My new commute sometimes takes me past the private university where there was a shooting almost exactly 10 years ago, even here in Barbara Lee-land.
If we're doing a Uvalde thread, I'll link my comment from the other thread because I sure did appreciate Biden's prompt, forceful, empathetic response.
Interestingly, at least NBC broke into regular programming for Biden. I'm not sure, but I don't think that's standard operating procedure any more.
As much as I admired Biden's response, Arizona Rep. Gallego has him beat for brevity and directness.
This tweet by Gallego is really good, too.
As I said in the other thread, I guess I appreciate the greater forthrightness, but I demand action, and I don't think the Dems are well served by acting like the current state of the Senate means sitting on our hands all year. Biden could be harassing gun manufacturers, holding up background checks, all sorts of things. And we need votes to keep GOP on record against any action.
Can we check first if holding up a background check doesn't mean the sale goes through regardless?
I'm pretty wrecked over this (as is everyone). But the knowledge that nothing ever changes is just soul-deadening. I hate them all so much.
It's not even that nothing will happen, which we already knew, it's that the responses are the same boilerplate "mental health" "uplift in prayer" "now is not the time for politics" that might be tone deaf the first time but the 5th or 6th time are just a big fuck you there's nothing you can do to make us listen.
I would be ashamed to face people who know me, or myself, if I said in public some of the things that politicians and pundits say after these regular catastrophes.
I find it difficult to believe that I ever had any respect, however thin, for the DC classes.
The mental health thing is such goddamn bullshit. It makes me so angry. Also for many people with mental illness the person they are most likely to kill is themself and guns are a particularly lethal method, so not having guns as easily accessible helps with that too.
And as has been pointed out they say we need to improve mental health care but they voted against ACA, BBB, and anything else that actually supported such improvements.
Somehow the fact that one of the dead teachers has a son who joined the Marines last summer made me bawl. Babies get mowed down in school and barely not babies get turned into canon fodder supposedly to protect their communities but not against any of the actual threats.
Somehow the fact that one of the dead teachers has a son who joined the Marines last summer made me bawl. Babies get mowed down in school and barely not babies get turned into canon fodder supposedly to protect their communities but not against any of the actual threats.
I'm going to be interested only if the conservatives just come out with "school shooting are good, actually." Until then, I am not entertained!
Hope no one shoots my kids.
Honestly since we're now out of Iraq and Afghanistan it might be safer to be a Marine than a school teacher.
You can get lunch on a tray either way.
only if the conservatives just come out with "school shooting are good, actually."
I've seen a (reposted, unverified) conservative argument that USian are free=>USians can have guns=>there will be school mass shootings=>we accept them as the price of freedom.
Not quite the same as saying the shootings are good, but closer than I expected anyone to get.
You should have lower expectations. Like Zardoz, but without the subtlety and camo instead of red diapers.
18: Oh sure, I've seen that argument made by actual conservatives, and it's a totally legit argument. The same way I used to be a proponent of largely unfettered free speech, honest conservatives favor unfettered gun ownership. I was able to acknowledge that free speech had its costs -- Nazis marching in Jewish neighborhoods, for instance -- and the honest gun absolutists are entirely prepared to grant that the cost of our precious gun freedom is the occasional massacre.
I really don't understand this whole line of analysis ( typified in this Grwakonomics podcast ) that since overall gun violence is (was?) Down, and mass shootings are a tiny part of of overall gun violence, which is basically "conventional" violence, we shouldn't worry about mass shootings. Like, yes, mass shootings *are* very rare but they are also horrific and and out of no where and there's nothing anyone can do about them on an individual level. I can do things to try and prepare to deal with conventional crime and mitigate it and also have some warning. The difference leads to a significant element of terror and trauma. Why does that not matter socially/economically/politically? Why is it irrational to consider that it matters?
Oops apparently I can't type of tag on my phone.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-think-about-guns/
The front page of The Onion is quite something just now.
23: Isn't that the same headline/article they run each time? Maybe minor adjustments to the article text?
The dumbest take I saw so far was that we should spend 9.8 billion to put an armed retired vet at every school. After all, we just spent 9.8b on Ukraine, so isn't this worth it, too?
That video of the parents pleading with the cops* to do something while their kids were being massacred and the cops doing nothing and instead restrained the parents is enraging. Heads should roll.
