Texas state lawmaker calls for ‘praying for protection’ instead of gun reform in wake of mass shooting
CNN
Let me ask you: what is “gun reform”? Why would it be better than prayer for preventing mass shootings?
Pray for protection and if you get shot, take comfort in knowing it was God’s will.
Can I get an amen?
Before swinging a refrigerator door shut over the top of your bare foot, make sure the door has enough clearance to actually go over the top of your foot.
You don’t know his name, but you know who he is. He’s one of three people in the foreground of one of the most famous photos in American history.
Leavelle is the man in the light-colored suit escorting Lee Harvey Oswald through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters when Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby.
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Notice the difference in the position of Oswald relative to Leavelle in the photo below, before the gunshot. Leavelle, who was handcuffed to Oswald, said when he saw Ruby with the gun, he tried to jerk Oswald behind him, but Ruby was so close by that time that all he was able to do was turn Oswald sideways.
Leavelle died this week at the age of 99.
RIP Jim Leavelle
“Does that complete your order?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like some chips or guacamole with that?”
“What did I just say?”
This picture is actually from the CNN website, in case you’re thinking I cherry-picked an image to make Anderson Cooper look like a clown . . .
Arresting some knucklehead on a weapons charge and saying you “thwarted a mass shooting” is a speculative fantasy.
Meanwhile, since El Paso there have been 25 actual unthwarted mass shootings (per Mass Shooting Tracker), which don’t make the news because they don’t fit the preferred narrative.
For example, four of the shootings occurred in Chicago, where in each case the shooters fired into a crowd of people. By my count, about half the victims were women.
I can’t find any reporting on this in Mother Jones, which is pretty shocking given their obvious interest in mass shootings.
They’d rather report on imaginary mass shootings by white males than on the actual mass shootings of Chicago residents .
The Mass Shooting Tracker defines a mass shooting as “an incident where four or more people are shot in a single shooting spree.”
The FBI definition of “mass murder” is three or more people murdered in one event. The FBI doesn’t have a definition for “mass shooting.” You have to actually die for the FBI to take notice of you.
As of this writing, of 75 mass shootings in 2019, where the race of the perpetrator is known, 22 were white, 39 were black, 8 were Latino, 3 were Asian, 2 were American Indian and 1 was Arab.
Many of the 2019 mass shootings are currently unsolved, thus the race of the shooters is not known, but they often took place in black areas and claimed black victims.
Mass shootings of black citizens is not generally considered newsworthy, possibly because media have written inner cities off as unsalvageable, so what happens there is of no interest; or possibly because these cases don’t fit the preferred narrative of mass shootings being the exclusive province of white males.
El Paso is the worst mass murder (22 deaths) in the U.S. in 2019. Second worst: DeWayne Craddock, a black man, murdered 13 co-workers in Virginia Beach, VA. Relatively speaking, how much more coverage did El Paso get? Ten times as much? 100 times? I know it was a lot.
El Paso fits a narrative; Virginia Beach doesn’t.
In May of this year, a Detroit man named Deroy Robinson murdered three people: two gay men and a transgender woman.
Because this crime hits not one but two media hot buttons — gun violence and homophobia — if not for the fact that Robinson is not white, it should have been a national topic for weeks, and then been adapted into a movie, a play and a miniseries.
As it is, you’ve probably never heard of Deroy Robinson.
TL;DR: Mass shootings happen every day but they largely go unreported. With more than four months left in 2019, there have already been 320 mass shootings (per Mass Shooting Tracker). White males are not the only perpetrators, and in fact are are not even close to being the majority of perpetrators.
Even in cases of actual mass murder, as in the Craddock and Robinson cases, the volume of news coverage seems to be much lower for non-white shooters.
Slate has published a transcript of what it calls the New York Times “crisis town-hall meeting.”
The transcript shows that Times executive editor Dean Baquet seems to fault readers for their failure to understand the Times and its duties in the era of Trump. “They sometimes want us to pretend that he was not elected president, but he was elected president,” Baquet said. “And our job is to figure out why, and how, and to hold the administration to account. If you’re independent, that’s what you do.”
This was followed by 75 minutes of Q&A with staffers in which, by my count, every question except one could be summarized as “Why can’t we call Donald Trump a racist more often?”
In terms of figuring out why and how Trump was elected, I feel sure that “Can you believe what stupid racists Republican voters are?” moves us further from rather than closer to an answer.
It also says a lot about about the so-called “independence” of the New York Times.
Here is what Baquet said about the Times coverage of the Russian collusion (non-)story:
“Chapter 1 of the story of Donald Trump, not only for our newsroom but, frankly, for our readers, was: Did Donald Trump have untoward relationships with the Russians, and was there obstruction of justice? . . .
