28 Dead in Shooting At Church - Republicans Offer "Prayers" Instead of Gun Control

UPDATE: Kelley - a white male - was an Air Force veteran and firearms enthusiast. He served on active duty between 2010 and 2014, but received a dishonorable discharge after facing a court martial in May of 2014, CBS News said.

It has been a little over a month since the mass shooting carnage in Las Vegas and now at least 25 are dead after a shooting spree at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas (a member of the Southern Baptist Convention), not far from San Antonio.   As is always the case when such avoidable tragedies occur, Republican elected officials - GOP Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott among them - disgustingly "send prayers" but meanwhile block and kind of responsible gun control that might lessen the frequency of such horrible events.   Not to sound cruel and heartless in this moment of grief and mourning, but I cannot help but find an element of irony in the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention has doggedly supported anti-gun control Republicans and bows down to the gun manufacturer lobby which hides behind the NRA which is now little better than a front organization for international gun manufacturers. Most upsetting is the fact that children appear to have been among the victims.  Here are some details from the New York Times:

A gunman walked into a small Baptist church in rural Texas on Sunday and opened fire, killing at least 25 people and turning a tiny town east of San Antonio into the scene of the country’s most recent mass horror.

Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas confirmed the death toll, which has steadily increased throughout the day after the shooting at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs.

Accounts of the number of dead have varied: Paul W. Pfeil, a Wilson County, Tex., commissioner, said that he did not have a total count of those killed but that it was “more than 20.”

Albert Gamez Jr., another Wilson County commissioner, told CNN that he was told by an emergency medical technician that 27 people were dead and 24 others were injured. He said he was told by the police that the gunman was chased into the next county and was killed, but it was not clear whether the police shot him or he killed himself.

Mr. Gamez said the victims were still inside the church. Sutherland Springs is a small community where everyone knows one another, he said.

Devin Keen, a constable in Wilson County, said “there were kids involved” in the shooting at the church.

Sheriff Joe Tackitt of Wilson County told The Wilson County News that a man had entered the church and begun firing.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said on Twitter: “Our prayers are with all who were harmed by this evil act. Our thanks to law enforcement for their response.”

Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, said in a statement: “The thoughts and prayers of all Texans are with the people of Sutherland Springs as tragic reports come out of First Baptist Church.

The San Antonio Express-News reports that the shooter who is as yet unnamed, is dead although whether by shots from the police or his own hand is unclear.  At least 9 injured victims are in the trauma unit.  I will wager that when the shooter is identified it will tun out that the gun(s) used was/were purchased legally - just like the guns involved in every mass shooting to date.   This mayhem could be stopped if Republicans would put the lives of innocent citizens above money from the gun lobby. 

Seduced and Betrayed by Donald Trump

One of the big questions in the wake of the 2016 presidential election is how long it will take for the millions of low information, working class white voters to realize that both Trump and the Republican Party played them for fools with no intention of curing the ills that they believe afflict them and their future.  Succumbing to appeals to their own racism, xenophobia and nativism, these voters ultimately ignored their own best economic interest and put in office a team that will strive to give more and more to the wealthy and large corporations while shredding the social safety net and leaving these voters much worse off.  Yes, in the short term they may feel smug and superior and better about themselves as they look down on blacks, Hispanics, non-whites, non-Christians, and, of course, LGBT American, but down the road they themselves will be the biggest losers.  A column in the New York Times looks at this said tale of trickery and votes cast based on resentment rather than logic.  Do I have sympathy for these voters?  Candidly, no, none whatsoever. Given the base motives that ultimately motivated them, they deserve whatever misfortunes that may befall them.  After all, it will all have been self inflicted.   Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump won the Electoral College (though not the popular vote) on the strength of overwhelming support from working-class whites, who feel left behind by a changing economy and society. And they’re about to get their reward — the same reward that, throughout Mr. Trump’s career, has come to everyone who trusted his good intentions. Think Trump University.

Yes, the white working class is about to be betrayed.

The evidence of that coming betrayal is obvious in the choice of an array of pro-corporate, anti-labor figures for key positions. In particular, the most important story of the week — seriously, people, stop focusing on Trump Twitter — was the selection of Tom Price, an ardent opponent of Obamacare and advocate of Medicare privatization, as secretary of health and human services. This choice probably means that the Affordable Care Act is doomed — and Mr. Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters will be among the biggest losers.

The first thing you need to understand here is that Republican talk of “repeal and replace” has always been a fraud. The G.O.P. has spent six years claiming that it will come up with a replacement for Obamacare any day now; the reason it hasn’t delivered is that it can’t.

Obamacare looks the way it does because it has to: You can’t cover Americans with pre-existing conditions without requiring healthy people to sign up, and you can’t do that without subsidies to make insurance affordable.

Any replacement will either look a lot like Obamacare, or take insurance away from millions who desperately need it.

