And as the weekend winds up here in November 2017 in the year of our Lord, 26 people are dead in yet another mass shooting, this one in a church; a U.S. senator is nursing five cracked ribs after an assault by a neighbor; and the second season of “Stranger Things” is a disappointment.
However, it serves as a pretty good distraction from the news of the day, so there’s that.
How was your weekend? Cool, then warm and rainy here. Miss Kitty came home for a couple days. We ate tacos. I went to Windsor. That was about it. It was a good weekend to be outer-directed, to turn one’s attention to, say, Hawaii:
Protesters in Hawaii mocked Donald Trump with signs that said “welcome to Kenya” as the President touched down on the first leg of his Asia-Pacific tour.
It’s good someone can keep a sense of humor at times like this. Probably helps to be in a place with such nice weather all the time. Has there been a president in anyone’s memory so often mocked like this? Nixon, maybe, but nothing like Trump. The few people I know who admit voting for him are quiet these days; the only rigorous defense I see anymore comes from the batshit cheering sections, and even there the air seems to be leaking from the balloon.
Or we can turn to London, last stop on earth before Adnan Khashoggi departed for Hell:
Adnan Khashoggi, the flamboyant Saudi arms trader who rose to spectacular wealth in the 1970s and 1980s while treating the world to displays of decadence breathtaking even by the standards of that era, died on Tuesday in London. He was 81.
…Mr. Khashoggi had several brushes with the law but was never convicted of a crime. He was involved in many of his era’s highest-profile scandals, including Iran-contra and the Marcos family’s effort to spirit money out of the Philippines.
I can never hear his name, even in my head, without hearing it in Robin Leach’s voice, as Ad-nan Hah-shogi was constantly popping into “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” and my old buddy Tarek did a killer Robin Leach impersonation.
Or we can look to home, where Eastern Standard time returned right on schedule, and now it’s dark as hell early, which makes a mass shooting and everything else going on this weekend probably something we just deserve.
So while we wait for news to come in on the latest mass killer, let’s try to have a good start to the week.
alex said on November 5, 2017 at 10:13 pm
Rand Paul getting his ass kicked by a neighbor really lightens my mood on this otherwise dreadful day. Hope it’s a trend.
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Mark P said on November 5, 2017 at 10:23 pm
I wonder how long it will take for all of us here in the US to finally realize that we are all insane? It’s the only possible reason that we don’t do anything about gun violence but pray for the victims.
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Heather said on November 5, 2017 at 11:25 pm
Aw, I liked the second season of Stranger Things. I admit it had its flaws. Like, what was the point of Billy and Max?
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adrianne said on November 6, 2017 at 7:05 am
Turns out that Devin Kelley liked to beat up his wife and child and torture animals. Textbook case of domestic terrorist. But Repubs will say, oh, he was mentally ill. He can be both, you know.
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coozledad said on November 6, 2017 at 7:32 am
Nothing says we’re living in the asshole of the Western world like having to worry about being shot in a public place. We’re well into the war of all against all, now, all because of white fear.
You know something about whites when they get really, really scared?
They’re highly efficient killers of their families, communities and selves.
My advice for people who don’t identify as “of European extraction”? Watch out for old shit drawers. They’re only operating at the fringe of consciousness. To believe what they believe, they have to be sleepwalking through a mass hallucination composed of equal parts hysterical blindness and paranoid schizophrenia.
It is a thoroughly fucked up demographic.
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Peter said on November 6, 2017 at 9:08 am
You know, it isn’t about the guns; if we had extreme vetting for immigrants, yesterday’s mass shooting wouldn’t have happened.
EDIT: Wait, he’s not an illegal immigrant? Well, what were the odds…
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Icarus said on November 6, 2017 at 9:14 am
It’s cool guys….a white guy did it. Every now and then the Tree of Liberty needs to be watered with the blood of our first graders, our country music fans, Batman movie fans, and so many others. A Muslim in NY tho…… we’re going to shut that down.
