Month: August 2019

We Are Unbelievably Screwed

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It looks like updated models are showing that anthropogenic climate change will be even more disastrous than previously predicted:

Our planet’s climate may be more sensitive to increases in greenhouse gas than we realized, according to a new generation of global climate models being used for the next major assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The findings—which run counter to a 40-year consensus—are a troubling sign that future warming and related impacts could be even worse than expected.

One of the new models, the second version of the Community Earth System Model (CESM2) from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), saw a 35% increase in its equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), the rise in global temperature one might expect as the atmosphere adjusts to an instantaneous doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Instead of the model’s previous ECS of 4°C (7.2°F), the CESM2 now shows an ECS of 5.3°C (9.5°F).

“It is imperative that the community work in a multi-model context to understand how plausible such a high ECS is,” said NCAR’s Andrew Gettelman and coauthors in a paper published last month in Geophysical Research Letters. They added: “What scares us is not that the CESM2 ECS is wrong…but that it might be right.”

At least eight of the global-scale models used by IPCC are showing upward trends in climate sensitivity, according to climate researcher Joëlle Gergis, an IPCC lead author and a scientific advisor to Australia’s Climate Council. Gergis wrote about the disconcerting trends in an August column for the Australian website The Monthly.

Researchers are now evaluating the models to see whether the higher ECS values are model artifacts or correctly depict a more dire prognosis.

I would note that every time that researchers update their models as a result of real world data, the predictions get more and more dire.

We are in for a huge world of hurt.

Do You Want Some Cheese to Go with That Whine?

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The NY Times published a searchable database and 4870 pages of donor names, all 146,000, all the way down to donors who gave $1 to the Clinton Foundation.

What’s the public interest in publishing a donor who gave $1? https://t.co/Qo1ISmxSJP

— amicable stationery helper 📎 (@xiruxi) August 7, 2019

Hypocrisy Much

Joaquin Castro is Presidential candidate Julian Castro’s twin brother, he grew a beard so that they are not confused, and he just
tweeted the names of people who have donated the maximum to the Trump campaign, and the Republicans, and the press has completely lost their sh%$.

This information is publicly available on the web, and, as death threats and doxxing is central to right wing communication, the pot is calling the kettle back:

Joaquin Castro, a Democratic congressman from Texas and chairman of the presidential campaign of his twin brother, Julián, fired back on Tuesday after being castigated on social media for tweeting the names and occupations of his constituents who’d maxed out their donations to President Donald Trump.

His tweet contained a graphic titled “Who’s funding Trump?” and listed the names of 44 people who purportedly contributed the maximum amount allowed by campaign finance laws. Their occupations, which, like donor names, are public record, were also listed. Close to a dozen of the donors shown are retirees.

“Sad to see so many San Antonians as 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump,” Castro wrote, naming local businesses whose owners were on the list. “Their contributions are fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.’”

The graphic, which Castro indicated had originated with a Democratic activist group, was blasted out to the more than 27,000 followers of his congressional campaign account on Tuesday afternoon. It came as politicians’ loaded rhetoric has come under closer scrutiny after a mass shooting over the weekend in El Paso that killed 22 and wounded dozens of others. Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, which mirrored language used by the suspected shooter in a racist manifesto, has loomed over the tragedy in the days since.

You are supporting a racist ratf%$#, in any decent society, opprobrium should be a consequence of this, you delicate snowflakes.

Missing the Point

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Over at Five Thirty Eight, where myopically examining data is increasingly their brand, Maggie Koerth-Baker concludes that there are no “lone wolf” terrorists, because they are all tied into the white supremacist community.

This misses the point: Random, but statistically predictable, acts of terrorism are actually a part of a deliberate strategy.

The right wing in general, and white supremacists in particular, knows that there will be a baseline level of random violence against their targets as a result of their social structure and rhetoric, and they plan on this.

This has been true since pseudo-random terrorists started fire-bombing abortion clinics in the 1980s.

I am not alone in this, the very first comment on this article use3 the term, “Stochastic Terrorism.”

