You are excused if you still have not dug yourself out of the blizzard of excuses put forth by Republicans yesterday after six more bodies lay dead in an elementary school in Nashville. It hardly seems necessary to recount them, but one of the Republican talking points that will no doubt go down in history was this one from north Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who once made a campaign video that included footage of her shooting at feral hogs from a helicopter with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle:
The idiot from Tennessee is my congressman. His name is Burchett, btw. He is notorious for invoking his daddy, and his momma, every chance he gets. He’s the Guiliani of Tennessee. A noun, a verb, momma and daddy.
Seems like a case of stolen valor and he really doesn’t deserve to have his father’s name in his mouth.
I can’t help but wonder if the congressman has the same attitude toward immigration, fentanyl and every other problem the country faces. If he does maybe he should just get out of Congress.
Stolen valor? Really? I think he made up the whole story about daddy. After all, that is today's GOP. Moreover, there is one thing that you might do to try to stop someone who might be intent on killing you....in the first instance, deny them the most efficient means of doing so.
Probably is made up. My grandfather fought in WWII. He died in 1965 when I was 18. My father fought in Korea, and he is long dead. Would be 102 by now. Congressman from TN is 58. I doubt a father who was 18 or 19 in 1944 or 45 would have been alive to tell him any stories.
Doing the math here -- my father (b. 1922, d. 2008) enlisted in the army in 1942, fought in North Africa and Italy. His kids were born between 1951 (me) and 1959 (my sister). My sister is currently 63. IMO it's conceivable that a WWII vet could have a son who's now 58, especially if his wife was a few years younger.
I do wonder about that story, though, and the use to which Burchett is putting it. A soldier in combat might expect to get shot at, but a nine-year-old at school? I don't think so.
Amen, Michael. That's the only real solution that matters at all. And Ogles is another Santos type in Tennessee who made up his resume. Plus being the one whole entire family appears in their Xmas card with guns. And I saw a little while ago, his donations have gone up since this horror.
Over the years we have heard a lot of non sensical rationalization for why we can't/shouldn't put a ban on assault weapons and tighten up gun ownership laws but the ones from Burkett yesterday have to be top of the list for inanity, insanity and insensitivity. Comparing what happened at Iwo , Tarawa and on Okinawa with what is occurring now weekly in American schools is a combination of stupidity and
political distraction but par for the course from what we have become accustomed to hearing from Republicans.
You might remember it was one of Burkett's fellow Tennessee congressman Andy Ogle who just happens to be from Nashville who famously had his family pose for their Christmas card toting ARs.
My family at one time considered moving to the Nashville area.We have visited there several times and have enjoyed the vibe.Not thinking that way anymore.Just like Florida where we vacationed throughout the years, we don’t want to spend our money in such places.Living in one red state(Ohio)is challenging enough and I don’t want to be around more red citizenry these days.
Ogle's enjoyed a real double-dip from that Christmas card snap. Huge publicity when sent, an encore now, not bad presumably in his gerrymandered district—god help us all.
Ogles is not from Nashville. He is a rep from our gerrymangled Metro Nashville Davidson County. State divided our blue county into 3 districts with each of the three encompassing very red rural counties. None of the 3 reps live in the county.
Off topic, but tngop now forced County to half our council members and more. Pissed that Metro Nashville Council refused to bid for RNC.
OMG! And I’m not very sure I have a “MY God.” After 16 years of cloistered Catholic girls education, I never would have thought that children would be so abandoned. On Monday night, all that my 15 year old granddaughter could say was “they’re 9!” Burchett and Ogle and Green and Graham and ALL of the rest of the GUN aficionados, need to be removed. Anyone who will not vote to limit military grade weapons to the military needs to be sent packing...and not packing heat!
As for making everyone in this country a Christian in order to have a "revival," let's keep in mind that Christian fundamentalist fanatics actually DO dream of forcing their version of Christianity down everyone's throats. They would love to have the power to make all other religions illegal, and to persecute those who refuse to conform. Kinda like reviving the Spanish Inquisition, taking us back to the late 1400s, when "Their Most Catholic Majesties," King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, issued the Edict of Expulsion, throwing out all the Jews and Moslems in the country who refused to convert to Catholicism. That couldn't happen here? I'm sure that's what a lot of Spanish Jews and Moslems said!