What the choice of Mr. Price suggests is that the Trump administration is, in fact, ready to see millions lose insurance. And many of those losers will be Trump supporters. . . . . we’re probably looking at more than five million Trump supporters, many of whom have chronic health problems and recently got health insurance for the first time, who just voted to make their lives nastier, more brutish, and shorter.

Why did they do it? They may not have realized that their coverage was at stake — over the course of the campaign, the news media barely covered policy at all. Or they may have believed Mr. Trump’s assurances that he would replace Obamacare with something great.

Either way, they’re about to receive a rude awakening, which will get even worse once Republicans push ahead with their plans to end Medicare as we know it, which seem to be on even though the president-elect had promised specifically that he would do no such thing.

And just in case you’re wondering, no, Mr. Trump can’t bring back the manufacturing jobs that have been lost over the past few decades. Those jobs were lost mainly to technological change, not imports, and they aren’t coming back.

There will be nothing to offset the harm workers suffer when Republicans rip up the safety net.

Will there be a political backlash, a surge of buyer’s remorse? Maybe. Certainly Democrats will be well advised to hammer Mr. Trump’s betrayal of the working class nonstop. But we do need to consider the tactics that he will use to obscure the scope of his betrayal.

One tactic, . . . will be to distract the nation with bright, shiny, trivial objects. True, this tactic will work only if news coverage is both gullible and innumerate. . . . . But judging from the coverage of the deal so far, assuming that the news media will be gullible and innumerate seems like a good bet.

And if and when the reality that workers are losing ground starts to sink in, I worry that the Trumpists will do what authoritarian governments often do to change the subject away from poor performance: go find an enemy.

Remember what I said about Trump Twitter. Even as he took a big step toward taking health insurance away from millions, Mr. Trump started ranting about taking citizenship away from flag-burners. This was not a coincidence.

The point is to keep your eye on what’s important. Millions of Americans have just been sucker-punched. They just don’t know it yet.

I always advise clients that they must put logic over emotion when making both business decisions or decisions to institute lawsuits.  Following emotion may feel good, but often the result is disastrous. Trump voters chose to go with emotion as opposed to logic and reason. Now they deserve to pay a very high price. 

Repeal Advocates Pressure Jim Webb and Democrat Wimps

I have been up front in my total dissatisfaction with one of my U.S. Senators - i.e., Jim Webb - and his betrayal of LGBT Virginians and the countless closeted service members stationed in Virginia through his vote against the DADT "compromise" in the Senate Armed Forces Committee. That and his willingness to kiss the wide asses of homophobes in the senior ranks of the U.S. military. Indeed, I suspect his staff have winced reading this blog or when they encounter me at political event. Fortunately, more and more LGBT advocates are waking up to Webb's betrayal and the damage he is likely doing to incumbent Democrats up for re-election this November. As E.J. Dionne notes in a Washington Post column, malaise within the Democrat base is the number one problem facing the Democrats as November approaches:
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There is something preposterous about how the administration and congressional Democrats have lost every major public argument that they should be winning.
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They lost it on a stimulus bill that clearly lifted the economy, as Alan Blinder, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, argued persuasively in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. They are losing it on the health-care bill, a big improvement on the current system enacted through a process that made it look like a tar ball on an Alabama beach. They are losing it on the deficit even though it was Republicans who cut taxes twice while the Bush administration was starting two wars.
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Professor Obama and his allies ought to be ashamed of this. The cure for malaise is to have a self-confident sense of purpose, and to act boldly in its pursuit.
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The result is that more and more activists are willing to speak out against Jim Webb and similar cowards who are afraid to act and deliver on the campaign promises from the 2008 campaign are who are playing directly into the hands of the GOP. Webb and those like him are making a strong case that electing Democrats makes absolutely no difference - so why bother to vote for them. Here are highlights from an article in The Advocate that looks at the growing pressure and similar Judas Iscariots within the GOP:
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Repeal advocates are mounting an effort to push back on Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia for voting against “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal in committee in order to keep other Democrats from doing the same on the Senate floor.
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“We hope that Virginians will not give Senator Jim Webb a pass on his vote in the Senate Armed Services Committee to keep ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ on the books,” said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. “His vote was against equality, and fair-minded Virginians should take exception.”
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Sarvis said holding Webb accountable for his committee vote is an important part of sending a message to Webb’s counterpart, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, that voting against repeal on the Senate floor will have consequences among his constituents.
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“It is our hope that Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia will do the right thing when the defense bill is debated and voted on the Senate floor,” he said.
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Sarvis said it was “critical” for those who favor repeal to contact their senators and urge them to “follow the lead” of the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin of Michigan, who will oppose attempts to strike repeal or weaken the measure’s language.
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What can readers do on this issue? Contact Jim Webb's office and let him know that his anti-gay vote will have negative consequences in your home district. While you are at it, tell your local member of the House of Representatives that Webb and those like him may cause you to sit out the November elections. Somehow, I suspect that if Webb and his homophobe embracing cohorts in the Senate get enough calls from livid House members, just maybe Webb, et. al, will decide to change their anti-gay attitude.

