The Republican Party in the state of Texas wanted guns to be easy to buy and own, with no requirement for a license or safety training, with over 50 percent of the gun sales in the state to be at gun shows where there is no requirement for a background check? They got it.
Please don't count all of us in that disgusting pack of monsters. Like many other Texans (apparently about 3% less than vote GOP) are lifelong Democrats of the "yellow dog" variety. We have never voted republican in any State, District or local election. It just goes to show you that the difference between democracy and autocracy is a very thin one. The republicans usually win by about 3%-4% margins, but it might as well be double digits. For those of you looking in from the outside it would appear that the whole state of Texas is predominately red. That's not the case. It's that once they got control of the Texas Legislature, they gerrymandered the map so that they eliminated democratic "strongholds". It was pretty easy. If you move a few republicans over to what had been a neighboring Democratic district, while moving a few Democrats out of that district and back over to the heavily republican district, you get two reliable republican districts. Simple. There are actually strong Democratic districts in the Houston and Austin areas. Just not enough of them. We're all looking forward to this upcoming Gubernatorial election. Beto O'Rourke, the Democrat is polling very close to greg abbot and there's a little hope here that it just might be a start. (Notice that I refuse to capitalize "greg abbot" and "republican").
It was and remains hard to be a Texas Democrat and turn out to vote time and time again and know your candidates statewide have probably zero chance at winning. Haven't won a statewide race since, what is it, 1994? Millions of voters getting nada for their time and efforts (apart from all the more recent suppression and gerrymandering). The state Democratic party is inept and sidelined -- Texas is a one-party banana republic, in essence. And the slimiest and most rotten bananas are in charge. (Look at how Paxton keeps skating along despite being under felony indictment since before he was ever elected the first time!)
And that's sad, because the Dems used to have a Labor-Farmer progressive wing that was an alternative to the moneyed elites (see Fightin' Bob LaFollette et al.) And they abandoned it when they abandoned the labor unions and the rural voters, after about 1970. No one since Humphrey or RFK has been a national voice for that advocacy.
Something else happened "about 1970": Nixon's "southern strategy," which was essentially about vilifying people of color and women who believed in reproductive (and other forms of) choice. As it turned out, too much of that "progressive" wing saw themselves as white and/or Christian first and everything else second. So please don't go pinning it all on "the Dems," unless you think they should have tried to out-racist, out-Christian the Republicans (which, of course, some of them did).
thanks, Donn, for giving us the word from the blue side.
yes, the gops years earlier were craftily strategic in planning their advancement to gain control of state legislative seats and thereby gerrymander to cement their place(s).
democrats, on the other hand were blithely jumping onto various social-issue bandwagons with no, or poor, leadership in the important strategic matters. and democrats STILL haven't learned to fight strategically (ie. dirty).
social issues ARE important and NEED corrections, but we are NEVER going to achieve change without getting in power to do such. that HAS to be step #1.
then let disparate democrat camps have say and sway.
and i have been dropping caps starting from the trump regime.
At least Beto has been out there, challenging Abbott the Clueless Dork and his evil minions, and speaking to the anti-NRA convention protestors in Houston today! I'm proud of him. Maybe this will give Texas Dems a fighting chance.
Ted Cruz advises schools to have only one working entrance, with an armed police officer standing at it. I am hoping that everyone realizes how stupid this is before some school adopts the plan and then has a fire, whereupon teachers, students, and staff all stampede the one working door (or possibly manage to smash whatever locked doors there are). P.S. Kat Abu, on Twitter, put together an awesome video of Republican talking heads diagnosing the massacre and giving their prescriptions. Spoiler alert: Not a single one of them mentions gun control of any kind. If you're on Twitter, it's easy to find and very worth it.
Twenty-eight years as a cop, and the four years before that a newspaper reporter, and now in my retirement I have become (pretended to be?) a writer, so I’m supposed to be eloquent and clever and facile with the written word. Nope. Fuck Texas. Leave it at that.
but, Mark, we need you to use wordcraft skills to put power into words that will stir to life somnolent democrat voters to get out this time and Do.Their.Civic.Duty.
i am sure even in texass there are more of us than them..we just need to drag their apathetic butts out to vote.
Texas native and resident here…unfortunately, everything Mr Truscott said is true. After decades of strategic political ploys, all the pieces are now in place here for one party to impose its will and dominate society. They gamed the system to their advantage and out maneuvered the opposition. As reported in an earlier article, the only solution is to vote them out but I’m not encouraged we’re playing on a level field either. Please don’t think we’re all heartless bastards like the others who are.