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Deborah said on November 6, 2017 at 9:20 am
Maybe the places that sell the guns to the crazies should face charges. They should at least be sued by victim’s families. I read that this shooter “checked the box” on his form when he bought one of his guns that said he didn’t have disqualifying circumstances. This after he spent time for assaulting his wife and child and being discharged from military service. HE checked a box, and they let him buy the gun. People are starting to sue bars that let drunk drivers have another drink before they go out and kill someone. And bars lose their licenses when they sell to minors, same thing should happen to gun shops when they sell guns to people who let their toddlers have access to a gun or things like that. There are so many things that can be done to stop this abuse of the “right” to own a gun. But as usual, nothing will happen except thoughts and prayers, and we see how well that’s working.
Meanwhile our glorious leader is in Asia making one stupid statement after the other. What a maroon.
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Diane said on November 6, 2017 at 10:00 am
Per CNN, “as the shooter left the Church, a local resident used his own rifle to engage him” whatever that means. So don’t ya know now, you should be taking your gun to Church! We will never near the end of that argument now.
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Bitter Scribe said on November 6, 2017 at 10:38 am
I found this passage on the NBC News site remarkable:
Did Abbott just admit the possibility that gun laws in this country might need tightening? I never heard any right-winger come close to that before.
Oh well. This fits the pattern of conservatives becoming very interested in things like parental leave or sexual harassment as soon as they have a baby or get harassed. (See: Kelly, Megyn)
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Sherri said on November 6, 2017 at 11:06 am
No, Bitter, Abbott didn’t admit that. According to NRA dogma, that the shooter bought a gun despite it being illegal for him to do so is just an indication that gun laws are pointless. You know, if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
With this logic, I’m not sure why we have any laws, but there you go.
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beb said on November 6, 2017 at 11:13 am
It was overcast during the weekend that it felt like night all day long. I just wanted to stay in bed and sleep the day away. The more so to avoid waking up to another mass murder. The Rs (NRC/NRA…they’re interchangeable.) are saying this is a mental health issue not a gun issue. It’s true, mentally ill people with guns are the problem. So we should pass laws barring people with mental health issues from possessing guns. But… was it Congress or Trump who recently removed barriers for the mentally ill to get guns. What we need is a law requiring anyone wanting to buy a gun to be psychoanalyzed to make sure they won’t go crazy and kill people. And reanalyzed every five years to continue to own guns….
On the whole it would be simpler to say only people who have a need to own a gun should be allowed to own a gun. After all the original intent of the second amendment concerned muzzle loading guns. So lets exempt those and ban everything else.
Speaking of that festering boil on the ass of humanity, I don’t know why anyone would let him out of the country, especially for a diplomatic tour of the far east. A day doesn’t go by when Little Boots proves again that he’s dumber than a fifth grader. The trip has barely begun and Trump has already suggested that Japanese car makers should build their cars in America. Maybe Trump doesn’t believe that Tennessee is part of the United States…
To end on an upbeat note, my wife and I saw the musical “Kinky Boots” at the Fox on Saturday. Based on the movie of the same name is about a failing shoe factory finding new life making erotic shoes for transvestites. Words by Harvey Fierstein and lyrics and music by Cyndie Lauper. It was toe-tapping fun.
The theater is pretty awesome in itself. It was one of those 20’s movie palaces designed in what can best be described as Persian/Burmese excess. Trump would love it — gold painted plaster everywhere. It’s huge, was restored a couple decades ago and just a sight for sore eyes.
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beb said on November 6, 2017 at 11:26 am
I want to add something before Basset feels all picked on again. I don’t have a problem with hunters. Hunting is well regulated (or it used to be…) There were limits to how many rounds you could have in a gun, for example. After all if you can’t kill a deer with your first shot you’re not likely to see it to take a second shot. It’s the people with semi-automatic weapons, 50 round clips and bump stocks that are the problem. Hunters are no the problem. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a mass gunman ever described as “an avid hunter.”