Terror with plausible deniability is a conscious goal.

An Inverted Yield Curve Predicted Twelve of the Last Five Recessions

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For those who are not up on the term, longer term bonds typically pay more interest than shorter term ones, because they lock up your money for a long time.

When, for example, the 3-month US Treasury pays more than a 10-year treasure, the yield curve is said to be inverted.

This is significant because pretty much every US recession since the end of World War II has been preceded by an inverted yield curve, though, to be fair, a lot of not-recessions have been preceded by inverted yields as well.

Well, we are now seeing a pretty large inverted yield curve:

A widely watched bond market indicator sent its strongest recession warning in more than a decade on Wednesday, as the global growth outlook dimmed and questions swirled about the Federal Reserve’s commitment to cut interest rates in light of rising US-China trade tensions.

The yield on three-month US Treasury traded as much as 41.23 basis points above that on the benchmark 10-year government bond — the widest gap since March 2007. Such an inversion of the yield curve — in which short-term yields are higher than longer-term ones — has preceded every recession of the last half century.

My guess is that this time it is right, because it’s been a long time, and our economic growth seems to be primarily an artifact of speculation and consumer debt, neither of which are sustainable.

Worst Incentive Deal Ever

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I am referring, of course, to former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s deal with Foxconn, which an independent report has declared beyond redemption.

I don’t know why the state needed to commission a study to come to this conclusion, it was patently obvious to every voter in the Badger State:

In 2017, Wisconsin offered Foxconn a record-breaking subsidy to build an LCD factory in the state, only to see the promised factory fall behind schedule and grow progressively smaller. Now, the Wisconsin Department of Administration has requested a reassessment of the costs and benefits to the state regarding the far-tinier facility.

The report, which was conducted by Tim Bartik of the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, finds that the smaller facility raises the already unusually high cost per job even further. If the subsidy levels in the current contract are kept, each Foxconn job would cost taxpayers about $290,000, Bartik found, compared to $172,000 if Foxconn built the original $10 billion, 13,000-job facility. For comparison, Bartik estimated the subsidies Virginia offered Amazon for its second headquarters amounted to between $10,000 and $13,000 per job.

“The most important conclusion of this analysis is that it is difficult to come up with plausible assumptions under which a revised Foxconn incentive contract, which offers similar credit rates to the original contract, has benefits exceeding costs,” Bartik wrote. “The incentives are so costly per job that it is hard to see how likely benefits will offset these costs.”

………

The analysis comes five months after a Foxconn executive met with Evers and expressed interest in revising the company’s contract with the state. Foxconn hasn’t said what it would push for, but Evers administration documents obtained by The Verge summarize the meeting and the company’s broad requests: updating the contract to reflect the smaller factory, including additional Foxconn subsidiaries, and extending the period Foxconn can qualify for capital investment tax credits.

Such changes make sense for Foxconn. The company has radically scaled back its plans and likely wants assurances that it won’t be found in breach of contract. But Evers was critical of the deal during his campaign and would likely be reluctant to agree to these changes without getting concessions of his own. In this context, the new economic impact assessment can be seen as setting a new baseline for further negotiations.

………

The Fiscal Bureau analysis was based on a best-case scenario. It relied on economic impact estimates supplied by the consulting firm EY (formerly Ernst & Young), which Foxconn had hired to pitch its project. It also assumed Foxconn would actually build what it promised and hire at an extremely fast rate. Instead, the company has repeatedly scaled back its plans and fallen far behind on hiring. Rather than a 20 million-square-foot factory manufacturing large LCD screens, Foxconn says the factory it’s now building will be less than 1 million square feet and make smaller screens. While the company had initially planned to employ 5,200 people by next year, it now says the new factory will employ only 1,500 people. Even that seems like a stretch goal: at the end of 2018, Foxconn employed only 156 people in the state.

………

Of course, there’s no guarantee that Foxconn will build what it is now saying it will, either. When The Verge spoke with O’Brien in June, his observations of LCD manufacturing machinery supply chains indicated that Foxconn was unlikely to meet the 2020 deadline it set for itself. If the last two years are any guide, any given Foxconn plan is only good until the next one.

