done about it. That seems to be what happened to change the minds of many conservatives when they realized they had LGBTQ friends and family members that they loved and respected. The tides turned.

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  8. Jeff Borden said on February 20, 2023 at 1:36 pm

    Deborah,

    I wish I could share your hopes for a mindset change, but consider Rep. Steve Scalise, the Republican representative from Louisiana who is the majority leader in the House. In 2017, he was seriously wounded by a gun nut who shot at QOPers practicing for a Congressional baseball game. His wound required numerous surgeries and a lengthy period of recovery. His view on guns in this violent nation of ours remains unchanged. Ammosexuals see guns as their holy sacrament and they are never going to turn away.

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  9. alex said on February 20, 2023 at 3:22 pm

    Hell, the Brady organization is named for the man who took one for the Gipper, and that ungrateful sumbitch refused to endorse Sarah Brady’s efforts.

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  10. Dorothy said on February 20, 2023 at 4:40 pm

    Twenty-three years ago I knew someone who was killed in my hometown by an unbalanced man with a gun. It’s the only time I can think of where I had a connection to a victim of a shooting like that. The man who was killed was a former priest who was married to the mother of some girls who were very close friends with two of my younger sisters. I’m going to see those two women later this weekend when we all attend the same national quilt show in Atlanta. Their whole family loved Joe very, very much and his death was quite a shock. These days I’m sure people feel shocked when someone they know is shot like this, but honestly? Are any of us surprised anymore? Sometimes it just feels inevitable that all of us are going to have a connection to a victim.

    https://old.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20000224wilkshoot1.asp

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  11. Julie Robinson said on February 20, 2023 at 4:50 pm

    Well, our little resistance group has swelled to 228 members in just two weeks, and since the wish list was posted 60 banned books have been ordered. There are some good synergies happening with a couple of other groups and people are energized. *raises fist in air*

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  12. Sherri said on February 20, 2023 at 5:32 pm

    When I was in junior high, a man with a gun kidnapped the owner of a liquor store in my town and ended up killing the owner and himself. It was a huge deal, the owner of the liquor store was from a family with deep ties in the town. My parents had gone to high school with him and his wife, and his wife taught at the high school. His son and the killer’s son both attended the same school, and did for many years, which I thought always had to be weird for both of them.

    In high school, I had the wife for a class, and her sister (small town, I also had a teacher who had taught my mother and a teacher who had taught my aunt), and tutored the son in math. The wife talked openly about it, and still carried her husband’s driver license with blood stains on it.

    The really sad part is that the son of the killer lost his mother to suicide a few years later.

    I also had a high school classmate who was shot and killed not long after we graduated from high school by another high school classmate. Not the only classmate on classmate murder from my class, but the other murderer didn’t use a gun.

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  13. Jeff Borden said on February 20, 2023 at 5:34 pm

    Julie,
    If you are fundraising, please post a link and I’ll donate. DeathSantis needs to be stopped. This morning, “Meatball Ron” attacked Biden’s visit to Kyiv, criticized aid to Ukraine and declared Russia poses no threat to other European nations. He’s not fit for the White House, but that’s no surprise for the QOP these days.

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  14. BigHank53 said on February 20, 2023 at 6:40 pm

    I only knew two of the victims at Virginia Tech, and only as acquaintances. One of my co-workers went to three funerals that week; was pallbearer at one. He was a wreck.

    If my spouse hadn’t dropped out of her grad program, there would have been an excellent chance she’d have been locked in Patton Hall with the killer that day.

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  15. Mark P said on February 20, 2023 at 7:06 pm

    I just saw that Marjorie Taylor Greene (Moron-Ga) is calling for a “national divorce” of red states from blue states. I wonder how she characterizes her home state of Georgia, since Georgia went for Biden and Warnock in 2022. Maybe she will want a divorce of her district from the rest of the state. That would be ok with me if they paid fair market for my house so I could move out.