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jcburns said on November 6, 2017 at 11:42 am
Well said, Beb. I think we’d have more success at making a change if somehow the concept of a hunter could be politically separated from the concept of “a gun nut hoarding semiautomatic weapons.”
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Jeff Borden said on November 6, 2017 at 11:47 am
Remember the shock and horror of Columbine waaaaaaay back in 1999? The latest mass shooting just knocked it out of the top ten in American mass shooting murders because only 13 students and teachers –plus the two fuck weasel shooters who killed themselves– just wasn’t enough to remain competitive.
Of course, I should note that in my beloved Chicago, we’ll kill off 26 people in the span of two or three weeks. And it won’t be automatic weapons, but the fucking handguns sold like candy at suburban gun shops and Indiana.
“Violence is as American as cherry pie.” — H. Rap Brown
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Mark P said on November 6, 2017 at 11:49 am
beb @12. Or Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama.
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Scout said on November 6, 2017 at 12:02 pm
Another 20 people dead. This is practically a daily occurrence. It’s just a darn shame there’s nothing that could be done to prevent this in the future. Thoughts and prayers it is.
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Deborah said on November 6, 2017 at 12:12 pm
They’re saying on places like CNN that the latest shooter was mad at his mother-in-law who went to that Baptist church but wasn’t in attendance yesterday morning. So, was the guy still married to the woman that he was discharged from the service for assaulting, along with his child? I can’t imagine staying married to a guy like that.
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Deborah said on November 6, 2017 at 12:15 pm
And what in the world is the weird deal with Rand Paul and his neighbor?
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Jeff Borden said on November 6, 2017 at 12:34 pm
The Texas murderer was discharged by the Air Force after being convicted of assaulting his wife and child. By law, he was not allowed to own a weapon. But he checked a box on his gun shop paperwork that said he was not prohibited from buying weapons. If gun shops were required to do more thorough background checks, perhaps his purchase might’ve not gone through, but the NRA has so thoroughly greased the process that it even such a modest effort is an infringement on gun buyers. I find it incredibly difficult not to equate Wayne LaPierre and the NRA with terrorism. They make it so easy for the worst among us to gather immense firepower. The price of freedom, indeed.
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Deborah said on November 6, 2017 at 12:39 pm
The NYT reports that the shooter was divorced from the wife he assaulted while in the Air Force and had remarried 2 years later. And he beat his pit bull, for which he was charged with animal cruelty.
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Sherri said on November 6, 2017 at 2:20 pm
If the answer to Islamic terrorism is extreme vetting and Muslim bans, and the answer to crime is stop and frisk and driving while brown, shouldn’t the answer to gun violence involve making it harder for white men to get guns?
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Julie Robinson said on November 6, 2017 at 2:27 pm
A friend of our daughter’s posted this:
Us: Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers.
God: I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings, I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:21-24)
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Jeff Borden said on November 6, 2017 at 3:34 pm
Shhhh. The politicians including oily Ted Cruz and greasy Paul Ryan are saying we shouldn’t politicize the slaughter in a Texas church. Remember. We only politicize mass killings when committed by Muslims or illegal immigrants.
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Heather said on November 6, 2017 at 3:59 pm
Meanwhile a Fox and Friends host is saying that church is the best place to die. Sometimes death is a relief and a release, especially if you are a Christian. So, no biggie!
http://www.businessinsider.com/fox-friends-host-church-ainsley-earhardt-god-jesus-2017-11
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Jolene said on November 6, 2017 at 4:17 pm
Sometimes death is a relief and a release . . .
Family members of some of the victims have said similar things—the standard Christian line that they are in a better place. Still, I doubt the people who are now in a better place would have been in a hurry to go there.
This sentiment was, by the way, expressed by a member of a family that lost eight people.