One hopes that the implosion of this deal will take the bloom off of the rose for similar deals.

It’s happened with the Olympics, where taxpayers have increasingly revolted against the excesses of hosting the games.

Ha Ha!!!

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As we are all aware, Donald Trump is fighting tooth and nail to prevent investigations by the Democratic Party controlled house, ignoring subpoenas and challenging any attempt at information gathering in court.

It looks like Congressional and New York State investigators have done an end run of his obstruction by demanding documents from his  partners:

Major Wall Street banks have given congressional committees investigating President Trump thousands of pages of documents related to Russians who may have had dealings with Mr. Trump, his family or his business, people familiar with the congressional probes said. Some banks are also giving documents related to Mr. Trump’s business, the Trump Organization, to New York state investigators, people familiar with the New York investigation said.

Wall Street firms including Bank of America Corp. , Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG , JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo & Co. have recently provided the documents to congressional investigators, according to people familiar with those probes. The investigators are working on a joint probe into potential foreign influence on Mr. Trump and his family by the House Financial Services Committee and the House Intelligence Committee. More information will likely be handed over in coming weeks as the banks continue to respond to subpoenas sent in April, the people said.

Separately, Deutsche Bank, Mr. Trump’s primary bank, has turned over emails, loan agreements and other documents related to the Trump Organization to the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, in response to a civil subpoena sent earlier this year, according to people familiar with the New York investigation.

Ms. James’s office has also in recent weeks received financing documents and emails from Investors Bancorp Inc., the people said. The Short Hills, N.J., regional bank handed over thousands of pages in response to a civil subpoena demanding information on a 2010 mortgage on Trump Park Avenue, a condominium building in Manhattan owned by Mr. Trump, the people said.

Mr. Trump has filed several lawsuits seeking to block lawmakers and states from getting access to his bank, accounting and tax records. The documents being provided by the banks could give investigators some of the same information Mr. Trump is trying to block.

Of course, particularly with Pelosi running the show, I expect Democrats to squander this opportunity.

Useful Metric

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A list of Democratic Presidential candidates with the most donations from billionaires.

This list is important, because it shows who the billionaires perceive as being most friendly to their agenda, which is basically the preservation of their wealth and power.

What is interesting is just how many has beens (Gillibrand, O’Rourke, Klobuchar) and never was (Bennet, Hickenlooper) candidates are beating the number 2 & 3 candidates, Warren and Sanders, in this metric.

Obviously, getting donations from billionaires does not, in and of itself, make a candidate unsuitable, but it is a very big red flag.

In order (# of billionaires):

  1. Pete Buttigieg (23)
  2. Cory Booker (18)
  3. Kamala Harris (17)
  4. Michael Bennet (15)
  5. Joe Biden (13)
  6. John Hickenlooper (11)
  7. Beto O’Rourke (9)
  8. Amy Klobuchar (8)
  9. Jay Inslee (5)
  10. Kirsten Gillibrand (4)
    1. Elizabeth Warren (2)
    2. Steve Bullock (2)
    1. Tulsi Gabbard (1)
    2. Andrew Yang (1)
    3. Marianne Williamson (1)
    1. Bernie Sanders (0)
    2. Julian Castro (0)
    3. Bill De Blasio (0)
    4. Tim Ryan (0)

And yes, I spent almost as much time tweaking the HTML code for the numbering as I did the article.

Tweet of the Day

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Re the crime of Hiroshima: In one of the cruel ironies of history, defeating global fascism in World War Two required the help of a state with a rich history of ethnic cleansing, genocide, forced labor, imperialism, and mass violence. And then it also required the Soviet Union.

— Tarik Cyril Amar (@TarikCyrilAmar) August 7, 2019

Read up on the Bengal Famine if you have any questions.

Nope, No Corruption Here

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Charitable Organization, My Ass!

Click through for my pithy architectural critiques

Papers have revealed that the National Rifle Association was considering purchasing a 10,000 square foot mansion for its executive VP Wayne LaPierre.