*fully kitted out with body armor and M4s.
24- I think the point is each entry on the homepage now is a separate incident.
27: And the stories of ICE waiting to take parents who are trying to find out if their kids are alive.
There's also a claim that they got the shooter locked in the room where he killed the whole class, but instead of breaking in the cops kept him locked in there while they went around to get their own kids from other rooms. That might be a bit of internet fiction because it seems too inhuman to contemplate.
Pokey came home terrified yesterday. He'd been freaked out over the Buffalo shooting, and had comforted himself that it couldn't happen here/to him, and plus he's already pretty fragile about leaving elementary school this week, and it was just way too much for him.
Some fairly well-established preliminary conclusions: https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1529812650716188673
One should not be surprised by the police performance here. This has been their actual response for decades.
As for some cops rescuing their own children before taking down the shooter, that seems to be corroborated by this public statement: https://twitter.com/SawyerHackett/status/1529808809719480320?s=20&t=EchWrN3bAf6MlkuifFEYqw
about halfway into the video. A charitable viewer could say this wasn't clear and specific; a cynical viewer might see a rare moment of accidental candor.
Since the police are likely to investigate themselves, we're not likely to learn the truth, at least not for months or years. But sometimes we do: https://twitter.com/the_cleric/status/1494063483616477185?s=20&t=EchWrN3bAf6MlkuifFEYqw
In summary, the cops aren't shit, never have been, never will be.
The details of the link in 32 are nauseating.
34: They really are. Especially when Ted Cruz was going on about how it would have been better if the teachers had been armed. I can't imagine the sense of abandonment a patient in that situation would feel.
I wrote patient, because I was thinking about a conversation at work at the same time, but I meant to write parent.
I hope you didn't accidentally tell someone at work they were about to be a parent.
Can you imagine going through all the effort to raise a child and the result is Ted Cruz?
I maybe have more sympathy than most for confused cops involved in a shootout. Whatever else they should have been doing, it's crystal clear that they needed to be keeping parents out of the building.
The society and government of the United States are designed to produce outcomes like this, and the gun nuts are well-served by our desire to point fingers at the individuals who fuck up.
Cops in the video worrying more about harassing the parents worried about their kids dying in real time than in actually stopping the gun nut seems on-brand.
38: look up his parents; I think Ted turned out pretty much the way they wanted.
Whatever else they should have been doing, it's crystal clear that they needed to be keeping parents out of the building.
Fuck that. Absolutely fuck that fucking bullshit.
If the cops aren't going to do their claimed job, they can damned sure get the fuck out of the way of their betters.
37: No, but I was just in a meeting where a physician said that charting such and such a course would really be abandoning a certain segment of our patients.
38: Hard agree.
Wasn't Ted Cruz's dad the zodiac killer?
I'm pretty sure the next step in our descent to dystopia involves one parent with a gun shooting another parent with a gun as they go into the school from different doors. I think we might avoid a parent with a gun killing a student at elementary schools, but at a high school I'm less certain.
47: I think that happens already. Twenty years ago a hockey parent killed another parent. That was in MA where we have strict gun control, and no g7ns were involved. They just beat the other parent to death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Junta
48: That's different. I'm talking about killing someone they didn't want to kill.
I'm not saying it's a great idea for parents to kill each other because of school sports. I'm just saying I don't think it's a threat to society as a whole.
50: I'm assuming he's Grover Cleveland above, until proven otherwise.
I was proximal to a mass hockey parent fight just a couple months ago! In the game before ours one team accused the other of bringing in ringers for the playoffs and after the game did the primate-dominance pointing/going face to face with chests out/get your hands off me act. I have a decent phone video of part of it. My team was in the locker room right behind this so when it was time for our game I stuck my head out and said "is everyone finished here" and a mom yelled at me "you better not come out while we're still here you cheater" and I pointed out that I was from a totally different team. She eventually apologized to me but yes I was glad it was MA where it's very unlikely anyone had a gun.
This wasn't high level club with scholarships or scouts, it was like the quarterfinals of the third division second tier inter-town league where there something like 60 teams are winners across all ages and tiers so I don't know why they cared so much.
In all seriousness, I cannot shake the rock in my stomach over this shooting.
54: Probably self-selection from the kind of parents who like having their kids play hockey.