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Sherri said on November 6, 2017 at 4:41 pm
Sometimes death is a release and a relief, if for example you’re suffering from a terminal illness and in terrible pain. If it’s such a release and a relief for the people saying that about the victims of violence, well, then, what are they waiting for? Why aren’t their churches filled with mass suicides? And who cares if abortion is murder? After all, those dead fetuses are in a better place!
White conservative evangelical theology is a mess. At least the Catholic Church is consistent in its pro-life stance.
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Sherri said on November 6, 2017 at 4:43 pm
On a different subject, I get really annoyed at tech companies complaining that our education system doesn’t produce the workers they need when they won’t pay their goddamn taxes!
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/world/apple-taxes-jersey.html
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Deggjr said on November 6, 2017 at 5:11 pm
… and even there the air seems to be leaking from the balloon.
What I seem to hear is a constant ‘but Hillary was worse’ which leads to unending waves of hate directed towards Clinton to maintain their approval of Trump.
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David C. said on November 6, 2017 at 5:12 pm
I hope this motherfucker’s prayers are the next to be answered.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/conservative-writer-god-was-answering-prayers-of-texas-victims-by-letting-them-get-shot/#.WgCibkE4Nfc.twitter
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Icarus said on November 6, 2017 at 5:30 pm
… and even there the air seems to be leaking from the balloon.
yeah the usual suspects who make up my conservative contingent on FB have been sharing less and less of their right wing propaganda and more normal things like pictures of their pets and/or kids. My FIL still posts anti Obama and Hilary crap but he’s got less than 50 friends in his echo chamber.
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coozledad said on November 6, 2017 at 5:44 pm
I don’t recall anything about the practice of suttee or any other form of human sacrifice in my Baptist upbringing, but I guess Jesus is whoever your ass wants him to be. Or whoever the Republicans want him to be, anyway.
I can tell you than an abortion would have stopped the living fuck out of that shooter, though.
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Dexter said on November 6, 2017 at 5:48 pm
Two of my daughters + one MIL and the husbands are going over to party hearty at the Waikiki Hilton over T’gikving. No trip for us to Columbus this year for turkey.
Last trip there the old van’s compressor burned out, so I am taking my time looking for a nice fairly-new-ish Subaru Forester. I have no qualms about driving the vehicle acclaimed as “The Lesbians’Choice”. I like the plain lines and the size of that vehicle. The deal will be done shortly I hope, because we’ll be going there for Christmas fersure. Of course, the way my mind works, I may get something entirely different.
I have corresponded via AA sites online with a guy who recently moved down around San Antonio from Sacramento. As the years rolled by, I realized he is a Trump supported, a churchy type, and also an extreme gun nut who recreates by going to firing ranges to play with assault rifles, pistols, the whole thing, the whole lifestyle.
So I checked, and he was horrified of the massacre, and what I noticed was his reaction was the same as gun-hating people, and those who just never thought much about guns; in other words he apparently didn’t identify or associate having his arsenal with the mass murdering asshole who killed all those innocents.
Still, the facts are that places like Australia and Japan, with strict anti-gun laws, have many less massacres than we have here in Freedumb Land. My status as a USA Army war veteran sorta means oh hell yes I have seen people who had been shot-dead, enough of them to say I am for a ban on all civilian gun ownership. Round ’em up and melt ’em down. Fuckin ‘ enough is enough.
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Dexter said on November 6, 2017 at 5:58 pm
Buddy Rico’s latest post… here’s how he spent today. (Rico is the gun-nut ex-drunk , my friend of 17 years)
https://www.facebook.com/LoneStarHandgun/?hc_ref=ARTrVqhYuxAoDLizncd3LmtYgyCDmbZO1JEelkS-uO7ih5rtOf6mmKan5KLmkmBbNOo
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Dexter said on November 6, 2017 at 6:18 pm
geez…see how confusing opinions can sway? Here’s a fresh update from Rico: “(We)…. are donating blood at the South Texas Blood and Tissue Center in New Braunfels Tuesday morning. I’m not sure how it all works but my question is to the medical field experts here. Can we designate our donation to be used for the wounded of Sutherland Springs…?”