PS: I keep wondering where these kids are getting the money to load up on all these armaments. Cash? Credit cards? How are they managing this? I could barely afford gas for my car at that age, or a few books, or to take a girl out on a date now and then. And I had a part-time job at a grocery store.
i had wondered that and looked up the model of gun the killer bought. DD AR-15 guns went from $1300 to $3900. he bought 2 within 3 days at say $2600 +tax each. plus 375 bullets ($0.22 to $1.16each). he also had 6? 30 round capacity clips ($12 to $16ea.)
what 17 yr old (JUST turned 18) has $5800 to spend like this?
Dems messaging has been flawed for decades. Between guns, voting rights and abortion, there is a golden opportunity to win elections, IF they stay on point and are articulate in presenting the case. More than 50% of the electorate support the Dems position in each of these issues! Keep it simple stupid! No excuse to lose if people vote. Big if….
These deranged people (not just in TX) want to maintain the white patriarchy at all costs. Their agenda is to keep women down by forcing them to be controlled by white men laws, keep people scared by allowing rampant guns and gun violence, make a fuss about the unborn/undeveloped cells but say nothing can be done when children are starving or being massacred, try to eliminate any other groups of people from gaining any power even though others are the majority. They holler about their personal freedom and rights while suppressing and denying everyone else their right to privacy and safety. A large number of them claim to be Christians but act and think the opposite, while trying to impose their religion on the entire country. Isn’t this why we came to America in the first place, so that no one will tell us we have to follow a religion at all? They are rife with hypocrisy and projection, primitive ‘reasoning’ and self-inflation. This sick minority will endlessly continue to bully, steal, manipulate, cheat, gaslight and try to rule everyone else if we let them. Their behavior has been reinforced with rewards and no discernible consequences - a recipe for disaster.
i have to say i get a kick watching national reporters trying to make sense of texas culture through the "news" conferences held by barely conscious republican politicians and their enablers. i think someone needs to write the book and explain to those not living in proximity to that benighted place what texas is actually about. poor eduction, no health care, barely literate and that's got nothing to do with how good the citizens are but until those citizens rise up and throw the bums out we will see more and more dysfunction and incompetence and deaths in the great state of texastan
One other thing the Texas Repugnants do very well is "thoughts & prayers". Well, at least they say they do. They only think about the victims & their families during news coverage and only then are they thinking of a way to make themselves as small as possible to deflect (or assign) blame. And my guess is very few of them say a single prayer for the victims and their families, unless it's to pray for some way to survive the hate directed toward them by the rational people of this country who are exhausted by the seemingly regular massacre of innocents by gun-loving wing nuts. And what will the Orange Stain speak about at the NRA convention? Your guess is as good as mine but it sure as hell won't address gun violence in the country. Almost certainly his long-winded remarks will be all about him. What a disgusting POS!!
Who is responsible? Go look in the mirror, we have let this happen because so far it hasn't touched us personally. Nothing will change until the majority of the American people have been personally affected by these tragedies.
I agree with you about how change occurs. Only when republicans woke up and discovered they had gay kids and relatives did things begin to move on rights for the LGBTQ community. While I am not suggesting or encouraging more violence, I believe if it weren’t public schools, but let’s say the schools where Ted Cruz’s kids go, or Abbots grandchildren hang, or Ivanka’s little wankers go to be educated, this would all be a different conversation. They seem fine with platitudes if their relatives aren’t moving targets; It is not how many kids it’s going to take before things change. It’s “whose kid” it’s going to take to get change moving. Unfortunately
Please don't count all of us in that disgusting pack of monsters. Like many other Texans (apparently about 3% less than vote GOP) are lifelong Democrats of the "yellow dog" variety. We have never voted republican in any State, District or local election. It just goes to show you that the difference between democracy and autocracy is a very thin one. The republicans usually win by about 3%-4% margins, but it might as well be double digits. For those of you looking in from the outside it would appear that the whole state of Texas is predominately red. That's not the case. It's that once they got control of the Texas Legislature, they gerrymandered the map so that they eliminated democratic "strongholds". It was pretty easy. If you move a few republicans over to what had been a neighboring Democratic district, while moving a few Democrats out of that district and back over to the heavily republican district, you get two reliable republican districts. Simple. There are actually strong Democratic districts in the Houston and Austin areas. Just not enough of them. We're all looking forward to this upcoming Gubernatorial election. Beto O'Rourke, the Democrat is polling very close to greg abbot and there's a little hope here that it just might be a start. (Notice that I refuse to capitalize "greg abbot" and "republican").