I do not agree with the NRA’s current mission, but this is not about their lobbying for the firearms industry, it’s about the proper management of a not-for-profit organization.

I incorporated a not-for-profit, and shepherded its application for tax exempt status with the IRS about 30 years ago, so I have more than a passing familiarity with these issues, and this crosses a pretty bright red line.

What’s more, it appears that tey attempted to use kickbacks from a vendor to conceal this.

Here is hoping that the New York Attorney General with be on the organization like white on rice:

The chief executive of the National Rifle Association sought to have the nonprofit organization buy him a luxury mansion last year after a mass shooting at a Florida high school, selecting a French country-style estate in a gated Dallas-area golf club, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions.

Wayne LaPierre, the longtime head of the NRA, told associates he was worried about being targeted and needed a more secure place to live after 17 people were gunned down at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., the people said.

LaPierre and his wife, Susan, were intensely involved in the selection of the property, rejecting an upscale high rise in Dallas with numerous security features in favor of a 10,000-square-foot estate with lakefront and golf course views in Westlake, Tex., on the market for about $6 million, according to emails and text messages described to The Washington Post.

Yea, right, “Security considerations.”

………

The discussions about the estate, which was not ultimately purchased, are under scrutiny by New York investigators. The transaction was slated to be made through a corporate entity that received a $70,000 wire from the NRA in 2018, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

The entity was created at ­Wayne LaPierre’s request by a law firm working for Ackerman McQueen, the NRA’s longtime ad agency, according to the people.

The origins of the idea to buy the mansion, its proposed purpose and the reason the deal never went through are now being fiercely disputed by the NRA and Ackerman McQueen, which are locked in a bitter legal fight.

In a statement late Tuesday night, Ackerman McQueen said LaPierre had sought the ad firm’s assistance with the real estate transaction, a proposal it said alarmed company officials. “Actions in this regard led to Ackerman McQueen’s loss of faith in Mr. LaPierre’s decision-making,” the firm said.

It appears that this was a bridge too far for Ackerman McQueen, but the basic execution was for the NRA to overpay their ad agency, and then that the agency would kick back personal benefits to LaPierre.

This is thoroughly corrupt an completely illegal.

………

The New York attorney general’s office is now examining the plan for an NRA-financed mansion as part of its ongoing investigation into the gun lobby’s tax-exempt status, in which it has subpoenaed the group’s financial records, the people said.

Yeah, pretty much.

………

Angus McQueen, the now-deceased chief executive of the ad firm, had learned about the location of the property and was furious about LaPierre’s claim that he needed the property for security reasons, the people said.

“He said ‘The scales fell from my eyes,’ ” said one person familiar with the discussions. “They were buying a Taj Mahal on a golf course with a social membership.”

In a statement last month, Ackerman McQueen said it decided to stop paying a series of expenses for NRA executives, including LaPierre, in 2018 out of concern they were “suspicious” and their true nature was concealed from the NRA board and members.

No sympathy for Angus McQueen, or Ackerman McQueen. To quote Upton Sinclair, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Ackerman McQueen was complicit in looting the NRA, because it made them money.

Hopefully, there is a way for both of them to lose.

Quote of the Day, I Cannot Believe That I Am Quoting the Cato Institute Edition

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The real significance of Gabbard’s critique, however, lies not in the proposition that Harris was a particularly unprofessional or malign prosecutor, but rather in the fact that she seems to have been a rather ordinary prosecutor who simply did her job the way most prosecutors do. And if that makes a former-prosecutor-turned-presidential-candidate look like a monster, then perhaps that says more about prosecutors in general than it does about Kamala Harris in particular.

—Clark Neily, and it was published at Cato.org.

It’s an insightful perspective on our justice system and the role that the almost completely unaccountable power of prosecutors in this system.

Power without accountability is a recipe for corruption.

Never Give to the DNC

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There are a number of reasons why not to give to the Democratic National Committee: It is ineffective, DNC Chair Tom Perez is clueless, and it is dominated by political consultants who make their money off the revolving door between the committee and private business.