Gun nuts donate blood for the wounded…what to think?
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Bob (Not Greene) said on November 6, 2017 at 6:24 pm
Dexter, if that link you supplied is any indication, we as a nation are completely out of our fucking minds. One comment regarding the shooting: “You can’t stop it only prepare for it.” What the actual fuck? The entire civilized world has been able to stop this, except for this nation. We are actively creating — and accepting — hell here.
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coozledad said on November 6, 2017 at 6:31 pm
Hypervigilance is a disease state. It reconfigures the brain and turns sentient beings into pathetic brutes. It is not merely a “different outcome”, and it certainly isn’t a desirable one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervigilance
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beb said on November 6, 2017 at 6:32 pm
Jeff @20: According to Buzzfeed, the shooter’s bad-conduct discharge deprived him of any veteran’s benefits but does not bar him from buying a gun. Pity.
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Suzanne said on November 6, 2017 at 6:56 pm
Diane @ 9, I know several people who bring guns to my church, because, they say, you just never know. Now will probably have more. Would any of them been able to stop this guy? Doubtful. He had an AR-15. A good guy with a box truck might also have been able to stop the bad guy in NYC.
What a world we live in.
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Deborah said on November 6, 2017 at 7:53 pm
Good for this guy http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chicagoinc/ct-met-cupich-politics-1107-chicago-inc-20171106-story.html. The church needs to speak up about this issue.
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beb said on November 6, 2017 at 8:33 pm
I was going to suggest this but Kevin Drum already has…
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/11/we-should-ban-all-semi-automatic-firearms/
We outlawed fully automatic weapons because they were too dangerous and favored by criminals. There is no good reason for semi-automatic weapons either. Self-defense? Six shoots from a revolver ought to be plenty.
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Heather said on November 6, 2017 at 9:30 pm
If you can handle more insanity, go to Twitter to read Seth Abramson or Chris Geidner’s tweets about Carter Page’s testimony in front of the House Intel Committee last week. It is 100 percent ba-zonkers.
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Ellen said on November 6, 2017 at 10:00 pm
Off topic, but this is a far-flung community so giving it a shot. Anyone know an ordained minister (ELCA or otherwise) in Key West area who might be available to officiate a same-sex marriage on Dec 26? Trying to help a friend.
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Jolene said on November 6, 2017 at 11:20 pm
Another case of a wounded male attacking those who disappointed him.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/11/06/the-other-deadly-church-shooting-in-america-on-sunday/?utm_term=.9f4cd5215b59
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coozledad said on November 7, 2017 at 8:35 am
Rand Paul getting sacked by his neighbor for a lawn waste dispute makes me wish I had enough money to hire a C-130 to drop a mix of leaves, knives and pistols over all those gated neighborhoods with names like “The Caucasianings at Crackerwood”, or “ (Insert Tawdry Ahistorical Britishism Here) Crossing.”
It’s hilarious that the first ripples of the coming disintegration of the social fabric will play out among the shitsticks living by the strip mall. Those four garage monstrosities will be a great place for whiny-ass libertarians and their children to build IEDs.
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Deborah said on November 7, 2017 at 11:57 am
You can’t sue a gun manufacturer or dealer because of this maddening law, which Bernie Sanders voted for by the way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_in_Arms_Act
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jcburns said on November 7, 2017 at 12:19 pm
Briar Forest Green Creek Mountain Valley Park.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 7, 2017 at 12:41 pm
Even though the sound of it is really quite precocious.
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Peter said on November 7, 2017 at 1:09 pm
Heather at #42 – here’s the part that just floored me – it’s DOCTOR Carter Page – this yahoo has a legit doctorate from a legit university in London – no Liberty honorary degree here! Kind of makes you wonder why bother going to college….