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  16. Julie Robinson said on February 20, 2023 at 7:38 pm

    Jeff B, we don’t have a mechanism to receive money, but we do have a wish list on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/5AD7RX8CPISM?ref_=wl_share&fbclid=IwAR3aPttMBSFIeSC2pJ0SMmfe8KWTugCOZodK4piFWy1KvzBxUi2zfT4lddw. We hope to set up something with a local bookstore or with the group that beneifts independent booksellers, but we are still in our infancy.

    The first batch of books arrived today and Sarah is perusing them as I type.

    I should add that my mother spends most mornings reading the newspaper, which always contains at least two DeSantis stories that outrage her. It’s really good for getting the blood circulating around her body.

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  17. LAMary said on February 21, 2023 at 12:32 am

    I knew two young men, one 18 years old and the other 24, who committed suicide with guns. This is not a rare occurrence these days.

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  18. Dexter Friend said on February 21, 2023 at 2:55 am

    Columbine was the first time I felt really affected with rage and hopelessness; now mass shootings in some places don’t make the news nationally. I have no connections to East Lansing but as a sports fan attending games there a few times, although I had friends years ago at work who had transferred into our Indiana plant when Toledo Dana closed, and several of their kids were at MSU then. This one was close enough to bring out the old rage again. They have problems there but when the leaves turn and the water is rushing in the river, it surely is a pretty place.
    This is a news item that is blowing up across the nation: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/20/politics/kristina-karamo-michigan-gop-chair/index.html

    These election deniers have their own base and they are here to stay…forever.

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  19. Deborah said on February 21, 2023 at 10:49 am

    I only know one guy personally who died by a gun shot, it was a suicide. He was LB’s godfather, nicest guy, would have never guessed he would ever do anything like that. He drove to the police station and shot himself in his car.

    Oh wait I just remembered when we lived in St. Louis, a woman who lived across the street from us shot and killed her boyfriend while he was beating her. He was a gigantic man, he wouldn’t fit on the stretcher when the ambulance came, they had to carry him out on a bloody quilt. There were a couple of other people in that neighborhood who got shot in different incidents but didn’t die, both were teenagers.

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  20. jcburns said on February 21, 2023 at 2:51 pm

    I’m going to veer away from people we know killed by guns and put this link out here:

    Early morning university classes are associated with impaired sleep and academic performance

    …this really explains a lot as far as my academic work was concerned.

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  21. Jeff Borden said on February 21, 2023 at 3:39 pm

    WTF?

    House Speaker Kevin McEunuch, R-Worthless, has turned over ALL video of the Jan. 6 insurrection to Putin’s poodle, Tucker McNear Swanson Carlson. What gives him the right to give these images to a committed propagandist?

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  22. FDChief said on February 21, 2023 at 4:31 pm

    Re: the gunlickers rock-response…

    The WW2 author SLA Marshall famously wrote that infantry in action was characterized by a small number of the soldiers who actually fired their individual weapons at all (the number he cited was something like 15-25%) when they had an enemy visible to shoot at. That, in turn, suggests that “carry on campus” would – given the lack of training by the carriers and the enormous “first mover” advantage of the nutter-shooter – mean that the likelihood that those hardy frontiersmen would shoot themselves by accident, some hapless bystander (either by accident or through poor marksmanship), or hit nothing at all, while complicating the hell out of the scene for the coppers by presenting multiple armed individuals, any one of which might be the nutter.

    Now…Marshall’s work is highly, highly flawed. But the work of other individual researchers who have looked at soldiers under fire suggests that it is often difficult for even a trained troop, under the stress of fear and danger, to use a firearm effectively. Now imagine a completely untrained person, armed not with a rifle but a handgun that is wildly inaccurate outside a dozen yards or so, showing up where some lunatic is firing into the brown with little or no interest in surviving the event. How is that likely to “help”?

    That the ammosexuals even thought that was a valid response to this crime suggests how wildly inane their ideas are.

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  23. David C said on February 21, 2023 at 5:23 pm

    Shannon Watts of Mom’s Demand Action said the police hit their targets less than 30% of the time. Politifact had to bend itself into pretzels to say it wasn’t completely true because they found a couple of police departments who obviously lied and said their officers hit their targets 100% of the time.

    https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/may/25/shannon-watts/do-more-7-10-police-bullets-miss-their-mark-gun-co/

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  24. alex said on February 21, 2023 at 6:22 pm

    I know a woman who committed suicide by gun. She had an abusive husband who wouldn’t let us be friends anymore. He refused to believe that I was gay. He thought it was just a ruse and that we were fucking. He accused her of fucking anyone and everyone so that he could isolate her from her friends.

