Another Mass Shooting In A Church

There has been another mass shooting in a small town in Texas by an AR 15 wielding 26 year old.  The rifle-wielding shooter burst into the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs on Sunday, killing 26 people -- including children.  This is a town of less than a thousand people.  The small church was so packed out it was like shooting fish in a barrel. The age range of the victims are between 5 years old and age 72.  This is the fourth most massive mass shooting of all time.  Las Vegas was 58 and Miami was 48 and Virginia Tech is 31.  The gun industry has blood on its hands, no doubt about it.  Devin Kelly fled and was pursued by police and shot but then Kelly officially shot himself and died from his own gun wound.  Thom Hartman points to incidents of domestic violence among the perpetrators of mass gun violence.  The gunman had in-laws who attended that church.  Since the guy isn’t a Moslem, Donald Trump won’t be calling him an animal or a terrorist.  Of course we hear so many of these stories it’s absurd to say “wait till the shock of the last one dies down before we even start to talk about gun control”.  Clearly these shootings occur on an almost constant basis where there is no recouperation time.  I’ve heard that mass shootings occur even more frequently but they just don’t make headlines in the news.  Clearly the democrats should make gun control issue number one in the 2018 midterm elections.

Humans are to blame for climate change. That's the verdict of an Executive-Branch Government Report concluding that Homo sapiens are the dominant cause of planetary warming since the mid-20th century.   The climate report, released today (Nov. 3), paints a dire picture of the present and future effects of global climate change, from sea levels that could rise by as much as 8 feet (2.4 meters) by 2100, to more-frequent heat waves and other extreme weather events. More people will die from climate change than die from domestic gun violence.  President Trump recently said "The storm that hit Puerto Rico wasn't that bad".  Evidence mounts by the ton.  Trump says he's "saving jobs" but all the new jobs are in alternative energy production.  So Trump is also a "progress denier".  But no amount of official “reports” will apparently convince some people. It is also in stark contrast to climate change stances taken by President Donald Trump, who has ranged from calling it a hoax to saying he had an "open mind" about whether human-caused climate change is actually happening.  "Many lines of evidence demonstrate that it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century," the authors wrote. "Over the last century, there are no convincing alternative explanations supported by the extent of the observational evidence." [6 Unexpected Effects of Climate Change]

Stephanie Miller was talking about the two big elections tomorrow for governor of Virginia and governor of New Jersey.  With the sort of luck the democrats have had lately in high profile elections the Republicans will win both of them.  Governor Wylder of Virginia didn’t even endorce the current democratic candidate for governor.  The Republican, Galespee or whoever is running these hate ads appealing to all manner of racism and prejudice.  I think an apt slogan might be “Hate Sells”.   We all thought that the Republicans were losing the demographic wars in the fall of 2014 and told ourselves that the deboccle of 2014 could never happened in a nationwide general election because all the racial minorities and fringe groups would come out to vote.  Further when you looked at Donald Trump you saw him along the lines of some eccentric candidate like Lyndon La Ruch, who believed that AIDS was spread by mosquito bites.  Certainly a birther would never be elected president.  The cries of Stephanie and all the rest are getting a little tiresome.  We keep hearing “Oh, we’ve just got to organize campaigns better and try a little harder”.  But no matter how hard we seem to try the Republicans keep winning.  Their flip humor is getting tiresome because these are not comedic times.  The issues are too serious today.  In 2014 we had the dual excuse that the Ebola virus was rampant and ISIS was a novel group then spreading terror everywhere and it was argued that “The American public went into emergency mode, and when they do that they invariably vote Republican”.   Now with 2018 just around the corner, I personally see no indication of a C change in American voting patterns. 

Sixty Minutes must have had a slow news day.  Their three segments were in the nature of filler material.  First there was a thing on Puerto Rico.  We know there is a crisis there in Puerto Rico.  Now they’re saying it’s worse than anybody thought.  Previously they said the lights would be on by Christmas time.  Now that date of restoration is moved back to February or perhaps early spring before power is restored.  Then there was a segment on a high-rise building in San Francisco that’s sinking and leaning fourteen inches.  But the safety experts say there is no danger and you don’t have to worry.   They marketed this 57 story building to apartments for millionaires.  Some of these millionaires have moved out at the loss of over a million dollars.  It’s a good thing they’re so rich they can afford that loss.  Then there was the little girl composer from England who is around eleven.  She is a genious; no doubt about that.  Although I wonder whether all of her “melodies” are original or maybe just a classic with just a few notes shuffled around.  I say this because of that “four note” composition.  I think the thing she was playing was from some Mozart concerto.  Meanwhile the Raiders and Miami were playing on NBC but I got distracted and didn’t watch the end of the football game.  I continued to have it on CBS and I guess I dozed off a little.  I went to bed sometime after nine.  I had a dream we were looking at some new model homes and they were large.  They were in small clusters around the central courtyard and I think there were four different floor plans.  They were multi story and spacious.  There was one model with four floors and a stairway, and some young woman was (maybe it was Glenda) was living there on the top bedroom at the top of three flights of stairs.