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Peter said on November 7, 2017 at 1:13 pm
Found on slate.com “Report: Billionaire Trump Commerce Secretary is not a billionaire, has lied about money for years”. Forbes is reporting that old Wilbur included the funds that he was managing as his personal wealth and is worth nowhere near a billion dollars.
Best comment on that story: “Geez, you people did all this complaining that Trump only hired billionaires. Now he has a non-billionaire and you’re still not happy!”
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Mark P said on November 7, 2017 at 1:36 pm
Dexter @33. When I read or hear someone say there’s nothing we can do about gun violence, I think, “Yes, of course there is. But we’ll never do it. We love guns more than we love our children.”
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ROGirl said on November 7, 2017 at 1:44 pm
Guns don’t kill people, people with guns kill people.
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Joe k said on November 7, 2017 at 2:54 pm
People with guns kill people, along with pickups, cars, knifes, airplanes, poison gas, machetes, boats, ropes, and bare hands. It’s a evil world.
Pilot Joe
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ROGirl said on November 7, 2017 at 3:00 pm
Seriously?
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coozledad said on November 7, 2017 at 3:07 pm
Made even more evil by the people who worship evil: the people who fawn over racists, the people who attribute their privilege to intelligence when they have none, the people who wish to impose their narrow medieval world of sorrow and punishment upon people who are in fact much better people.
It’s evil because they’re evil.
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coozledad said on November 7, 2017 at 3:10 pm
Joe’d be better off if he just whipped himself through the streets like the Euroclown flagellants of old. He gets off, we get the theater.
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Heather said on November 7, 2017 at 3:19 pm
Yeah, those mass knife-attack casualties every three days or so are brutal. Also, Joe, I guess we can assume you are OK with removing security measures at airports now? Since people are just evil and we can’t do much to stop these attacks.
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Joe Kobiela said on November 7, 2017 at 4:05 pm
Personally I’d like to see them enforce the gun laws that are on the books now.
Pilot Joe
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Mark P said on November 7, 2017 at 4:10 pm
Joe, you could use the same argument about antibiotics and cancer treatments. After all, why treat people dying from a disease when so many other things kill people? Why should you inspect your airplane before you fly it; after all, you could be hit by a bus when you reach your destination.
Obviously, to many of us, the fact that a number of different things kill people does not relieve us of the responsibility of trying to keep one particular thing from killing so many people.
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coozledad said on November 7, 2017 at 4:17 pm
“the gun laws that are on the books now.”
Bullshit. The shit-filled diaper you voted for vacated the Obama era law that forbade the sale of guns to the mentally ill. You’re just an illiterate troll in every sense. That song on a loop in your head was popular when Colonel Sanders voted for George Wallace.
They’re both fucking dead.
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Jolene said on November 7, 2017 at 4:33 pm
Other countries have knives, pickup trucks, boats and ropes, too, Joe, but, among rich nations, only the US is saturated with guns.
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Deborah said on November 7, 2017 at 4:40 pm
Jolene, that graphic chart is staggering. It is so obvious that we have mass killings and deaths by shootings in general because of the preponderance of guns, so obvious. There’s no other explanation. If it were harder to get guns and particularly semi automatics and automatics, there would be less carnage.
Give it up Joe, you’re wrong.
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Icarus said on November 7, 2017 at 5:02 pm
OMG the responses
https://twitter.com/WalshFreedom/status/927611461316247552
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Sherri said on November 7, 2017 at 5:20 pm
I have to take my shoes off to fly because one person unsuccessfully attempted to blow up a plane one time.
My current drivers license will no longer be valid ID for flying after October 2018 because we’re so worried about terrorists and airplanes.
Yet, if I want to buy a gun, no problem! Never mind that we’ve had more than a mass shooting per day this year.
What fucking gun laws, Joe?
We’ve spent billions of dollars on security theater in airports that does damn little to actually make anybody safer, while we let people run around with guns killing people and say there’s nothing we can do.