    Too bad there was a gun lying around their house. One night when she was drinking and he got up in her face to accuse her of fucking around, she picked up the gun and said “Oh yeah? Well fuck you, motherfucker!” and she blew her brains out into his fucking face. In front of his daughters from his previous marriages.

    So guns just aren’t a good thing to have sitting around. Wouldn’t have one in my house.

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  25. Mark P said on February 21, 2023 at 6:26 pm

    Politifact lost my trust when they tried to help T***p weasel out of his statement that women should be punished for having an abortion.

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  26. Sherri said on February 21, 2023 at 6:30 pm

    Russia isn’t bringing its A misinformation game to Finland. The Russian trolls trying to create anti-NATO feeling on Twitter used automatic translation tools to try and post “NATO will not save Finland” in Finnish, but didn’t realize that Finnish has more than one word for save. What they posted instead was that NATO will not save Finland, as in save a recording, rather than save as in rescue.

    You’d think they’d be able to do better considering they share a border with Finland.

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  27. Deborah said on February 21, 2023 at 10:19 pm

    We ditched Sedona and are spending the night in Flagstaff because there’s a major wind and snow storm coming. Tomorrow on our way back to NM from Southern California will not be fun. Traveling on this trip has been the pits. Snow, wind, dust storms you name it have happened since we left Santa Fe last Tuesday. I will be biting my fingernails tomorrow with 50-70mph gusts expected and lots of blowing snow.

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  28. Dexter Friend said on February 22, 2023 at 1:42 am

    FD Chief: A few years back there was an onslaught of party store holdups near the U of Toledo campus. One owner took matters into his own hands, and posted himself in a high cubby , armed with a rifle. In a matter of days he acted and killed a robber and was applauded and exonerated from any prosecution. He was a native of Syria and had served in the armed services as a young man.
    I believe your statistics that many war veterans never shot at a visible human target. As I wrote the other day, I never fired a pistol in Vietnam, and I fired very few rifle rounds from an AK-47 my buddy bought on the black market because we didn’t even have access to M-16s. I believe most Vietnam vets believed they may have had difficulty killing another human before they were trained and commanded to do just that, and then some became bloodthirsty and later had to deal with all that emotionally. Nobody in my unit of medics ever sighted a human target and fired, obviously, because we had no M-16s. Had I ever made it to my original destination (which were cancelled because of transpo issues) of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade and been issued weapons and sent to field ops…this would be a different post here. I never asked myself would I have killed a soldier in battle. It’s a moot point.

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  29. Dexter Friend said on February 22, 2023 at 3:17 am

    mea culpa of an asshole

    https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/george-santos-admits-i-ve-been-a-terrible-liar-17796790.php

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  30. Sherri said on February 22, 2023 at 4:10 am

    I want to introduce everyone to Nate Oats. Nate Oats is a good Christian man, who played high school basketball at a Christian high school and college basketball at a Christian college. He became a high school coach, and was successful enough to get a job as an assistant at a D1 college, then the head job when the head coach left for a bigger program.

    Soon our coach is the head coach in the SEC, taking the University of Alabama basketball team to heights not reached in decades. Our coach still claims to read the Bible daily and value character in his players, even as his best player is a freshman who will be a top five pick in the NBA draft in a few months.

    But maybe he missed something in all that Bible reading, because a month ago, one of his players who was not playing because of an injury was out on the town bar-hopping with a friend. There was too much alcohol involved, the friend hit on a woman, the woman’s boyfriend objected, and the injured player texted his star teammate to bring him his gun.

    The star player hopped in his car and brought the gun, parking his car to block the car that the woman and her boyfriend were in. Another teammate parked his car behind. Star teammate told injured teammate where the gun was, and injured teammate gave the gun to his friend.

    Many shots were fired. There is a dispute over which side shot first, but there is no dispute that the 23 year old woman was killed.

