This is the kind of thing that happens with disturbing regularity in the United States and it’s not preventable. There is no way to undo the massive increase in gun ownership that resulted from the Bush-era lapse of the Assault Weapons Ban. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.

There is no magic bullet. There is only an excessive response by the public to such crimes because it’s not enough that the shooter pays, those around them must pay as well.

We need a red flag law that allows a family or family members to report psychologically unstable family members whom they suspect of being willing and able to carry out a mass shooting. Then those people are remanded for one month of psychiatric evaluation after which, if cleared, they are not permitted to own a firearm for five years.

If a family fails to alert the authorities and a mass shooting event occurs, the entire immediate family will be charged along with the defendant of murder… and executed publicly upon conviction. We can’t contain this without the family stepping up and they never will until something forces them to do it.

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So, this happened.

It was predictable given the corruption of the Court by Mitch McConnell. It should also end any discussion into reforming the Court (there is no way it can be allowed to continue as currently constituted).

What’s coming next are challenges to Obergefell, Lawrence, and probably Loving. Since the 14th and 9th Amendment no longer matter, we can also assume that the 13th will be ignored in short order as well.

The one good thing about this is that it seems to have awakened The Majority and they’re not happy.

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The USSC has lost its credibility in a country that at this point is holding together like a bad marriage.

So, why should we bother with what these clowns think?

It goes against what so many of us were raised to believe that it’s uncomfortable admitting the Court no longer really matters. That and the larger reality around it, that we are no longer a nation, grow increasingly difficult to ignore. We pick and choose which institutions we care about and right now a Court loaded with partisan hacks by the corrupt former Senate Majority leader from Kentucky is not credible. It should be the last iteration of itself.

It will be up to the Biden Administration to see it’s way clear to ‘handling’ the decisions of the Court and moving us toward a better future. At least it will be until the states decide they’ve had enough of the inaction.

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With all the kvetching about the loss of democracy in the US, it’s important to remember that the US ceased to be a functioning democracy on December 12, 2000 when the US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, determined that not every vote should be counted and the conservatives on the court fully politicized it.

Everything since has been consequences.

The Court, as it exists today, is no longer an institution. Every branch of government is now fully politicized. There is a chance to save it, by implementing term limits and expanding it, but neither of those are likely to happen due to pure corruption in the Senate on the Republican side and a brainless fealty to the past coupled with a willingness to ignore the present state of affairs on the part of some Democrats.

The court will not be fixed. Neither will any other part of government. All that remains is how this ends. I would hope that leaders at the State level would begin having conversations about the necessity of national divorce, at the very least as a final demand for reform. There is no reason at this point not to demand a new Constitutional Convention and either do the hard work of implementing reform or determine how to terminate our experiment and begin a new one.

I do not have any hope at this point in the future of the US as it exists today. We are living, quite literally, on borrowed time and money and the best hope some of us have for escape is to demand a separation. It’s time the red areas of this country live up to their claims of self sufficiency.

The rest of us are quite tired of paying the bill.

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It’s become something of an article of faith that the stock market is delinked to the real economy. This isn’t accurate since the stock market isn’t valuing businesses, or the economic environment, of today. The market is looking six months or more ahead.

The market is looking for what is simplistically called a v-shaped recovery in which a sharp economic downtown (like the one we’re in) ends with a very sharp economic upturn. For this to occur, the economic pain needs to kept at a minimum through countercyclical spending, which government has been doing, and we need stimulus to provide the boost back to normal growth.

It’s that last part where the market isn’t seeing the trouble on the horizon. The Republicans have all but ended any debate on additional stimulus while the Democrats are hard at work on the next package. The question is how long it takes the market to realize that the recovery it’s already pricing in is in trouble? At what point do participants decide to take risk off their balance sheets given that Senator McConnell and President Fats have concluded they’ve done enough?

My guess is we get the first taste of it tomorrow. And I bet by the end of the week the tune in Washington changes back to the one called by Speaker Pelosi.

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Christ on a motherfucking crutch… this country has two papers of record and one of them ran this today.

Why bother writing about differences in policy between the candidates when we can do light and fun pieces about viral moments!

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I didn’t start off this primary season behind Senator Warren, I was more for Senator Harris. However, during the course of these few months, Warren has jumped out ahead in terms of campaign quality and seriously stepped up how well she delivers her message. She is now best in the field and her central theme, I Have A Plan For That, fuels hope in people who’ve long since abandoned it in the face of Trump’s glaring and consistent incompetence. Further, it ties together her campaign with a simple message that anyone, of any education level, can grasp and understand.

I don’t know whether she started out with this point in mind, but she has taken complex issues, created solutions that are both workable and cost effective on a ton of issues, and then pulled it all under one, neat, hard to dislodge message.

What’s so beautiful about it from a messaging perspective is that it feeds into an essentially American ethos, that we are masters of ourselves and can fix what’s wrong ourselves. There’s no need to blame anyone or even worry about them. Americans just need get to work. This appeals unbelievably well to the new voting majority below the age of 50.