“The day Bob Mueller walked off that witness stand, two things happened. Our readers who want Donald Trump to go away suddenly thought, “Holy shit, Bob Mueller is not going to do it.” And Donald Trump got a little emboldened politically, I think. Because, you know, for obvious reasons. And I think that the story changed. A lot of the stuff we’re talking about started to emerge like six or seven weeks ago. We’re a little tiny bit flat-footed. I mean, that’s what happens when a story looks a certain way for two years. Right?”
No, that’s not right. “A little tiny bit flat-footed”? The story “looked” a certain way for two years because you pre-selected it as the number one narrative of the Trump presidency and because you deliberately framed it a certain way for two years, and that way was, in a word, wrong.
According to the New York Times, at least three mass shootings this year — the one in El Paso last Saturday, the mosque attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the synagogue shooting in Poway, Calif. — have been announced in advance on 8chan.
The 8chan site has struggled to stay online as hosting providers no longer want to provide services.
If mass shootings are being announced in advance, wouldn’t it make sense to maintain the site online and pay attention to it?
John Berryman said that for a writer any ordeal that doesn’t kill him is terrific. The fact that his ordeal did finally kill him doesn’t make what he was saying wrong.
Philip Roth
Analyzing the actions and/or writings of mass murderers in hopes of being able to blame one’s political opponents is not an admirable impulse. The El Paso shooter wrote that his views predate President Trump, but I notice that didn’t stop motivated people from blaming Trump and his “polarizing ideas.”
If we have to play this game, I think I could make an equally good case for “polarizing ideas” on the left. e.g., “When I’m president, I will decriminalize border crossings. People will be coming in from everywhere and when they get here, you’re going to be paying for their healthcare and education, all the way through college. Oh you’re trying to save up a down payment for a house? That’s too bad. Maybe they’ll take your job too. By the way, if you don’t think this is a good idea, you are a deplorable person. You’re a racist. You’re a white supremacist. You’re a Nazi. What do you think about that?” Is that a polarizing idea? I can imagine some unhinged person thinking, “What do I think about it? I’ll show you what I think about it.”
Unfortunately I won’t be rocking my Betsy Ross sneakers today as Nike is making product decisions based on the hurt feelings of the most sensitive man in America.
Hatred of a political party is erasing an iconic (female) figure in the founding of the United States of America.
Below is a photo of the Betsy Ross flag prominently displayed at the 2013 inaugural of Barack Obama, of whom I was not a great admirer, but who at least did not hold completely insane views like displaying the original Stars and Bars is an endorsement of slavery.
Here’s an article by some artistic nobody on the subject of Art That Sells: Top Themes, Subjects, and Mediums for Best-Selling Art.
“As an artist,” he says, “I like to know what sells.”
Right! Leave the starving artist shtick to some other starry-eyed clod.
The article delivers on its promise, enumerating the most popular genres, themes, subjects, media, colors, sizes, etc.
Van Gogh, to my knowledge, did not sell a single painting in his lifetime. He did not “know what sells.”
It saddens me to think that if only we could reverse the hands of time and make the information in this article available to him, perhaps he could have made something of himself and still been alive today.
This Robot Artist Just Became the First to Stage a Solo Exhibition. What Does That Say About Creativity?
Time
A robot painter has a solo exhibition on display at Oxford.
Van Gogh has asked that his gun be sent to Hell so he can shoot himself again . . .
“You look much younger than 60,” he says.
“Thanks, so do you.”
“I’m 37.”
“Well, that explains it.”
BuzzFeed journalists just walked off the job in 4 cities. Here’s why.
Vox
Seriously though, in the absence of BuzzFeed “journalists,” where can I find a quiz to learn if my cat is going to kill me?!
There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.
Sylvia Plath
And those few things can be cured by sticking your head in an oven . . .
Faceless Killers is the first novel in the Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell, described as “Sweden’s greatest living crime writer” and “the dean of Scandianvian noir.”
I love a good mystery novel — a good mystery novel — but most mystery novels are very bad. I can’t even finish them.
Genre novels — mystery, fantasy, romance, sci-fi, etc. — have a built-in audience so the quality standard is well below the standard for a mainstream novel.
I did finish Faceless Killers, so it’s better than most, but it’s still no more exciting than a Swedish meatball.
If you’ve ever had an inkling to try writing a mystery novel, I encourage you to move forward with it. Your competition is mostly idiots.
Rating: 
And when they seek to oppress you
And when they try to destroy you,
Rise and rise again and again
Like the Phoenix from the ashes
Until the lambs have become lions and the rule of Darkness is no more
According to Titanic Belfast (“She was alright when she left here”), 72 percent of the women aboard Titanic survived vs. 19 percent of the men.
(In 1912, people were arbitrarily divided into only two genders!)
“Women and children first” — who came up with that idea? Men! Had they wanted to get in a lifeboat, they could have just pitched the women into the sea. But no . . .
You go ahead, honey. I’ll just stay here on the boat and drown.