    But here’s the thing. The police have charged the injured player and his friend with capital murder, but say the other teammates, including the star who bought the gun to the scene, are just witnesses and broke no law. The University of Alabama has known about this for a month, but star player has faced no discipline.

    And today, good Christian Nate Oats, the coach who believes in molding young men of good character, said of his star player’s actions that he “was just at the wrong spot at the wrong time.”

    I guess the gun was too.
    Oh, and here’s the kicker; when asked who were among the people Coach Oats had talked with to help advise him in this situation, Oats named Ray Lewis. Ray Lewis, who covered up a murder, hiding his blood-soaked clothes, and eventually agreeing to an obstruction of justice charge and throwing his friends under the bus for the murder (they were acquitted).

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  31. alex said on February 22, 2023 at 7:15 am

    Sherri, it’s not just Christianity that gets used for self-serving purposes or to reinforce unjust power structures.

    It happens even in the one religion whose shit supposedly doesn’t stink: https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/02/what-it-was-like-to-be-raised-by-american-buddhists.html

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  32. Jeff Gill said on February 22, 2023 at 7:45 am

    JC, there’s also a study that I’m too groggy and in a hurry to hunt up showing how early start times impair high school attendance and outcomes. When it came out, I did a quick chart for our ten county school districts on average attendance rates for high school buildings only and the start time, and there was a clear correlation — the earlier the start time, the worse the attendance/absence figures, the latest two having the best in the county. I shared it with the next month’s superintendent’s meeting; it was read, reviewed, and received without comment.

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  33. Dorothy said on February 22, 2023 at 8:03 am

    Has anyone else seen the hot mess known as the jury foreperson (Emily Kohrs) from the Georgia grand jury in the voter interference case overseen by Fahni Willis? I’m seeing stuff on Twitter about her and people are saying she’s going to taint the hell out of the jury pool and ruin this case. How is she allowed to do this?!

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  34. Suzanne said on February 22, 2023 at 8:44 am

    Alex, that Buddhist article is interesting. I once worked at a place where the CEO identified as a Zen Buddhist but humility seemed to not be part of his belief system. He drove a Miata convertible with a gold Buddha proudly affixed to the rear bumper and was, I think, on his 3rd wife. He didn’t do much for the organization that any of us could tell, either, but he got paid handsomely.

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  35. FDChief said on February 22, 2023 at 8:49 am

    Dexter: re: your bodega sniper – apples/oranges. To lay in ambush is a presupposition that you’ll fire. I’m a bit shocked he didn’t at least get charged; in most states it’s flat-out illegal to set a man-trap, which is in effect what he did. He was defending his “castle” so not exactly unjustified, but given HOW he did it? Pretty sketchy.

    Most GIs I know/knew weren’t squeamish about killing. It was the difficulty applying what seemed simple and straightforward in training to a time and place where the targets shot back. It’s a (fortunately) rare human being that can be cool and effective the first time under fire, and I’m not sure the the rest of us really want people out there with 1) that sort of reaction to danger who are also on 2) the almost-paranoiac-level of alertness you’d need to respond quickly and accurately to a nutter shooting.

    So the simple answer is still the best one; make it harder to kill. Make the nutters use a knife or an axe. Firearms make it waaayyyyy too easy.

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  36. Mark P said on February 22, 2023 at 10:02 am

    Dorothy, where did you see something about Kohrs? CNN has her saying she wants and expects indictments, and hinted that T***p will be indicted, but I didn’t see anything about tainting the jury pool. Is it possible some commentator said that?

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  37. Jenine said on February 22, 2023 at 10:38 am

    Really enjoyed this story from twitter
    “just learned about the oakland buddha statue, which was installed by a (non-buddhist) resident after being annoyed by the illegal dumping in the area…

    dumping stopped, neighbors started using it as a shrine, & as of 2014, “criminal activity” in the area dropped by 82% lmfao”

    More on the Oakland Buddha

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  38. Dorothy said on February 22, 2023 at 10:40 am

    As I said, Mark, I saw comments on Twitter about her possibly tainting the jury pool. It’s just speculation. I imagine if she was doing anything legally wrong she would have been reigned in by Ms. Willis or others who work for her. MSNBC had info about it yesterday, when I watched Deadline:White House at 4 PM. No one on MSNBC said anything about jury issues.