What need or right does anyone have to own a semiautomatic weapon that overrides the compelling interest of the rest of us to not be victims of the next angry white guy who graduates from beating women to shooting people?
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LAMary said on November 7, 2017 at 5:27 pm
Joe it’s not an evil world. I have lived in a lot of very urban areas. Never needed or wanted a gun and I’m still here, ready to sign up for Medicare. I’ll spend my disposable income on books and perfume and good food. Not on weapons I think I need because someone with bigger weapons wants to hurt me. I heard some fool on NPR say that not owning and assault weapon means you’re naïve because all the bad guys out there have assault weapons. He also said we all need assault weapons because otherwise only criminals will own them. I’ve been hearing that crap my whole life and it still doesn’t make any sense. I feel sorry for anyone who assumes that at any given time someone wants them dead. I’d like to assume that at any given time I might learn something new or see something I’ve never seen before. There are far more good people in the world than there are evil people.
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Jolene said on November 7, 2017 at 5:28 pm
Amen, Sherri. Every year since 9/11, three to four times as many Americans have been killed in gun homicides as died on that day. And we have discomfited ourselves, spent trillions on detecting and preventing the execution of terrorist threats, and killed thousands of people—many of them innocent civilians—all in the name of preventing terrorist attacks.
And yet something as minor as a waiting period to purchase a gun is viewed as an infringement on liberty. What an utterly ludicrous state of affairs.
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susan said on November 7, 2017 at 5:32 pm
JoeTroel wins the thread (as Brian likes to say)! He got everyone hopping and focussed on him him him. Why keep engaging him, what ‘s the point? Unless there is nothing else to talk about, I suppose. Yeah, that must be it. He ain’t gonna change minds around here, and he sure ain’t gonna change his or learn anything, either. Joe-olls are like that. Stirring up the pot.
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Deborah said on November 7, 2017 at 5:56 pm
Good point, Susan. I need to be reminded not to feed the trolls, that’s what they want.
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Jolene said on November 7, 2017 at 6:16 pm
Some news that, for a change, won’t break your heart or make you furious: Pete Souza’s new book on his time as Obama’s photographer is out today. Here is his interview with Terri Gross on Fresh Air.
Here’s the Amazon link to the book.
Nancy, is the Kickback Lounge still in business? Link didn’t work when I tried it (twice) for this post.
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Dexter said on November 7, 2017 at 6:26 pm
Today, another family who are my Facebook and blog friends were affected by another shooting. Wanna read the wife’s post? “Gil brought Evie to school, just like a normal day, and thought he would be walking her to class, helping her at her locker, kissing her goodbye and going about his day.
Except his day was not a normal day. As he was dropping her off, Evie’s school was going into lockdown for an active shooter on the TCU campus. A campus that her school sits on, a safe school, a family loved school, a little community school.
The thought that I almost lost my whole family today has crushed me, I have been trying to go through the motions of the day without thinking about it. But the thought that my husband and child could have been shooting victims today has wrecked me. I can’t even put into words the fear and panic that I felt when Gil texted me. The thoughts that went through my mind from fear to “what if’s” to I don’t know how I could function without my little family.
I can’t wait to get home, meet her at the door and give her the biggest hug and kiss that a mother could give her child, her only child.
And for those of that want to post about guns not being the problem, I dare you to come talk to me.”`END~ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/11/07/tcu-lockdown-lifted-after-shot-fired-on-campus/?utm_term=.8b36ef3b4f9f
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Dexter said on November 7, 2017 at 6:29 pm
From New York, a nice nod to a woman:
Drum roll please! The first woman to get a statue on the poet’s walk in Central Park is a former Chelsea Hotel resident. And, she is an activist! #Elizabethcadystanton ~post by NYC author Ed Hamilton~
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Joe Kobiela said on November 7, 2017 at 7:01 pm
Perhaps I should have said the world is full of evil people instead of it’s a evil world, maybe it would help if everyone tried to be a little nicer to their fellow man.
Pilot Joe
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