The good news, Judith, is they're massively shrinking. They are way down from ten years ago and their kids are embracing "no religion" after being raised inside this hellish thing they call religion.
Onward Christian soldiers,eh?I still think these Republican gun idiots are going to get their “come to Jesus” moment via the ballot box.Maybe people taking to the streets en masse will be a coming attraction here. Look at the numbers of folks in Paris or Tel Aviv who have had it with their f’ed up status quo.There isn’t an easy solution to this plague of guns but we must do something everyday to try to remedy this horrible situation. Nothing changes if nothing changes.
Will they? Tenneessee is as red and ignorant as they come. They have a Republican legislature who has turned its ugly eye on Nashville, one of the greatest places to live because it's got so many educated and decent "liberal" types. The rest of the state is, as one friend of mine answered when someone found out he lived in Atlanta, "Well, yes, if not there then I'd have to say I live in Georgia."
They’re also messing with Knoxville. Changing the way we elect the city council. So much for local control. But hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug for these cretins.
I was born in NY and live in CA and have lived and worked in Europe and Asia - and could do so again if need be. So you'd be right to understand that I'm here by choice.
But the day I feel I need a gun to keep my family and myself safe, I'm leaving.
I would like to ask Burchett this: if the shooter hadn’t had access to a gun, does he think that the killer would have successfully, say, strangled 3 children and 3 adults in quick succession? It’s the guns, stupid! And as for it’s the not guns, it’s the people, rationale? Well, guns were invented by people, are manufactured by people, and are used by people to murder other people. Does that make it any better?
Ok, but even if he lived in Chattanooga and rode a choo-choo in circles around Lookout Mountain, I can't see what difference it would make. He is a Congressional rep from the state with this tragedy gripping the nation and even garnering attention abroad.
At the risk of making a very tasteless choice of words, your aim is dead-on target with the truth and essence of these cultural diseases of gun mania, mass shootings and so-called Christianity that ignores the teachings of Jesus (as best a smart person can divine them from the imperfect gospels)
It's exhausting trying to come up with a strategy to out-maneuver or head off or vote out or shame into doing the right thing the utterly shameless Guns Over People politicians who are dismantling as many gun regulations that protect public safety as they can get their greasy-with-gun-lube fingers on (and yes, I bet they use it in bed, too.) Here's the comment I just left on an opinion in the New York Times who was musing about How Far the Supreme Court Will Go to Arm America:
The Guns Over People judges appointed by Trump are pushing their Arm Everyone Everywhere agenda to the point where Democrats will have no alternative but to expand the Supreme Court and end lifetime tenure on lower courts, just to stop the slaughter. I am wondering whether these pro-gun appointees are all members of the fundamentalist pseudo Christian cult that believes anything is justified as long as it hastens a real world Armageddon in pursuit of a "Second Coming" of a charismatic, compassionate man who died 2000 years ago and was deified in the centuries afterward by followers bent on promoting his legacy of kindness and charity into a religion. A religion whose latest fundamentalist adherents want to strap us all to their doomsday machine so they can try to make their myths come true.
I am numb from the outrage I feel at every mass shooting. In recent years in my region, we had Gilroy and VTA (and going way back the original 101 California shooting that led Sen. Feinstein to propose and pass an assault rifle ban). How is it that these gun nuts can override the desires of the vast majority of Americans who want bans on weapons of war? Rhetorical question I guess when a majority of the Supreme Court totally ignores the first clause of the 2nd Amendment, you know, the part about a “well-regulated militia.” Aaarrrgh.
So Empty G blames the testosterone she stated the shooter was using. Would she also blame T if the shooter were male? The shooter had attended the same Christian school she attacked. Her Christian upbringing sure didn’t keep her from arming herself with two rifles and a pistol and then killing six people.
Testosterone may well have played a role. But it plays a role in the brains of young men as well. Perhaps this speaks to not giving anyone with a surfeit of testosterone access to weapons until the testosterone subsides?
"There it is, the Christian nationalist’s fatalistic solution. Why bother trying to control the guns and stop the shooters when it’s all in God’s hands? Nothing is going to happen unless we have “a revival in this country.'"
