Big Bird may be innocent but who can vouch for Elmo?

[lionheart]

thehill.com/homenews/senate/580426-ted-cruz-labels-big-birds-tweet-about-vaccination-propaganda

www.salon.com/2021/11/07/sesame-streets-big-bird-for-promoting-vaccine-brainwashing-children_partner/

Old thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4305074-To-filibuster-or-not-to-filibuster-Biden-needs-to-get-a-move-on-before-Doofus-Duck-waddles-back-into-the-swamp-Biden-Trump-Thread-128

I listened to an interviewer from Sky - didn't catch his name, think it was the late night/early hours anchor - valiantly trying to interview some Texan woman from the vicinity (she may even have been in charge of the schools - I missed the start).

She was insisting that they needed not fewer but more guns to deal with incidents like this. She was adamant that guns were required to protect citizens from the Government (yes, really ) and because of all the immigrants pouring over the border, who were armed and dangerous. She was convinced that they would be safer if more people had guns.

The poor guy tried all sorts of different angles - asking why sniper rifles and assault guns were "needed" (answer "hordes coming across the border to attack them), whether more checks should be done ("No")

..... before closing the discussion with the only point of humanity he could think of, that our heartfelt condolences went to those families who had lost loved ones.

I've been away at the sea and this is what I come back to. It just makes me sick. And again, the GOP will 'send thoughts and prayers' and do absolutely nothing except fan the flames of hatred and rile up 2nd amendment nut jobs. At least the Dems will try to get legislation through. Their 'fault' is not wanting to do away with the filibuster so we can get things through on a simple majority. I know, I know it's a double edged sword, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

As far as the interviewee in @prettybird 's post, well, that's Texas for you! I always mention (and will now) that California vs Texas is a bit of a 'thing' because the mindsets of the majority are poles apart. But you'd think we'd all be able to agree on restricting certain types of weapons, having national background check laws, and registration for ALL firearms (not just handguns). But NO! because, you know, Texas.

And what really gets me, as the mother of an adult son with PTSD, is the vilification of people with MH struggles that is being vomited up by Cruz, Abbott, and that ilk. Their implications that people with MH issues are the 'only ones' who do this when it's been proven that a person with MH issues is more likely to be the victim of violent crime than the perpetrator. That arresting and prosecuting them if they try to buy a gun is going to solve the problem. But that it's OK for hate filled racists, white supremacists, and violent domestic abusers to have personal arsenals. How about instead, we just say there are certain guns that NO ONE can have, sales only at licensed gun shops, and that EVERYONE has to serve a mandatory waiting period.

I wish we could outlaw guns completely. But because of the 2nd amendment that's just never going to happen. The best we'll ever be to do is severely restrict type and access.

AcrossthePond55
I wish we could outlaw guns completely. But because of the 2nd amendment that's just never going to happen. The best we'll ever be to do is severely restrict type and access.

Maybe they could require anyone bearing arms, as per their second amendment right, to become part of a well regulated Militia (as also in the second amendment) and spend their evenings four days a week (say) being drilled by ferocious sergeant majors, or the US army equivalent. Or their entire weekends.

I wish! That's MY (and many other's) interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Unfortunately none of us is a SCOTUS Justice. SCOTUS has upheld the interpretation of the 2nd as the 'personal' right to bear arms more times than I can count. And with the SCOTUS make up and ages we have now, it's going to be that way long after I've shuffled off my mortal coil.

I wonder if St Peter will agree to letting me haunt the hallowed halls of justice in DC, at least for a few years.

If you wonder how people end up having opinions like hers, try listening to Republican politicians and watching Fox News (America’s most popular news network).

While I appreciate every news source has its bias, and that factual errors occur, Fox often descends into pure, unabashed lies and propaganda. Hordes of violent immigrants and the inefficiency of gun control (or that the Democrats are going to steal your guns) are pretty standard topics on there.

I don’t much care for our right-wing news either (I’m left wing so of course I don’t), but there’s spin and then there’s the purposeful peddling of disinformation.

Its why many of Fox’s more credible journalists, devout Republicans though they might be, have left the station.

Murdoch owns Fox doesn't he... he is now 91 years old... we can but hope that there might be a change after he's popped his clogs - a faint hope I know.

That man and his organisation has done a lot of damage in his lifetime. I hope it's been worth it for Jerry Hall.

Still lurking. So sad at latest shooting

I fear the younger Murdoch who now seems to be in charge of Fox is at least as bad as his father. And he is only 50.

Oh fuck.

I know one left because he didn't like the way the corp was going. So the objectionable one will be in charge then... it was a very faint hope there would be a sea change...

About the murders at Uvalde:

GOP people keep on saying "the way to stop bad guys with guns is good guys with guns"; well, at Uvalde there was one bad guy with a gun, and how many good guys with guns? Twenty? More? What those good guys mostly seem to have done, for about an hour, is stop other good guys (mostly the children's parents) from trying to stop the bad guy.