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  39. Dorothy said on February 22, 2023 at 11:05 am

    Mark look for Bradley P Moss on Twitter. That’s where I saw the mention about jury tainting.

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  40. Mark P said on February 22, 2023 at 11:30 am

    Based on what I saw of Kohr’s comments, I would say it was probably unwise to talk about it, but if saying someone will or should be indicted taints the jury pool, why wouldn’t an actual indictment do so? I don’t do Twitter, so I didn’t read Moss’s comments, but I suspect pearl clutching might be involved.

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  41. Deborah said on February 22, 2023 at 11:45 am

    We are stuck in Flagstaff AZ at a Hampton Inn where we checked in yesterday evening. It’s snowing and blowing, 30mph sustained winds and gusts up to 70mph they say. Interstate 40 is closed. I’m actually happy to be stuck in the hotel than trying to drive in this. If we had spent the night in Winslow instead of Flagstaff, only about 45 minutes east we would be in a lot better shape for driving. Oh well nothing to do about it now.

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  42. Scout said on February 22, 2023 at 11:57 am

    Bradley Moss just tweeted this: https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1628437940853477376?s=20

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  43. Suzanne said on February 22, 2023 at 11:58 am

    Oh the GOP, always able to look on the upside of tragedy: “Wasilla Republican Rep. David Eastman sparked outrage online after asking whether there could be economic benefits from the death of abused children.”
    We used to call this eugenics.

    https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2023/02/21/rep-eastman-sparks-outrage-after-asking-about-the-potential-economic-benefits-of-the-deaths-of-abused-alaska-children/

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  44. David C said on February 22, 2023 at 12:47 pm

    Everyone I’ve heard this morning talking about Kohrs is saying they’re not concerned bout what she said harming the prosecution. They say their biggest concern is her being doxxed and threatened as many others involved in this have been.

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  45. Mark P said on February 22, 2023 at 5:19 pm

    I want to state in the most emphatic terms possible that Kohl maybe shouldn’t have talked about the special grand jury. And I want to say about Moss’s tweet that we in the world of rational thinking consider it overblown, not to say obscenely stupid, ill-advised and inappropriate. I do not know what’s eating him, but I think he might consider consulting a proctologist about his vision problem.

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  46. LAMary said on February 22, 2023 at 8:40 pm

    My initial foray into Twitter put me off and I haven’t been back much since then. I think it’s probably worse now than when I decided it was a fetid swamp.

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  47. FDChief said on February 22, 2023 at 9:40 pm

    Dexter: Your Syrian sniper is pretty much the exception that proofs the rule. Laying in ambush is prima facie evidence that you intend to shoot. That he did, and was not prosecuted is curious, since he had for all intents and purposes set a “man-trap” that is nearly universally illegal in the states.

    As I said; the Marshall work is now considered deeply flawed, but the experience of many GIs suggests that it’s difficult to respond quickly and lethally when under fire for the first (or, sometimes the second, or the third…) time. Firearm combat is confusing; loud, chaotic, and (obviously) frightening. It’s no disrespect to the cherries who freeze (or fire wild, or just panic) when they’re shot over. Training only takes you so far.

    And that’s a GI who, at least in theory, has been trained for weeks to expect that combat stress and react appropriately. Turn that person into some Rambo wanna-be who has never been anywhere but the local handgun range or done anything but play Call of Duty.

    So…again, no. The notion that “more guns = more security” is just an ammosexual fap fantasy. Period.