Ogles in Tennessee, pictured in their cheery Christmas inappropriate card with all of them, adults and children, celebrating merrily and all with a gun in hand. His state. He is getting grilled and clinging to his right to send that appropriate card. These monsters want the rest of this country to just settle down and accept that every year, a good number of their children are going to be blown to bits in their schools and many, many other innocent people. And to nail this on the trans community, because there always must be an excuse so bizarre and so awful your own eyes bulge, is a victimization in turn, essentally, well, go shoot those awful trans people, who compose less than 1 percent of the population of the U.S. Anything to keep from blaming the gun. It's hard not to hate these cruel and monstrous imbeciles.
Math error: 6.5 million armed police should be 650,000. Sorry. It's been a while since I studied multiplying and dividing.
The R/con revised 3Rs, Revival, Rattlesnakes and Rapture
To err is human, proving your non-divinity. ;-)
It's all right. We're all too traumatized to understand mathematics right now.
It’s that damn pesky extra zero!\
Now multiply that by a police officer's salary.Or maybe just bring back the draft.
The idiot from Tennessee is my congressman. His name is Burchett, btw. He is notorious for invoking his daddy, and his momma, every chance he gets. He’s the Guiliani of Tennessee. A noun, a verb, momma and daddy.
Seems like a case of stolen valor and he really doesn’t deserve to have his father’s name in his mouth.
I can’t help but wonder if the congressman has the same attitude toward immigration, fentanyl and every other problem the country faces. If he does maybe he should just get out of Congress.
Republican: The Can’t Do Party!
The can't do and they won't do.
Stolen valor? Really? I think he made up the whole story about daddy. After all, that is today's GOP. Moreover, there is one thing that you might do to try to stop someone who might be intent on killing you....in the first instance, deny them the most efficient means of doing so.
Probably is made up. My grandfather fought in WWII. He died in 1965 when I was 18. My father fought in Korea, and he is long dead. Would be 102 by now. Congressman from TN is 58. I doubt a father who was 18 or 19 in 1944 or 45 would have been alive to tell him any stories.
Doing the math here -- my father (b. 1922, d. 2008) enlisted in the army in 1942, fought in North Africa and Italy. His kids were born between 1951 (me) and 1959 (my sister). My sister is currently 63. IMO it's conceivable that a WWII vet could have a son who's now 58, especially if his wife was a few years younger.
I do wonder about that story, though, and the use to which Burchett is putting it. A soldier in combat might expect to get shot at, but a nine-year-old at school? I don't think so.
These folks are addicted to fabulist tales. He and Ogles should be the best of friends. They have so much in common and great get.
yeah, he needs to insert another generation to update his "story."
it also sounds a little fatalistic for the kind of "good Christian" this schmuck wants us to think he is.
Amen, Michael. That's the only real solution that matters at all. And Ogles is another Santos type in Tennessee who made up his resume. Plus being the one whole entire family appears in their Xmas card with guns. And I saw a little while ago, his donations have gone up since this horror.
Ugh
Kevin, I am stealing that for online use, thanks!
Of course he won’t
he also mentioned that his kids are homeschooled. I have to allow for the fact that he acknowledged this option "wasn't for everybody."
whatta dick.
That is not surprising at all. I know several just like that and it's the culture of "who's yo mama 'n 'em."
Over the years we have heard a lot of non sensical rationalization for why we can't/shouldn't put a ban on assault weapons and tighten up gun ownership laws but the ones from Burkett yesterday have to be top of the list for inanity, insanity and insensitivity. Comparing what happened at Iwo , Tarawa and on Okinawa with what is occurring now weekly in American schools is a combination of stupidity and
political distraction but par for the course from what we have become accustomed to hearing from Republicans.
You might remember it was one of Burkett's fellow Tennessee congressman Andy Ogle who just happens to be from Nashville who famously had his family pose for their Christmas card toting ARs.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/nashville-rep-andy-ogles-responds-to-criticism-of-christmas-card-of-his-family-posing-with-guns/
With minds like this representing the citizens of Tennessee, it is likely the state will become the new Alabama.
I have a nephew at Vanderbilt, investigating transfer as I write.
That's voting with your feet all right.
Daughters (25, 26) sought out of state colleges and never returned.