Compared to the average parent, obviously; present company not implicated.
55: Have you tried dealing with stress by beating up a youth sports referee?
This level of societal wrongness feels unbearable and intolerable and yet there's nothing constructive to do. It feels like there is no justice anywhere and no path to a kinder country.
Fuck, I want out of America.
||
NMM to Ray Liotta. Fuck fuck fuck!
|>
59: This incident has my wife revisiting the possibility of getting Italian citizenship by descent, which we think she's technically eligible for, but the paperwork is challenging.
I'm so angry at the NY Times article arguing that it doesn't matter that the police did nothing for so long because "[m]ost if not all of the victims were believed to have been shot within the first few minutes that the gunman arrived at the school, according to the timeline." It's absurd to use hindsight to say that the cops refusing to do anything was justified. Oh wait, the cops did do something. They threatened to use their tasers on parents that wanted to save their children.
I'm so angry at the NY Times article arguing that it doesn't matter that the police did nothing for so long because "[m]ost if not all of the victims were believed to have been shot within the first few minutes that the gunman arrived at the school, according to the timeline." It's absurd to use hindsight to say that the cops refusing to do anything was justified. Oh wait, the cops did do something. They threatened to use their tasers on parents that wanted to save their children.
Speaking of having an itchy trigger finger.
Hard, sad agree with 55. There's a part of my brain that realizes that this is just the latest in an interminable string of unbearable tragedies that I've somehow borne, but I am really struggling this time in a way that feels new.
It's now being reported that the police cuffed one mother and pepper sprayed another parent: https://www.wsj.com/articles/uvalde-residents-voice-frustration-over-shooting-response-11653588161
I am not the transphobic cop, just a longtime lurker.
Crover Gleveland is a great pseud.
66: Did you deliberately transition to a pseud from "Presidential"? Anyway, once our supply chain issues are worked out, I will be sending you a fruit basket.
67 it is but Wry Cooter is still available
I'm sorry Heebie. It is pretty close to you isn't it? I'm sorry about your kid's anxiety.
I figure I'm struggling with it more because I'm pregnant.
I am trying to focus on the Senate. It seems like the only possibly productive venue for action.
40.1 love you man but this is a shit take
JFC https://twitter.com/ernie_zuniga/status/1529872688939995136?s=21&t=LJzqIUIqQAL2hlknR7OPdQ
61,72 I've also been looking into doing this.
72: I would! Mostly I notice that searching for anything related finds a thousand possibly-sketchy agencies that want to help you with this. I mean, we could use help, but the number of such places and their aggressive SEO makes me suspicious.
As my grandfather said when he moved to Omaha from Naples, "Out of the Great Sea to Middle-West I am come. In this place I will abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world.'" I think Pittsburgh is pushing it as far as I can.
He lived briefly in Philadelphia, so there's precedent.
yeah no way is g/crover c/gleveland the slc cop, absolutely no way. at least not the one i knew on here (i've been told he deteriorated over a number of years).
seems useless but - solidarity with the sheer terror of every kid & parent.
61, 72, and 74: I think my husband could get UK citizenship, because his grandfather was British. The grandfather emigrated when great grandmother married a Canadian soldier. His biological great grandfather was killed in WWI. But the way it worked was that you had to have a job lined up in the UK first, so no dice. Also, post Brexit the UK is less appealing as an escape route.
I'm jumping in with an email address, in case SP will share Italian citizenship info with a lurker (I have accumulated many documents but have been stalled for the reasons Nathan lists in 75
I also wonder: how to put pressure on Dems who are responding to this event in pro-cop ways? This seems like the kind of moment where we'll look back in a few weeks and say "well that was wasted..." Does it do good to call out generally progressive candidates on social media? If I assume that Dems posting / retweeting the usual "grateful / service" copaganda reflects not sincere belief but rather their sense of tactical political necessity or even their plain fear, what to do?
I've toyed with getting Irish citizenship (I have one definite grandparent and one complicated but probably), and I've been thinking I should get serious. I do need to find my grandfather's birth certificate somehow, which is the sort of thing that I'm sure is easy if you do that kind of thing but I find a little defeating.
The technical minimum is two. Less the four raises questions.
I also wonder: how to put pressure on Dems who are responding to this event in pro-cop ways?