It doesn’t help that these consultants are over priced and incompetent, otherwise, I would be complaining about President Hillary Clinton.

And now we know that the organization is completely unwilling to take even baby steps toward accountability and competence, because they just nixed an internal committee that would review spending and report to the DNC members who theoretically run the organization:

A proposal to bring unprecedented oversight to the way that the Democratic National Committee spends the billion dollars it raises between presidential elections was rejected by the DNC Rules and Bylaw Committee Tuesday, after a spirited debate highlighting that there is no independent oversight reporting back to the DNC’s 450 members.

The decision did not come without some Rules Committee members saying that the oversight issue was legitimate. But they did not feel that creating a new elected committee to review the DNC’s spending decisions was the best approach. The oversight proposal was the last piece of business from the DNC’s post-2016 Unity Reform Commission recommendations, which sought to heal the party’s internal divides after that cycle.

“I am disappointed,” said Jim Zogby, a longtime DNC member and Arab-American human rights leader, who noted that Tuesday’s proposal was the latest in a series of efforts to introduce greater transparency and oversight before 2020’s election.

………

“Look, I’ve been a DNC member—this is my 27th year. I was an executive committee member for 16 years. The issue of never seeing the budget, never being able as a member to evaluate the budget, sticks in my craw. I think it should stick in the craw of every member of the body,” he said. “At the end of the day, the ability to know how money is spent, and have some say in it, or, at least, as the [DNC] bylaws call for, to evaluate it, is essential for the governing body of any organization.”

………

Leone’s last point was referring to the current DNC leadership, under Chair Tom Perez, saying that the party’s spending has been much more transparent and accountable than in previous years. Another objection came from David McDonald, an RBC member from Washington, who said looking retrospectively could distract from current campaigns.

So let me get this straight:  We can’t let the members know how the money is spent, because it might distract from us spending our money in stupid ways.

………

“The [DNC] chair simply cannot appoint the committee that oversees the finances of the chair and the expenditures that are determined by the chair. That simply makes no sense,” he said. “We would not get into trouble—and we have had trouble—if the Finance Committee… [had had] an oversight committee that can do the due diligence and report back to us, ‘This happened. That happened. This didn’t happen. That didn’t happen. We make these recommendations for the future.’”

The DNC does not want to know when they do stupid things:  It’s how friends and relatives of current DNC staffers make their money, spending on stupid sh%$, and then getting a percentage of their ineffectual advertisement buys.

Corruption is the goal, not an accidental byproduct of incompetence.

Don’t Worry About the DPRK and Iran

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Because it looks like two nuclear powers may be on a path to military conflict over Modi’s revoking Kashmir’s automomy.

From a purely selfish perspective, it makes sense for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to do this, it gives him a political boost, and he legitimately wants to make sure that Muslims in India are second class citizens.

He is a bigot and a fascist a half step removed from the Hindu nationalists who assassinated Mahatma Ghandi:

India on Monday revoked the special status of Kashmir, the Himalayan region that has long been a flashpoint in ties with neighboring Pakistan, moving to grasp its only Muslim-majority region more tightly.

In the most far-reaching political move in one of the world’s most militarized regions in nearly seven decades, India said it would scrap a constitutional provision that allows the state of Jammu and Kashmir to make its own laws.

“The entire constitution will be applicable to Jammu and Kashmir,” Interior Minister Amit Shah told parliament, as opposition lawmakers voiced loud protests against the repeal.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged India and Pakistan, which also claims Kashmir, to exercise restraint. The U.S. State Department said it was closely following the events and expressed concerns over reports of detentions.

………

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said the move “was in clear violation of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions” in the region, according to a statement released after a telephone call with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Monday evening.

“As the party to this international dispute, Pakistan will exercise all possible options to counter the illegal steps,” its foreign ministry said in a statement.

India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, where a nearly 30-year armed revolt has killed tens of thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands of Indian troops have been deployed to quell it.

………

Hours earlier the Indian government launched a security crackdown in the region, arresting local leaders, suspending telephone and internet services, and restricting public movement in the main city of Srinagar.