So how exactly does that GOP mantra work, again?

I'm hearing some awful stuff about this horrendous tragedy.

The murderer has been jailed for threatening to shoot up his school when he was 14. He then went on to say he would do it when he was 18 when he was a senior in 2022. This was in the Independent

Then the delay going in and the police and their children. I just can't imagine how people are ever going to heal.

Just saw this tweet

Paul Danahar
NYT on school shooting - ‘local officers entered the school at 11:35, two mins after the gunman. There were 19 officers in the hallway by 12:03 p.m but they did not breach the door and kill the gunman until 12:50, even as they continued to hear him firing.’

Just mind blowing.

Which rather undermines the argument of the US gun lobby that all you need to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, because 19 good guys in uniform with guns were standing outside seemingly listening to children get shot dead.

I asked upthread how many armed "good guys" were there when those children were being killed by the one bad guy; according to CNN, the answer is "about a hundred". Milling about outside, going in to rescue their own children, pepper-spraying parents who tried to get them to do something.

It's a terrible indictment of the police cowardice, really; but Salon explains it...

www.rawstory.com/uvalde-shooting-timeline-exposes-an-ugly-truth/

I find it a shattering revelation that the police have no duty to protect members of the public: what the hell do they exist for, if not that?

Apparently there is one single session at the obscene NRA convention where no guns are allowed .....

Trump is now eliciting sympathy bu reading out the names of the victims, punctuated by a bell He is the lowest of the low using them for his own political ends, while protecting himself through a form of gun control denied to "lesser" people

I am just so angry. There aren't enough words to describe these LEOs that just stood about pepper spraying desperate parents trying to get to their children. But I'll start with two; fucking cowards.

I've just seen a clip of TFG at the NRA. I feel sick at how he's used this and called out the names of all the poor little children. Disgusting.

I really, really wish that the blasted media would treat this as it deserves, and not cover it. It was repulsive hearing him blethering on the World Service: they ought to know better.

This has completely floored me:

www.rawstory.com/gop-election-lawyer-accuses-candidates-of-despicable-abuse/

Candidates are required to submit a minimum of 15,000 lawfully collected signatures. The GOP signature-collectors submitted 68,000 fake signatures spread over ten candidates. And now they are trying to argue that disqualifying five of those candidates over the fake signatures would disenfranchise voters. Who don't exist, because the signatures are purportedly thsoe of people who don't in fact exist....

The sheer unmitigated gall of these fraudsters is truly gobsmacking.

Nothing floors me anymore. Doofus has ripped the barn doors off their hinges and stood behind the horses waving his hat and shouting 'free for all, free for all' as they galloped out the barn doors. Now those doors will never shut again, at least as far as the GOP is concerned.

We're seeing this all the time in our everyday lives. People, both high and low, are becoming more and more entitled, disregarding laws and societal norms in the name of their 'freedoms' and an 'I'm alright Jack I got mine' mindset. Lies are justified, cruelty and racism are applauded, and theft and fraud are rationalized because 'Doofus and his ilk did it, so it must be OK' or because of the ever-present threat of 'the others' and what 'they' are planning to do to 'us'. It's truly appalling.

And because we don't want to become them, all we can do is vote.

So agree Across and it's happening over here too.

Just yesterday Johnson is ripping up the Ministerial Code to protect himself (very Trump like). If you break the MC, you used to resign, now he's saying No, we'll just dock some pay and you apologise. And blocking the Ethics man investigating him. It's to save his skin and anyone in his party.
The only good thing is... it is not voted on, and can be reversed by the next government. Fingers crossed. The aftermath of Trump and Johnson is very worrying.

Worrying times

@Roussette

You know, I seem to be seeing a lot of Trump-like behaviour in leaders of other countries. Not just 'dictator leaders' either, but leaders one would have thought of as 'going along with the norms'. I don't agree with Johnson's politics and his 'Aw shucks' buffoonery, but he used to seem to sort of 'play by the rulebook' for the main. I think that's what's so worrying. We've suffered a sea change and not into something rich and strange.

If I were of a pentacostal/evangelical/end times bent, I'd say that Doofus was the Anti-Christ. For one man, his effect has certainly been far bigger than he, himself, is.

v.redd.it/l739y6tigi291

At the NRA and the crowd clapping are obviously totally unaware that this guy is being facetious and taking the proverbial big time

We've suffered a sea change and not into something rich and strange.

Did you have to sing that at school, Across? I did. We’re contemporaneous, though grew up very far apart.

It was this version.

No, I learnt it in 'verse form' in the (US) 7th grade when we studied Shakespeare and read The Tempest.

Shakespeare is pretty universal.