It was and remains hard to be a Texas Democrat and turn out to vote time and time again and know your candidates statewide have probably zero chance at winning. Haven't won a statewide race since, what is it, 1994? Millions of voters getting nada for their time and efforts (apart from all the more recent suppression and gerrymandering). The state Democratic party is inept and sidelined -- Texas is a one-party banana republic, in essence. And the slimiest and most rotten bananas are in charge. (Look at how Paxton keeps skating along despite being under felony indictment since before he was ever elected the first time!)
Not easy to be a Dem in lots of places, especially rural America.
And that's sad, because the Dems used to have a Labor-Farmer progressive wing that was an alternative to the moneyed elites (see Fightin' Bob LaFollette et al.) And they abandoned it when they abandoned the labor unions and the rural voters, after about 1970. No one since Humphrey or RFK has been a national voice for that advocacy.
Something else happened "about 1970": Nixon's "southern strategy," which was essentially about vilifying people of color and women who believed in reproductive (and other forms of) choice. As it turned out, too much of that "progressive" wing saw themselves as white and/or Christian first and everything else second. So please don't go pinning it all on "the Dems," unless you think they should have tried to out-racist, out-Christian the Republicans (which, of course, some of them did).
thanks, Donn, for giving us the word from the blue side.
yes, the gops years earlier were craftily strategic in planning their advancement to gain control of state legislative seats and thereby gerrymander to cement their place(s).
democrats, on the other hand were blithely jumping onto various social-issue bandwagons with no, or poor, leadership in the important strategic matters. and democrats STILL haven't learned to fight strategically (ie. dirty).
social issues ARE important and NEED corrections, but we are NEVER going to achieve change without getting in power to do such. that HAS to be step #1.
then let disparate democrat camps have say and sway.
and i have been dropping caps starting from the trump regime.
(further, eases my hunting and pecking)
Will Rogers once said, "I'm not a member of any organized political party ..... I'm a Democrat".
Google Gym Jordan's Ohio district to see how the GOP has gerrymandered this country. Scary!
The tragedy has opened the Texas fiasco to the world perfectly.
Ted Cruz had no answers for the European reporter. What a gold mine of inept clips by Abbott and his henchmen for the upcoming election!
Gold mine? Only Dems will pay any attention— GOP morons will remain oblivious. They actually LIKE Ted Cruz!
At least Beto has been out there, challenging Abbott the Clueless Dork and his evil minions, and speaking to the anti-NRA convention protestors in Houston today! I'm proud of him. Maybe this will give Texas Dems a fighting chance.
If you are old enough, Ted Cruz is the Eddie Haskell of this generation.
Ted Cruz = Smarmy
I gets it! "That's a very nice dress you're wearing, Mr. Cruz!"
The pearls are lovely!
I am old enough, but I never watched “Leave It To Beaver.” Had to google the name, which I had never before heard. It sure does fit Ted Cruz!
Ted Cruz advises schools to have only one working entrance, with an armed police officer standing at it. I am hoping that everyone realizes how stupid this is before some school adopts the plan and then has a fire, whereupon teachers, students, and staff all stampede the one working door (or possibly manage to smash whatever locked doors there are). P.S. Kat Abu, on Twitter, put together an awesome video of Republican talking heads diagnosing the massacre and giving their prescriptions. Spoiler alert: Not a single one of them mentions gun control of any kind. If you're on Twitter, it's easy to find and very worth it.
Twenty-eight years as a cop, and the four years before that a newspaper reporter, and now in my retirement I have become (pretended to be?) a writer, so I’m supposed to be eloquent and clever and facile with the written word. Nope. Fuck Texas. Leave it at that.
but, Mark, we need you to use wordcraft skills to put power into words that will stir to life somnolent democrat voters to get out this time and Do.Their.Civic.Duty.
i am sure even in texass there are more of us than them..we just need to drag their apathetic butts out to vote.
Texas native and resident here…unfortunately, everything Mr Truscott said is true. After decades of strategic political ploys, all the pieces are now in place here for one party to impose its will and dominate society. They gamed the system to their advantage and out maneuvered the opposition. As reported in an earlier article, the only solution is to vote them out but I’m not encouraged we’re playing on a level field either. Please don’t think we’re all heartless bastards like the others who are.