My family at one time considered moving to the Nashville area.We have visited there several times and have enjoyed the vibe.Not thinking that way anymore.Just like Florida where we vacationed throughout the years, we don’t want to spend our money in such places.Living in one red state(Ohio)is challenging enough and I don’t want to be around more red citizenry these days.
Ogle's enjoyed a real double-dip from that Christmas card snap. Huge publicity when sent, an encore now, not bad presumably in his gerrymandered district—god help us all.
Ogles is not from Nashville. He is a rep from our gerrymangled Metro Nashville Davidson County. State divided our blue county into 3 districts with each of the three encompassing very red rural counties. None of the 3 reps live in the county.
Off topic, but tngop now forced County to half our council members and more. Pissed that Metro Nashville Council refused to bid for RNC.
OMG! And I’m not very sure I have a “MY God.” After 16 years of cloistered Catholic girls education, I never would have thought that children would be so abandoned. On Monday night, all that my 15 year old granddaughter could say was “they’re 9!” Burchett and Ogle and Green and Graham and ALL of the rest of the GUN aficionados, need to be removed. Anyone who will not vote to limit military grade weapons to the military needs to be sent packing...and not packing heat!
I'm sorry that your granddaughter has to know that. I'm also sad that my 11 year old grandson understands how to respond to an active shooter drill.
As for making everyone in this country a Christian in order to have a "revival," let's keep in mind that Christian fundamentalist fanatics actually DO dream of forcing their version of Christianity down everyone's throats. They would love to have the power to make all other religions illegal, and to persecute those who refuse to conform. Kinda like reviving the Spanish Inquisition, taking us back to the late 1400s, when "Their Most Catholic Majesties," King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, issued the Edict of Expulsion, throwing out all the Jews and Moslems in the country who refused to convert to Catholicism. That couldn't happen here? I'm sure that's what a lot of Spanish Jews and Moslems said!
Fundamentalists are the same everywhere.Mirror images. At least in Israel the zealots have finally aroused the left from a long, deep sleep.
The good news, Judith, is they're massively shrinking. They are way down from ten years ago and their kids are embracing "no religion" after being raised inside this hellish thing they call religion.
oh lordy,
i hope you're right
https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx
as i have declared before,
i follow the words of John 10:11:71...
imagine there's no heaven...
so maybe someday they'll join us and the world can live as one
There you go! I was just looking for one of these.
It's popping up all over my news feeds kind of regularly these days. It depends on what else is going on.
Onward Christian soldiers,eh?I still think these Republican gun idiots are going to get their “come to Jesus” moment via the ballot box.Maybe people taking to the streets en masse will be a coming attraction here. Look at the numbers of folks in Paris or Tel Aviv who have had it with their f’ed up status quo.There isn’t an easy solution to this plague of guns but we must do something everyday to try to remedy this horrible situation. Nothing changes if nothing changes.
Will they? Tenneessee is as red and ignorant as they come. They have a Republican legislature who has turned its ugly eye on Nashville, one of the greatest places to live because it's got so many educated and decent "liberal" types. The rest of the state is, as one friend of mine answered when someone found out he lived in Atlanta, "Well, yes, if not there then I'd have to say I live in Georgia."
They’re also messing with Knoxville. Changing the way we elect the city council. So much for local control. But hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug for these cretins.
I think that's what they were doing to Nashville as well.
I was born in NY and live in CA and have lived and worked in Europe and Asia - and could do so again if need be. So you'd be right to understand that I'm here by choice.
But the day I feel I need a gun to keep my family and myself safe, I'm leaving.
I would like to ask Burchett this: if the shooter hadn’t had access to a gun, does he think that the killer would have successfully, say, strangled 3 children and 3 adults in quick succession? It’s the guns, stupid! And as for it’s the not guns, it’s the people, rationale? Well, guns were invented by people, are manufactured by people, and are used by people to murder other people. Does that make it any better?
And don’t forget that when Burchett was asked about his own daughter, he very pretentiously pointed out that she was homeschooled.
And his daughter has no friends at all in other schooling venues? The shooting in Nashville was at a Christian-sponsored charter school.
He lives in Knoxville. But your point stands.
Ok, but even if he lived in Chattanooga and rode a choo-choo in circles around Lookout Mountain, I can't see what difference it would make. He is a Congressional rep from the state with this tragedy gripping the nation and even garnering attention abroad.