Local TV channels citing Press Trust of India reported that former Kashmiri chief ministers Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah had been detained at a state guest house.

To quote (not) Tallyrand, this is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

Modi’s bigotry and arrogance could end up killing hundreds of millions of people.

Hoax Tweet of the Day

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Let me reaffirm that this is a hoax, but it’s funny as hell:

BREAKING:

In a major ethics violation, Kamala Harris’ iconic and memorable rainbow sequin coat she wore to San Francisco Pride was sewn together by truancy convicts in a California prison work camp, sources report. pic.twitter.com/MqliI2RD8D

— MSDNC (@MSDNCNews) August 4, 2019

Again, not true, but, as Stephen Colbert would say, there is a lot of truthiness there.

What the F%$# is Wrong with the New York Times?

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The New York Times, and by that I mean their editorial board, just published an editorial, which among other things, appeals to the conscience of the good Nazis and white supremacists out there.

This is unbelievably stupid.  There are no good Nazis, but they ask for their goodwill anyway:

Those who sympathize with the white nationalist ideology but who deplore the violence should work closely with law enforcement to see that fellow travelers who may be prone to violence do not have access to firearms like semiautomatic assault-style weapons that are massively destructive.

(emphasis mine)

There are no white supremacists who eschew violence.

Violence is inextricable from white supremacist and Nazi ideology.

You can enforce neither without violence and the threat of violence.

Think about it:  Without lynchings and shooting, Jim Crow would never have had any force.

Asking for a few good Nazis to do their civic duty is dangerously misguided.

H/t Atrios.

We Are Doomed

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Welcome to your gerontocracy. pic.twitter.com/yTjdkfDHxQ

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) August 5, 2019

Un-F%$#ing-Believable

Both of the Septuagenarian front runners for the major Presidential nominations got the locations of this weekends mass shootings wrong:

President Donald Trump and Democratic 2020 presidential hopeful Joe Biden both got confused in regards to the locations of mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton over the weekend, mentioning inaccurate cities when discussing the violence.

During a Monday address from the White House, Trump, 73, shared condolences for the victims “in Toledo,” apparently mixing up the Ohio city with Dayton, where nine people were killed and dozens more were wounded on Sunday morning.

“May God bless the memory of those who perished in Toledo,” the president said toward the end of his speech. “May God protect them.”

Biden, 76, who previously served as vice president under former President Barack Obama and is currently leading in the Democratic presidential primary polls, made a similar gaffe on Sunday evening while addressing attendants of a fundraiser in California. He referred to the mass shooting as “the tragic events in Houston today and also in Michigan the day before.” Although the politician later corrected his mistake, he seemed to be confusing Houston, which is also in Texas, with El Paso and mixing up Ohio with its fellow midwestern state of Michigan.

It really is remarkable how dysfunctional and corrupt the two parties are.

My Thoughts Exactly

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As hard as it may be for the relatives of the victims, we need to publicly broadcast the horrific images of the mass shooting victims, much like Emmet Till’s mother insisted that the brutality visited against him be made public:

Emmett Till’s mother was right. After the horrific murder of her 14-year-old son in Mississippi in 1955, she decided on an open-casket funeral. “There was just no way I could describe what was in that box. No way,” she said. “And I wanted the world to see.” The graphic images of her son’s mutilated body, printed in The Chicago Defender and Jet magazine, contained vastly more raw power than any verbal description could possibly have had.

We sometimes say that “words fail us,” and it’s true. Nothing we can say can pack the emotional punch of what we can see with our own eyes. For those of us who support a level of gun control in the United States equivalent to that in other advanced countries, it ought to be clear by now that facts and logic are not enough to change public policy on the issue. We need ugly pictures. Not the pictures of the sweet faces of the children of Newtown, Conn., before they were slaughtered, but the awful sights that so shocked the first responders.