They wanted Texas to have the best equipped teenage assassin. They got him.
The only caveat I might add, is that Texas REPUBLICANS got what they wanted.
Texas: A state that treasures its guns more than its children. It’s hard to fathom.
Thanks, Lucian, keep writing and keep telling the truth.
PS: I keep wondering where these kids are getting the money to load up on all these armaments. Cash? Credit cards? How are they managing this? I could barely afford gas for my car at that age, or a few books, or to take a girl out on a date now and then. And I had a part-time job at a grocery store.
yes
i had wondered that and looked up the model of gun the killer bought. DD AR-15 guns went from $1300 to $3900. he bought 2 within 3 days at say $2600 +tax each. plus 375 bullets ($0.22 to $1.16each). he also had 6? 30 round capacity clips ($12 to $16ea.)
what 17 yr old (JUST turned 18) has $5800 to spend like this?
I know! Holy Moley! I'd like to see some digging into that issue. Who enabled this shooting? Where did that money come from? Was it legit or what?
Something for investigative reporters to look into.
Dems messaging has been flawed for decades. Between guns, voting rights and abortion, there is a golden opportunity to win elections, IF they stay on point and are articulate in presenting the case. More than 50% of the electorate support the Dems position in each of these issues! Keep it simple stupid! No excuse to lose if people vote. Big if….
Not all Texans wanted these things! I am sad and angry!
yes
the truly sad thing us that possibly/probably, the victims were likely from the blue shades...
and more probably/likely the shooter(s) from the red side.
These deranged people (not just in TX) want to maintain the white patriarchy at all costs. Their agenda is to keep women down by forcing them to be controlled by white men laws, keep people scared by allowing rampant guns and gun violence, make a fuss about the unborn/undeveloped cells but say nothing can be done when children are starving or being massacred, try to eliminate any other groups of people from gaining any power even though others are the majority. They holler about their personal freedom and rights while suppressing and denying everyone else their right to privacy and safety. A large number of them claim to be Christians but act and think the opposite, while trying to impose their religion on the entire country. Isn’t this why we came to America in the first place, so that no one will tell us we have to follow a religion at all? They are rife with hypocrisy and projection, primitive ‘reasoning’ and self-inflation. This sick minority will endlessly continue to bully, steal, manipulate, cheat, gaslight and try to rule everyone else if we let them. Their behavior has been reinforced with rewards and no discernible consequences - a recipe for disaster.
Brava!!!!
And it's not just the guns. It's now coward cops. Inept, too.
i have to say i get a kick watching national reporters trying to make sense of texas culture through the "news" conferences held by barely conscious republican politicians and their enablers. i think someone needs to write the book and explain to those not living in proximity to that benighted place what texas is actually about. poor eduction, no health care, barely literate and that's got nothing to do with how good the citizens are but until those citizens rise up and throw the bums out we will see more and more dysfunction and incompetence and deaths in the great state of texastan
One other thing the Texas Repugnants do very well is "thoughts & prayers". Well, at least they say they do. They only think about the victims & their families during news coverage and only then are they thinking of a way to make themselves as small as possible to deflect (or assign) blame. And my guess is very few of them say a single prayer for the victims and their families, unless it's to pray for some way to survive the hate directed toward them by the rational people of this country who are exhausted by the seemingly regular massacre of innocents by gun-loving wing nuts. And what will the Orange Stain speak about at the NRA convention? Your guess is as good as mine but it sure as hell won't address gun violence in the country. Almost certainly his long-winded remarks will be all about him. What a disgusting POS!!
I already know what Dumpy will talk about: The Big Lie over and over and over again.
Glad you're here to call these liars to task.
Who is responsible? Go look in the mirror, we have let this happen because so far it hasn't touched us personally. Nothing will change until the majority of the American people have been personally affected by these tragedies.
I agree with you about how change occurs. Only when republicans woke up and discovered they had gay kids and relatives did things begin to move on rights for the LGBTQ community. While I am not suggesting or encouraging more violence, I believe if it weren’t public schools, but let’s say the schools where Ted Cruz’s kids go, or Abbots grandchildren hang, or Ivanka’s little wankers go to be educated, this would all be a different conversation. They seem fine with platitudes if their relatives aren’t moving targets; It is not how many kids it’s going to take before things change. It’s “whose kid” it’s going to take to get change moving. Unfortunately