I think/hope the exceptionally terrible response of the cops in this specific case will help tamp down that sort of thing among Dems. (Republicans are a lost cause of course and will say whatever to try to distract from the problem.) It's really outrageous, heartbreaking stuff.
NYT headline right now is "Police Defend Response to Texas Shooting, as Parents Criticize It." So that does seem to be the emerging media narrative.
They updated it. Earlier today it was "Police Defend Response to Texas Shooting, as Parents Ask About Clinton Email."
79.1: I'm pretty sure heebie didn't for a moment think ex-President Cleveland was gswift. She was taunting gswift, who like all ex-commenters is assumed to still be reading every comment here.
But maybe heebie owes g/cleveland an apology.
IIRC there were one or two times he did not side with the default cop narrative. Chauvin maybe.
I thought it was a gentle reminder that you should not go presidential without a valid reason, such as a cop offering an opinion about copinesss.
88 is correct, and I do apologize for it.
70: It's metro San Antonio in roughly the same sense that we are, but in a totally different direction. But I definitely have had students from there, and am loosely aware of it as a town.
Great. Now I have to lower my estimate of your subtlety.
lots of people saying they feel despair.
Doesn't anyone feel cold hate for these cops, the gun nuts?
Cops who are too spineless to stop a single shooter and who try to stop parents from saving their kids should be the new face of Police for the next year.
GOP: cheer gunfights in the schools.
Dems: fire the cowardly cops, hire new cops to fight crime, not protect their own asses.
Liberals constantly expressing empathy, disappointment, and sorrow instead of outrage and contempt is why the median american doesn't trust democrats for anything related to security.
I am feeling the cold hate for these cops, yes. It's literally making me nauseated and off it my stomach, I'm so angry.
I am such a confused squish on defunding the police. There does seem to have to be someone to do some of the police functions: e.g., useless as they were about arresting the NYC subway shooter a few weeks ago, someone had to come get him once the cheerful immigrant dude actually apprehended him. But the actually existing cops seem to so frequently be both vicious and useless. The culture of policing in the US is completely broken, and I don't know how it can be fixed.
They are now specifically denying having shot any of the kids, which does give rise to suspicions about an even more horrifying level of incompetence.
I don't know how to keep existing with this level of rage and hate, but there's nowhere for it to go so I'm placidly proceeding with my day.
It looks the same as not incandescently sickeningly angry. But nothing fucking works and I don't know how to do anything that matters.
I would like to know how other countries staff police. It seems like in addition to the deluge of guns in the US, lackadaisical rules of engagement, zero accountability, police culture of fear and brutality, etc, etc, the intersection of heavily armed and 'just drive around' method of policework is especially toxic. Why isn't most police work investigating crime reports instead of finding someone to beat up? Fire most of the beat cops and hire a bunch of detectives and lab techs.
this also parallels with my impression of how the criminal justice system, which is once you suspect someone did something bad, threaten them (police: intimidate them in an interview so they confess, or lawyer: charge with a bunch of crimes with enormous penalties so they agree to plead to something).
96: How about taking away all the tactical crap, probably including sidearms, from all but specialized backup units? And equipping the backup units for the sorts of situations they're intended to face, not as half-assed military units? Crazy talk, but I'd bet that any increase in the number of cops getting shot would be completely swamped by the reduction in the number of civilians shot.
If cops didn't have firearms, I'd steal their cars all the time.
If their primary mission is officer safety, we should just be paying them to sit on their couches at home. Less overtime cost that way, too.
82 and previous- we shared a bit of info at the other place but I'm going to write up something more detailed and email it around. Might take a couple days though.
I would like to know how other countries staff police.
The US somehow trains up its military with a lot better trigger discipline and respect for civilian control. I think we could apply those lessons, but only if we clear out the current impunidos.
I think Poland may have relatively generous citizenship-by-descent policies too (multiple generations back), if that's significant for anyone. Poland's government is a bad mess but it is still part of the EU for now.
Lourdes and Elke got their Tiny EU Homeland documentation a few months ago, as I think we mentioned. They have that, and I have the memory of leaving San Antonio in late February as everything blew up: my uncle's beloved husband and life partner died the day I left, then Russia invaded Ukraine, Abbott's transphobic executive orders hit around the same time and immediately had consequences on the ground, the right-wing ratchet turned a few full rotations.... Honestly, this year seems clearly worse than 2020 so far, and 2020 set the bar low.