It also has a very destabilizing effect on Trump’s messaging.

Make America Great Again? She Has A Plan For That!

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THIS definitely caught my eye this afternoon…

Donald Trump, the US president, confirmed that the US would want to include access to the NHS market in any US-UK trade talks. Woody Johnson, the US ambassador, said this at the weekend, and Trump was asked if he agreed with Johnson that the entire economy should be on the table in trade talks, including the NHS. He replied:
“I think everything with a trade deal is on the table. When you’re dealing in trade, everything is on the table – so NHS or anything else, a lot more than that, but everything will be on the table, absolutely.”
But, as my colleague Patrick Wintour points out, Theresa May had to explain to Trump what the NHS was.

You folks are getting it wrong… he actually means it. Ask the Chinese because they’ve been making it increasingly plain that they’re good with American trade demands… except for privatization and an end to subsidies of state owned enterprises. To explain, it’s like asking someone to burn down their own house and then give you half the insurance settlement.

To our friends in the UK… you better start calling your MPs asking them to completely reject ANY input from the US on healthcare. Trust me, you don’t want our system… most of us want yours.

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In what has to be the lamest press release since Rick Perry announced he was abandoning the 2016 Republican Presidential race along with his hopes of being a real person, the NRCC decides to stick with proven to fail language against a candidate in the Democratic Primary for TX CD 10…

“Shannon Hutcheson is just another carpetbagging socialist Democrat running to be a rubber stamp for all of the left’s extreme policies, from the oil and gas killing Green New Deal to socialized medicine. Hutcheson’s entry into the primary ensures that whichever socialist comes out on top will be broke and badly damaged heading into next November.” – NRCC Spokesman Bob Salera

The post on the site is by Bob Salera who loves himself so much that he quotes himself. Since I am no stranger to self love, here are some quotes from me.

“I really think Shannon Hutcheson is an exceptional candidate to take on Rep. McCaul because she’s not named Mike or McCaul. She’s also a woman, unlike Rep. McCaul who is not. ” -McBlogger

“Shannon is exceptionally well positioned to win this race, especially since she believes that women (who make up more than half of CD 10) can make medical decisions for themselves without the help of Rep. McCaul or Bob Salera.” – McBlogger

“Tootsie DOTS are really the perfect candy for anything from a movie, to a road trip, to watching a Democrat finally retake CD 10 from Rep. McCaul.” -McBlogger

“Now, I’ll be the first to say I’m not the smartest person in the room most of the time, but in this case it’s really puzzling to me why you’d reuse the same old attacks like ‘socialist!’ and ‘carpetbagger!’ and ‘socialist!’ that didn’t work so well the last time your guy was at bat.” -McBlogger

“It takes a world class pair of low hanging huevos to suit up and do battle on behalf of a chickenhawk bitch like Rep. McCaul, a man whose greatest achievement in life is marrying well and who will go down, much like the President, on any Russian he can find.” -McBlogger

Look, I get it, you’re the spokesgolem for the NRCC and you’re holding the kind of losing hand that would even make the toughest poker player collapse in a fit of rage induced crying. We’ve all been there… but you gotta dig deep and find something better than ‘socialist’. Shit just don’t work the way it used to.

It’s also a good idea to have staff post to your blog if you’re going to quote yourself.

Go throw some support Shannon Hutcheson’s way!

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Of all the silly commentators who are still phoning it in, Matthew Dowd stands out for his delusions about compromise and ‘the way things should be’.

In this latest piece of trash, Dowd calls out Rep. Tlaib for using the word ‘motherfucker’. His first line of attack is the vulgarity of the word motherfucker because apparently profanity is a big deal for Dowd and his kids who apparently are living in a bubble in 1952.

His second issue is that this doesn’t help the Democrats…

Second, from a purely political perspective, her comments aren’t helpful to the Democratic party in bridging divides and accomplishing what I know she wants to accomplish. In order to achieve success in politics, one must bring consensus to get the common good, and this kind of talk goes in the opposite direction of that. If she really wants the Democrats to succeed in Congress, and pass public policy, then her party is going to need the support of people who don’t feel the way she does. She is going to have to be part of building bridges with people who don’t think like her or talk in that way. And to that goal, her language sets her back.

Actually, from an electoral standpoint, the Democrats ARE the consensus… there is no divide to be bridged. Lookit, it’s simple… the Republicans are a continuously sliding slice of the pie, in no position to expect or demand anything. They compromise with us or there is no compromise… as Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer have made quite clear, we’re willing to go the distance on anything to stop the bullshit. There is no point trying to appeal to the better nature of Republicans… they just don’t have one anymore.

Finally, Dowd cribs from MLK and alludes to Michelle Obama (think ‘When they go low, we go high’) , completely missing that we are the majority and the time for ‘being nice’ has passed.

Frankly, ABC would be far better served with someone less clueless. Just as it’s ridiculous to keep giving a platform to folks like Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Sanders, it’s stupid to give one to Matthew Dowd who frankly is about as disconnected from reality as the President at this point.

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