Gaythia Weis @Gaythia@qoto.org

JD Vance says that mass murders in schools (and elsewhere) are just a fact of life. Given the frequency of mass murders, which is increasing every year, I guess he's right.

Weird how it's only a fact of life in THIS country, though.

No, school shootings do not have to be a "fact of life."

— Gun laws in other countries have stopped mass shootings

— More guns don't make us safer

— A majority of Americans want gun reform

We do not have to live like this. No other country does.

PRO-MISERY

Strictest abortion-ban states offer least family support

‘Pro-life attitude begins at conception but ends there as well’

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2024/september/strictest-abortion-ban-states-offer-least-family-support/

Gee. It's a mystery...

Why Trump Demands 'No Fact Checking' From Debate Moderators
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/09/why-trump-demands-no-fact-checking-debate

#LiarTrump #DonaldArlingtonTrump #GOPWeirdos #TrumpWillLose2024 #TrumpIsUnwell #Project2025 #KevinRoberts #HeritageFoundation #NoRepublicansEverAgain #FuckFascists #VoteBlue #USPol #DonaldTrump

Colt Gray murders 4—arrested alive

Dylan Roof murders 9—arrested alive

Payton Gendron murders 10—arrested alive

Nikolas Cruz murders 17—arrested alive

Patrick Crusius murders 23—arrested alive

Tamir Rice, Aiyana Jones, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Eric Garner—all unarmed & innocent—killed immediately

While Black people are only half as likely to be armed as are white people—police kill Black people at 3.23X the rate as white people. A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect

Trump no longer has to worry about having to run his campaign from jail, but the delay in sentencing doesn't change the fact that he is a criminal convicted of committing 34 felonies while serving as President of the United States, and who still faces dozens of criminal charges.

"He has the whole press corps acting as his ghostwriter, sanitizing his babble for the public." -- Heather Digby Parton

https://www.salon.com/2024/09/06/donald-incoherence-makes-the-medias-double-standard-hard-to-hide/

#Harris2024

Anti-immigrant backlash is nothing new, say sociology and criminology experts, who point to attacks against Irish, Italian and Polish immigrants about 100 years ago

https://coloradosun.com/2024/09/06/venezuelan-gangs-aurora/

People like JD have also prevented us imposing product liability on gun manufacturers (so, for example, they have no liability for a design that allows you to remove the magazine and not realize there's still one in the chamber which has led to accidental death.)

This is disgusting. Americans have so many shootings - in our schools, our places of worship, our concerts, our streets - because we have lousy gun laws in America and people like JD Vance have stood in the way of reforming them. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/06/jd-vance-school-shootings/

Can you even imagine an article written about a male candidate in which it described his "demanding management style" as a weakness?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/06/harris-veep-boss-management/

WAFA - An American-Turkish human rights activist has died after being shot in the head by Israeli forces during a weekly protest against settlement expansions in the West Bank. https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/148963

If you're traveling to Florida, definitely stay alert, especially if you’re not white. They have closed the agency that monitors police misconduct and the Florida police are free to do as they will.

I won’t be going there. More work from Republicans.

Florida's police oversight boards shutter after new state law:
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2024/09/03/the-law-must-be-followed-south-floridas-civilian-police-oversight-boards-shutter-after-statewide-ban/

"Climate action is fundamentally not about “saving the planet”, after all, but saving ourselves.

Shifting the framing of #ClimateChange from the environment to #PublicHealth is gaining support. The human costs of climate change, fossil fuel dependency and environmental destruction are enormous. A health framing could garner greater support for faster, deeper and more transformative action."

https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/climate-crisis/2024/09/05/should-we-treat-greenhouse-gas-emissions-like-smoking/
#ClimateFraming

Last one, for now.

Seconds after closest approach to Mercury, BepiColombo got this view of sunrise over the planet's rugged landscape.

These shots are just from the probe's monitoring cameras; the full science images will be amazing.

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2024/09/BepiColombo_s_closest_view_of_Mercury #space #science #tech (4/4)

Joseph Allen, @j_g_allen; Associate Professor @HarvardChanSPH: The Pivotal Importance of Air Quality, Ventilation and Exposures (Such as "Forever Chemicals") For Our Health, by @EricTopol https://open.substack.com/pub/erictopol/p/joseph-allen-the-pivotal-importance?r=cwb8u&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Hurray for James Gaddis:

“Florida’s department of environmental protection has fired a whistleblower who exposed and sank governor Ron DeSantis’s secretive plan to pave over environmentally sensitive state parks and build lucrative hotels, golf courses and pickleball courts.”

“Speaking with the Tampa Bay Times on Monday, Gaddis said preservation of the state parks was more important to him than his position.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/03/florida-park-whistleblower-fired

#Florida #environment

@StillIRise1963 This quote from a student was chilling:

“They prepare you for these things,” a 15-year-old girl told the New York Times. “But in the moment, I started crying. I got nervous.”

She thinks she did something wrong because she got scared by a mass murderer shooting up her school. 🤬🤬

No kids should have to PREPARE for this. The adults should be doing everything possible to prevent it. Instead, we get a-holes like Brian Kemp, who bragged about passing a law in GA allowing guns to be carried without licenses or background checks, pretending to be sad today. He doesn’t give a flying F about those kids. Or he NEVER would have signed such a law.