………

I think that gun control has now become as emotionally charged and intractable as civil rights and the Vietnam War once were. The American College of Physicians was joined in 2015 by nearly 60 other organizations, including the American Public Health Association and the American Bar Association, in a call to address gun violence as a public-health threat. Last month, in Annals of Internal Medicine, the physicians’ group issued a position paper with recommendations for reducing firearms-related injuries and deaths. The National Rifle Association responded with a tweet that read, “Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control.”

………

News organizations, law-enforcement agencies and medical professionals are unlikely to publish the images of the bloody, mangled bodies that gun violence produces. But husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, can do what Emmett Till’s mother did. They can insist that we see the result of our weak, ineffective and poorly enforced gun policies. They can find ways to publish the pictures in all their gory detail.

Some might say this would disrespect the dead. I can think of no more respectful way to treat the dead than to allow the loved ones of those who have been slain to show what actually happened to them. If we think these images are too awful to see, then we should change the circumstances that create them.

Mamie Till-Mobley died in 2003 at the age of 81 and was buried near her son. Her monument reads, “Her pain united a nation.” May the pain felt today by the loved ones of the victims of gun violence do the same.

This is a big sacrifice to be asked of grieving parents, but it needs to be done.

Gee, That Was Quick

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A few hours after I noted the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, we had yet another in Dayton, Ohio, and the victims included the gunman’s own sister:

Ned Peppers would not close for another hour, and the crowd inside the bar and on the outdoor patio early Sunday morning was lively. The line to get inside stretched around the block, and the revelers were black and white, men and women, spanning at least two generations. One was the mother of a newborn, another was a nutrition trainer. Within seconds, both would be dead, along with seven others.

Among the victims killed in the barrage of gunfire outside Ned Peppers, a popular spot in Dayton, Ohio, was the gunman’s sister, a 22-year-old college student described as “bubbly” and “outgoing.” Investigators had not determined on Sunday evening whether the gunman, armed with a military-style rifle and clad in protective armor, had specifically targeted his sister or anyone else in the crowd.

………

The massacre outside Ned Peppers came only about 13 hours after a gunman stormed into a Walmart store in El Paso and opened fire, killing 20 people and wounding at least 26 others as he stalked the aisles. The store is near the bicultural city’s border with Mexico, in an area heavily trafficked on weekends by El Paso residents and Mexican citizens alike.

There is something profoundly broken in the United States, but we already knew that.

I have no clue how to fix it, but we are destroying ourselves.

Another Day, Another White Supremacist Mass Shooting

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Confirmed Photo of the shooter as he entered the Cielo Vista Walmart store. #EPShooting https://t.co/wfXkVy7a3y pic.twitter.com/TWVZwQXIyl

— KTSM 9 News (@KTSMtv) August 3, 2019

Roll Tape!

A white supremacist just killed 21 people and wounded at least 20 more at an El Paso Walmart:

A mass shooting at a Walmart in the Texas border city of El Paso that has left 20 people dead and 26 injured is being investigated as a possible hate crime, Texas officials said.

A 21-year-old white man is in custody after the mass shooting, one of the deadliest incidents in Texas history, El Paso’s police chief said. Local news outlets reported the name of the suspected shooter, but his name has not yet been officially released by law enforcement. A local TV station published what it said was a picture of the suspect from CCTV footage.

There was “little to minimum force” used when law enforcement took the suspect into custody, El Paso police spokesman Robert Gomez said at an earlier press conference. “No law enforcement personnel fired their weapon.”

“It happened without incident so I can assume that the person dropped his weapons,” Gomez added.

Law enforcement officials are investigating “a manifesto from this individual” that suggests the incident may be a hate crime, police chief Greg Allen said. He added that law enforcement still needed to “validate for certain” that the document under investigation was from the arrested suspect.

………

Investigators are “reasonably confident” that the Walmart shooting suspect posted the document on 8chan, an extremist online message board that often features racist content, senior law enforcement officials told NBC News.

If the manifesto is authentic, it would make it the third mass shooting announced in advance on 8chan in less than five months.

………

The 8chan document under investigation by Texas law enforcement described a gun attack that was intended to be “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas”.

God bless America, huh?