At the risk of making a very tasteless choice of words, your aim is dead-on target with the truth and essence of these cultural diseases of gun mania, mass shootings and so-called Christianity that ignores the teachings of Jesus (as best a smart person can divine them from the imperfect gospels)
.
It's exhausting trying to come up with a strategy to out-maneuver or head off or vote out or shame into doing the right thing the utterly shameless Guns Over People politicians who are dismantling as many gun regulations that protect public safety as they can get their greasy-with-gun-lube fingers on (and yes, I bet they use it in bed, too.) Here's the comment I just left on an opinion in the New York Times who was musing about How Far the Supreme Court Will Go to Arm America:
The Guns Over People judges appointed by Trump are pushing their Arm Everyone Everywhere agenda to the point where Democrats will have no alternative but to expand the Supreme Court and end lifetime tenure on lower courts, just to stop the slaughter. I am wondering whether these pro-gun appointees are all members of the fundamentalist pseudo Christian cult that believes anything is justified as long as it hastens a real world Armageddon in pursuit of a "Second Coming" of a charismatic, compassionate man who died 2000 years ago and was deified in the centuries afterward by followers bent on promoting his legacy of kindness and charity into a religion. A religion whose latest fundamentalist adherents want to strap us all to their doomsday machine so they can try to make their myths come true.
I am numb from the outrage I feel at every mass shooting. In recent years in my region, we had Gilroy and VTA (and going way back the original 101 California shooting that led Sen. Feinstein to propose and pass an assault rifle ban). How is it that these gun nuts can override the desires of the vast majority of Americans who want bans on weapons of war? Rhetorical question I guess when a majority of the Supreme Court totally ignores the first clause of the 2nd Amendment, you know, the part about a “well-regulated militia.” Aaarrrgh.
Same as the anti-abortionists can override the majority’s will to privacy and bodily autonomy, I guess.
Read this:
www.salon.com/2023/03/29/wants-americans-to-think-society-is-an-apocalyptic-wasteland-mass-help-him/
^^^^^^^
Amanda Marcotte on the probability this is part of intentional, completely amoral, fanatical political strategy.
So Empty G blames the testosterone she stated the shooter was using. Would she also blame T if the shooter were male? The shooter had attended the same Christian school she attacked. Her Christian upbringing sure didn’t keep her from arming herself with two rifles and a pistol and then killing six people.
Testosterone may well have played a role. But it plays a role in the brains of young men as well. Perhaps this speaks to not giving anyone with a surfeit of testosterone access to weapons until the testosterone subsides?
No one needs an assault weapon, male or female, testosterone or not.
"There it is, the Christian nationalist’s fatalistic solution. Why bother trying to control the guns and stop the shooters when it’s all in God’s hands? Nothing is going to happen unless we have “a revival in this country.'"
the lord works in mysterious ways, don't he?
I'm done whining about how bad things are. Here's what i plan to do:
Never vote for any Republican, or anyone else who will not commit to advancing sensible gun reform legislation.
Support (campaign contributions, votes, social media) any politician who pledges to
Expand the Supreme Court.
Abolish the Electoral College.
Grant statehood to the District of
Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Ban the sale of semiautomatic, AR-15
style rifles and establish a buyback
program for the millions in private hands.
Communicate regularly with my lawmakers in Washington and my state on these same issues.
Any other ideas?
That's a great list.
Support Abortion and the ERA, vote for the John Lewis Act, Take “Woke” away from Repubs.
Ogles in Tennessee, pictured in their cheery Christmas inappropriate card with all of them, adults and children, celebrating merrily and all with a gun in hand. His state. He is getting grilled and clinging to his right to send that appropriate card. These monsters want the rest of this country to just settle down and accept that every year, a good number of their children are going to be blown to bits in their schools and many, many other innocent people. And to nail this on the trans community, because there always must be an excuse so bizarre and so awful your own eyes bulge, is a victimization in turn, essentally, well, go shoot those awful trans people, who compose less than 1 percent of the population of the U.S. Anything to keep from blaming the gun. It's hard not to hate these cruel and monstrous imbeciles.
They know their audience. But the number of followers peeling off do provide some solace.
Young people for the most part and they're not buying it. There is hope.