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  48. MarkH said on February 23, 2023 at 12:11 am

    Mark P @43 makes the understatement of today’s thread. Maybe some of you have not seen Ms. Kohrs’ interview, especially the CNN version. I don’t know how Ms. Bolduan kept a straight face, refrained from shutting her down early, or whatever (okay, ratings…). That she had no business going public need not be stated, but how did she get allowed on this grand jury, let alone get elected foreperson? Her cringeworthy preening here is more of an audition, for something. This may not be jury tainting, but you can be sure, as legal TV talking heads have said, the MAGA machines are gearing up their 100 mph freight trains for a run at the case, muddying it all up. Have a look here.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qyEG7Wr7tY

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  49. Mark P said on February 23, 2023 at 12:28 am

    The thing about the special grand jury is that it has already exercised the full extent of its power by — Wait for it! — issuing a report. That’s it. That’s all they could do. Maybe they recommend an indictment and maybe they don’t, but so what? A regular grand jury has to investigate and decide whether to issue actual indictments. There is probably some interesting stuff in the report, but, again, so what? We all say interesting stuff here with as much impact on the course of justice. So worrying about what someone says about the special grand jury is pointless. The regular grand jury is all that matters.

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  50. Dexter Friend said on February 23, 2023 at 3:25 am

    All the Big Three MSNBC shows covered Kohrs. I have never seen such a spectacle in a one-on-one interview with geese honking throughout the interview. It was quite interesting, with Kohrs getting her 15 minutes+ and just thoroughly enjoying herself. 30 years old, had never heard of the vote-demand by Trump, has never voted even for dog catcher let alone a presidential candidate. A true ostrich-head in sand type, who volunteered as jury forewoman, obviously for the sheer excitement.
    Blaine Alexander kept asking her if any names were on the indictment sheet and she said some, but probably most “my dad wouldn’t know”. If she is so ignorant about politics in general, how the fuck would she know ANYbody involved. Oh, she never heard of the Trump vote call to Georgia, but she was “so thrilled” to shake Rudy’s hand. Fuckin-OW!

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  51. ROGirl said on February 23, 2023 at 9:28 am

    Did she have advisers? She blitzed the media pretty thoroughly in one day, I find it hard to believe she would do that without at least talking with someone. A lawyer would have told her not to do it

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  52. Deborah said on February 23, 2023 at 10:52 am

    Exactly what I was thinking ROGirl, if she’s so uninformed how did she know how to get set up with the media? Makes you wonder.

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  53. MarkH said on February 23, 2023 at 12:01 pm

    Mark P., thanks for the heads-up about a special grand jury vs. a regular grand jury. This difference explains why there is less risk to the prosecution’s case due to Ms. Kohr’s theatrics. While it can subpoena the target, in this case Trump, the special grand jury only issues recommendations, not indictments.

    This AP article goes into further detail.

    https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-atlanta-georgia-presidential-elections-elections-a702f2ff710ef59dfa7f3215b233102b

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  54. ROGirl said on February 23, 2023 at 2:01 pm

    I decided to work from home today because of the ice storm, and my power, as it inevitably does in these situations, went out around 11:45.

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  55. Sherri said on February 23, 2023 at 2:25 pm

    Also remember that the US does not have a legal system, it has a myriad of legal systems. The specifics of how grand juries operate in one state can be different from state to state. There is a federal system, different state systems, and within states, different county systems. Anybody pontificating about what someone did incorrectly who isn’t local probably is wrong.

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  56. Scout said on February 23, 2023 at 2:33 pm

    I loved Twitter before Elmo Skum took over because I could get news in real time from a variety of journalists and media accounts I follow. Now the algorithm provides little but doom scroll outrage 24/7 and my mental health cannot handle more than a quick check in once a day. The slim majority in the House has put me right back into feeling hopeless about the direction our country is headed. How is it possible that a majority with that slim a margin is able to completely turn decency on its head and allow the likes of Empty Greene to be the face of their toxic waste dump of a party? I read HCR in the morning to learn the salient reports of the previous day and of course there is always informative discussion here. Otherwise I’ve had to mostly check out. Republicans have destroyed honesty, decency and common sense and I don’t know if we can ever get those things back.

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  57. Jeff Borden said on February 23, 2023 at 2:35 pm

    I had the unfortunate opportunity to be a jury foreman in a civil case because I showed up for court in a suit and tie. (My hope was being dismissed and able to go right on into the office.) Clearly, my attire gave me standing. It was a silly, stupid case involving a traffic accident in a private parking lot with $3,000 in damages. So, 12 people and all the court personnel spent two days listening to arguments and looking at drawings. We received free sandwiches for lunch and were paid $17.50 per day. Justice, baby!