British police are very different from the US. That doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of problems, especially with things like disproportionate use of stop and search powers against ethnic minorities, deaths in police custody, etc. But, police firearms teams are well trained, as far as I can tell, and there are very very low rates of shooting of unarmed civilians.* On the other hand, if you are running about with a machete or a gun or whatever, there's a very high likelihood that if they can't restrain you--which they are trained to do without firearms--they'll shoot you, and in bigger cities the response time is pretty fast as there are armed response vehicles. In the 2019 London Bridge stabbings, the armed police were on the scene within 5 minutes of the call being made, for example.**
US police, whenever I see them being interviewed or describing their jobs, seem both scared and aggressive, which is a bad combination.
* one or two a year, at most, in a country of 67 million people. Police have shot 6 people in the UK, in the past 2 years, in total. As far as I can tell, looking at the news stories, etc, those were all justifiable shootings.
** by which time he'd already been partly restrained by other civilians on the scene
106 by a dude with a narwhal tusk IIRC
Nothing stops a bad guy with a knife like a good guy with a narwhal tusk?
I feel extremely weird about these discussions of how to leave the US.
(Perhaps that's because I have no options.)
re: 107
Yeah, and some other dudes with a fire extinguisher, I think.
Much like the Glasgow Airport bombings, where the would be terrorists got the shit kicked out of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Airport_attack#Good_Samaritans
A bad guy without a knife is like a narwhal without a fire extinguisher.
I'll entertain offers for arranged marriages to my Italian kids.
Oh do they like yelling and being snippy? That's our stock in trade.
111: There's an obvious option for me. I would get all kinds of special benefits for immigrating, and I have a close relative living there. There aren't any moral or safety issues about living in Israel, are there?
I understand the impulse about leaving the US, and as the spouse of an EU citizen it might be easier for me than for many. But I just don't see how it solves the problem. I'm not going to stop giving a shit about kids in the US just because of distance: if that could work, I could do that now. It's just just whether a shooting is in my native state (Connecticut) or in a place that seemed semi-legendary in my childhood (my Dad went on guys hunting trips to Uvalde, and always brought home a big can of Uvalde honey) -- there's no where you can go that lets you run away from these tragedies.
The uselessness of the police for crime prevention, or in general, is certainly enraging. I'm currently living a tiny version of this: there's a warrant for the arrest of my granddaughter's father for felony DV, and somehow the police just can't seem to make an arrest. Guy isn't some kind of man of mystery. He got served with papers last night showing that my daughter wants to move to Montana, so she's spending a couple of days in a hotel, in case he explodes and comes by the house. Kiddo thinks it's a mini-vacation, but it's be great if the police would pick the guy up. This is nothing like keeping the parents out -- that would be different, and the Uvalde parents would experience it as different, if they were actually doing something.
I remember making the same comment as DaveLHI about our armed forces in Iraq when the principal mission shifted from defeating Saddam and then Al Qaeda in Iraq to force protection. We let these people carry guns around and exercise the violence on behalf of the state on the explicit promise that they are going to be risking their lives to protect and serve. Their fear -- including of kids with toy guns -- shows such a breakdown in that compact.
It's like they think we, as a society, feel like people of color need to be hassled, and *that's* why we employ these guys.
You've been reading Nextdoor for Pittsburgh.
The Uvalde cops are lying like this with the full spotlight of national attention blazing down on them; I see at this point they are walking back their statement that the cop at the school fired at the shooter before he entered the school. At this point it's a given for me that they lie even worse about ordinary everyday crimes, let alone ones where they fucked up and people died.
116: Israel is the only place I can think of that would welcome me. In some ways it's probably not unlike Texas? Olive trees grow well here, too.
But mostly I'm with CC - I just wouldn't leave.
And I've been thinking a lot about the difference between the response in Uvalde and the cowboys who executed Tamir Rice and John Crawford III.