Congressman Glenn Nye Continues to Disappoint

Spineless first term Democrat Congressman Glenn Nye continues to disappoint progressives who supported him and votes again as if he were Thelma Drake, except he lacks her backbone. Nye's latest betrayal is his decision to vote against health care reform. Nye campaigned promising "change" yet has failed to deliver and has done ZERO for LGBT voters whose money and votes he sought. My letters to him have been greeted with noncommittal, mealy mouthed form letter responses. He seems to have learned nothing from the hapless Creigh Deeds campaign of last fall where pretending to be a Republican alienated Democrats and did nothing to attract GOP voters. Should Nye find himself opposed to Scott Rigell this fall, the only thing to recommend him to Democrat and progressive voters will be that he's not a theocrat like Rigell who could prove to be another Ken Cuccinelli. Here are some highlights from the Virginian Pilot on Nye's disappointing betrayal of average families:
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U.S. Rep. Glenn Nye announced Saturday night he is voting against the Democratic health care bill today, saying it doesn't do enough to reduce the cost of health care, would make deep cuts in some hospital funding, and could cause problems for Tricare recipients.
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"I know there are some people who will be disappointed with my vote," Nye said, "but I believe that I have a firm duty to vote my conscience and represent the best interests of my district." While Nye - whose district includes Virginia Beach, parts of Norfolk and Hampton, and the Eastern Shore - had held off making his intentions known until the eve of the vote, his decision is consistent with his "no" vote on a similar health care overhaul bill that passed the House in November.
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President Barack Obama, in a politically charged visit to Capitol Hill, tried to rally support for the measure by telling the House's 253 Democrats to ignore the gloom-and-doom midterm election scenarios that Republican leaders and pundits have suggested if they pass the health care measure. "You're here to represent your constituencies, and if you think your constituencies honestly shouldn't be helped, you shouldn't vote for this," Obama said. "But if you agree the system's not working for ordinary families... then help us fix this system."
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The legislation would require most employers and consumers to obtain coverage by 2014 or face penalties. Families earning up to $88,000 a year would be eligible for help paying premiums. Consumers would be able to use new exchanges, or marketplaces, to easily shop for coverage.
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The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the plan would reduce the federal deficit by $138 billion over 10 years. It includes a series of tax increases, including higher Medicare payroll taxes on the wealthy and a new tax on dividend, interest and other unearned income.

Obama's Missing Foot Soldiers

Harold Meyerson has a column in the Washington Post that looks at the Obama administration's apparent failure to mobilize its grass roots supporters via the Internet as it did during the campaign. Since I - and I suspect many other LGBT Americans - have unsubscribed from Obama's Organizing for America in disgust over the non-progress on LGBT issues such as DADT, DOMA and ENDA, I do not know personal knowledge of what is being disseminated. Personally, I believe that Obama's failure to forcefully push for change and use the presidency as a "bully pulpit" has greatly dampened spirits and left many disappointed and not just within the LGBT community. With Virginia elections coming in the fall, I hope the sense of malaise doesn't give a boost to the ultra far right GOP slate lead by Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell who is working hard to cast himself as a moderate when he is in fact anything but. Here are some column highlights:

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If you measure the Obama administration's campaign for health-care reform by its ability to win crucial support from major institutions, things are going swimmingly. . . . But if you measure the administration's campaign by the degree of street heat on legislators to enact a universal plan, the results look far less rosy.

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The problem begins with the administration's inability -- or disinclination -- to use its greatest political asset, the list of 13 million supporters that the Obama presidential campaign amassed last year. In 2008, that list was the wonder of the political world, enabling Barack Obama to run the best-funded campaign in history and to activate more volunteers than any candidate ever had.

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This year, however, the administration has asked far less of that list and received, not surprisingly, far less in return. . . . . "What made the presidential campaign so potent were clear goals and a strategy that made sense to people," says Marshall Ganz, one of liberal America's foremost organizing geniuses (who led training sessions for Obama campaign staffers and volunteers last year). Such goals and strategies are hard to discern today, and the participation of Obama volunteers has declined accordingly.

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the administration's willingness to limit the potential of its army of supporters and the progressive groups' unwillingness to try to create a movement (say, for single-payer health care) that goes beyond the administration's goals have all but ensured that legislators will feel no major pressure for systemic change as Congress crafts national policy.

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Are Obama and the Congressional Democrats throwing away the mandate for change that voters so clearly wanted? It would seem so and much of the problem stems from Obama's desire to play nice with Republicans who hate him rather than work to enact legislation desired by those who supported him.