    It’s high time that orange blob took the fall. Indict the S.O.B. and then watch as he runs for preznit as a pathetic martyr pursued a woke Javerts and transgender mobs. Given the general levels of abject stupidity and inability to reason within our borders, the blob would still get tens of millions of votes.

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  58. susan said on February 23, 2023 at 3:16 pm

    Charlie Pierce knows this era as the Age of Morons. He’s correct, as usual.

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  59. Scout said on February 23, 2023 at 3:18 pm

    Funny, I stumbled on this right after I wrote my post above, and it pretty much summarizes my general feelings.

    “So much of it is fucking trivial, for one — the individual incidents, to clarify, not the overall intent to strip everyone but white dudes of their rights — and all of it is “I said or did something shitty, now you have to respond, so I can play my next card.” Engaging in that level of rhetorical dishonesty for anything more than the length of a tweet feels icky, and even engaging in it for that long is fast losing its appeal.”

    &

    “(Also: I have less interest in being snarky about politics these days, which cuts down the amount I write about it here, too. It used to be easy to be snarky about politics! But then we had an attempted coup and the right leaned really hard into actually taking away the rights of American citizens. I don’t know, I feel less inclined to make funny quips about all of that. You can think of it as a personal failure if you like.)”

    https://whatever.scalzi.com/2023/02/13/i-think-ive-finally-figured-out-why-i-write-about-politics-here-rather-less-than-i-used-to/

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  60. susan said on February 23, 2023 at 3:19 pm

    And how about that Scott Adams, Proud to be a White Racist. Jeebus. Why is this never-has-been-funny-a$$hole in syndication? He should just be a has-been.

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  61. Jeff Borden said on February 23, 2023 at 3:48 pm

    Scott Adams has been an asshole since the last time “Dilbert” was funny.

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  62. ROGirl said on February 23, 2023 at 4:05 pm

    Individual instances are trivial, but they are all being carried out for a purpose. They’ve disrupted the world as we knew it to reshape it to serve their ends. Nothing will stop them.

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  63. Mark P said on February 23, 2023 at 5:14 pm

    Not to change the subject, but the mention of Elon Musk reminded me that I just got a notice that our Starlink internet service is going up to $120 a month. It was advertised at $100 a month, but was $110 by the time we got it. It was the only real choice we had for reasonably high-speed internet. Now I’m wondering if one of the 5G cellular services might suffice at $50 a month. I have always hated giving money to Musk, but Starlink was the first possibility of getting decent speed since we moved up to the mountain in 2005.

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  64. Brandon said on February 23, 2023 at 5:43 pm

    It happens even in the one religion whose shit supposedly doesn’t stink

    “Waking Up to Racism:
    Dharma, Diversity, and Race,” by bell hooks, Tricycle, Fall 1994.

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  65. Jeff Gill said on February 23, 2023 at 8:54 pm

    The problem with most religions is their being made up of people. Charles Spurgeon said in 1888 “If I had never joined a church till I had found one that was perfect, I should never have joined one at all; and the moment I did join it, if I had found one, I should have spoiled it, for it would not have been a perfect church after I had become a member of it.” Or Groucho Marx about associations in general: “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”

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  66. Dexter Friend said on February 24, 2023 at 3:06 am

    Do not blame Kohrs; the judge set all jurors free to discuss the case. Only federal grand juries insist on a gag rule for jurors.
    Eric Swalwell and others were on with Lawrence O’Donnell explaining this.

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  67. FDChief said on February 24, 2023 at 10:09 am

    The behavior of the Buddhist leaders of Sri Lanka should put paid to any illusions about the inherent pacifism of the religion.

    Or any religion, for that matter. A Jewish friend once remarked that his illusions of modern Judaism as thoughtful and nonviolent had been destroyed by the occupied territories. “Here I thought we’d shed all the old violent sectarian baggage through generations of being on the receiving end and instead it was just that we’d lacked to opportunity to dish it out…”

    So I’m guessing that there’s probably not an organized religion that lacks the probability of sectarian violence under the right conditions.

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