Narwhal tusk guy's backstory is not particularly well known outside his home town, and it's a whole film noir in itself: https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/london-bridge-terror-hero-murder-3711655
(He was doing time for murder, and was at the Fishmongers' Hall event because he was a leading volunteer in a prison education charity. The murder was extremely savage, and the victim was a guy who had been unexpectedly cleared [he was almost certainly guilty and was actually facing charges of intimidating a witness] of the attempted murder of a prostitute who he battered and dumped in a skip. The target of the witness intimidation seems to have been the guy who rescued her from the skip, who eventually died of an overdose:
https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/hull-man-woman-skip-dies-218489
.
I honestly can't imagine actually leaving my home. But national politics is such that I'm starting to feel that there might be a time coming when I would want to have an option.
Actually, Charley, you're a genealogy guy -- can I email you for advice on how to find my grandfather's birth certificate?
I can't imaging leaving and I can't bear the thought of losing to a bunch of feckless asswipes.
We'd only leave in a situation where we were personally at risk due to government policy. Who knows, some day your kid may need an abortion, or be trans or gay, and it's not impossible those things will be criminally pursued by the federal government at some point. It's good to have the option in place before you need it. Italian citizenship took about 4 years and $5000 start to finish.
117.2: Jesus Christ, I'm so sorry. (I'm sure everyone else knows about this through FB already, but I had no idea it was that bad.)
128 Thanks. No, I barely talk about it at all online -- it's not really my story, but my daughter's. And I have various members of the asshole's family on FB, and nothing good comes for my granddaughter by further poisoning the water. I have had to spend a lot of time explaining to wife and daughter just how little regard the 'justice' system has for justice.
124 Absolutely.
127 Oh certainly.
126: That it was a lot easier to Rambo in and kill someone when it was "reports of a scary black man with a gun" versus "someone actively engaged in the process of murdering a dozen children". (That's maybe less the case for Crawford, where some murderous creep had called it in as someone pointing a gun at people in the Wal-Mart, but this was not actually true and as we have seen repeatedly that cops are quite often able to take people alive when they want to.) The DOJ declined to prosecute Crawford's killer because he stated that he was afraid for his life and they felt they couldn't disprove it.
Maybe the cops' motto is that line from Phillip Dick "IF I HAD KNOWN IT WAS HARMLESS I WOULD HAVE KILLED IT MYSELF."
I guess the history of police making things worse at school shootings goes back as least as far as Columbine.
https://twitter.com/the_cleric/status/1494063483616477185
130 Not beyond reasonable doubt, anyway, given that assuming racism of the part of some jurors, if not the whole panel, isn't crazy.
A decade ago, my city made national news over the police not investigating/charging acquaintance rape with sufficient vigor. They did adopt some changes in internal procedures, which have undoubtedly improved things (I'm not saying the the current situation is adequate, just that it's better than before). But they also took a fairly high profile case to trial -- the star quarterback of our local college team -- and got a very fast acquittal. People who attended the trial told me they thought the victim was probably telling the truth, but that the defendant's version couldn't conclusively be ruled out.
In a slightly different world, it'd be great to have a strict liability felony for shooting someone who turns out to have a toy gun. No, we don't care how scared you were (and certainly not in the Rice situation, where what was supposedly scary was completely created by the officers) -- if it turns out it was a toy, you get some jail time, and a felony conviction (which would preclude gun ownership and further work in law enforcement).
I'm pretty sure it's an actual plan to boost white supremacy by legalization of carrying guns in the expectation that "perceived threat" would make it effectively illegal for anyone who isn't white.
As people have noted, Ohio is an open carry state.
Germany also manages to have roughly 80 million people and only about 11 shot by police each year since 1990 (last available data 2019). The low was 3 in 2003 and the high was 21 in 1995. In contrast to the bobbies, many (most?) German cops do carry guns, they just don't use them very often.
It's usually about this time that I noted the Republic of Georgia fired its entire highway patrol and started from scratch. The main problems there were corruption and impunity rather than violence, but the principle remains.
I don't see another municipality near Uvalde that could provide a police force if Uvalde's were disbanded or, I dunno, all committed seppuku to atone for catastrophic failure. They could probably go without for a while.
Regarding comparative policing, my undergraduate research advisor's eponymous son grew up to start studying it.
https://sociology.columbian.gwu.edu/carlos-bustamante
So I guess watch this space for when his book comes out.
Sorry, I had the impression the president name bit was for folk too lazy or creative to pick a good nickname. Now it's kinda growing on me.
If https://twitter.com/DuddingChris/status/1530233969429598208/photo/1 from the Times is to be believed, the cops waited *in the hallway* outside the classroom while the shooter murdered students inside.
I have changed my thinking this week. I now believe it's apparent this is the opening campaign of a civil war pitting the white supremacists against the rest of us, and they show every likelihood of seizing dominant control of the state within the next few years.
I don't see another municipality near Uvalde that could provide a police force if Uvalde's were disbanded or, I dunno, all committed seppuku to atone for catastrophic failure. They could probably go without for a while.
As some people have been noting on Twitter, Uvalde is very close to the Mexican border and is absolutely swarming with law enforcement personnel from a wide variety of agencies. The guys who eventually showed up and killed the shooter were apparently from the Border Patrol. Lack of cops is not an issue.
140: literally the first time I have heard of Border Patrol doing something good in many years. I guess federal training standards kicks in in certain situations.
As the resident pseudonym crank, Clover Gleveland is terrific as a name.
Dead presidents/monarchs/other world leaders are for raising issues too sensitive or embarrassing to be associated with a continuous identity, and can be reused freely -- there's no reason to think one day's James Polk is the same as the next's. They are not for expressing opinions that you you think people will get mad at you about, however -- just sensitive facts.
Clover Greveland. I never said I could spell.
My thinking this morning is that all of the following are true:
1) The cops performed badly (and perhaps atrociously badly) in the situation.
2) Once you're in a situation in which people need to quickly make life or death decisions in a chaotic and dangerous situation, you can't guarantee that they'll make the right choice. It is difficult and the key to avoiding tragedies like this is minimizing the number of times those situations occur not (only) training people to be prepared to act if it does.
3) This is, absolutely, an argument in favor of gun control and against the right-wing arguments that you just need good guys to be ready.
Brad DeLong posted something today saying that his memory of the Clinton assault weapons ban was that it had the support of law enforcement.
One thing that became clear, from rural sheriffs and deputies and big-city police departments alike, was that the cops were starting to get scared. They were getting scared that they were going to run into bad guys with military-grade amounts of automatic firepower, and get killed. There was unified buy-in from law enforcement nationwide that, while people really did disagree about "gun control", an assault weapons ban made sense.
We added it to the bill, and we held enough of the Democratic caucuses to push the Clinton crime bill, with all of its constructive and destructive elements, across the finish line.
140: Lack of cops is not an issue.
Good to go then. Disband the department. Start again from scratch, maybe even go five years without just to cleanse the bureaucratic palate.
We could use a tongue scrape thing.
A friend just wrote this and posted at the other place:
if I were to dabble in the business of inventing deities
my god wouldn't have to show up, she
would already be there. The children
need not pray or bleed, her mothering
would be infinite and everywhere
my god could deflect that first bullet
into the skull of the shooter. my god
could freeze a finger, lock a trigger,
lock an open a door, open a locked one
my god would possess all the attributes
you claim for your god. mine wouldn't
hide behind ambiguous mistranslations
or skimp on food, healing, miracles
my god, newly born from between my ears
would step softly on the earth, not float
in some far off heaven. my god, observing
this place in tears, wouldn't tolerate yours
147: Thanks for sharing! Very nice! I'm voting for that god.
As the resident pseudonym crank, Clover Gleveland is terrific as a name.
As the resident grammar crank, some people need to learn about dangling participles.
144, 1-3: Yeah, I thought this piece did a good job of apportioning blame and responsibility. I don't know which teacher left a door ajar, and I hope I never find out.
150: Yes, that matches up precisely with what I was thinking.
150: I don't believe the "teacher left the door ajar" line. Really? A shooter is outside so the teacher goes outside to get her phone and props the door open? I can see why the cops would want people to believe that, but after 48 hours of their lies it doesn't pass the smell test. (Things I'd believe: with all the end of year celebrations, the door had been propped; the mysterious security officer who so bravely "engaged" the shooter in their first set of lies propped the door. But this just sounds like something that will get walked back when it turns out it's a fucking lie.)
150: I hope I never find out not because I'd be enraged at the teacher but because as bad as this has been, it would be 10 times worse if the media or law enforcement tries to seriously make the argument that that teacher is meaningfully to blame.
Just to close the loop on the teacher and the door, I'll add this for the record.
And marijuana (Laura Ingraham on Fox).