Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

~~~

~~~

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

 



Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann was acquitted of lying to the FBI, in the 1st trial of special counsel John Durham’s investigation. 

The verdict is a major defeat for Durham, who has spent 3+ years and $3.8 million looking for misconduct related to the Trump-Russia probes.

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

 

U.S. marks Memorial Day weekend with at least 12 mass shootings 



PORTSMOUTH, N.H. – Quarius Naqua Dunham, a third grader from Portsmouth, N.H. was killed over the weekend when police say he and his family were victims of a random shooting in South Carolina.

According to the Florence County Sheriff's office, 40-year-old Charles Montgomery Allen allegedly shot at three cars as they drove by his home on Saturday.

Dunham was rushed to the hospital after being shot in the neck. The 8-year-old was removed from life support on Sunday and later died. His father was hit in the leg, but is expected to survive. 




Charles Montgomery Allen, the killer who shot the 8-year-old New Hampshire boy.




Monday, May 30, 2022

MEMORIAL DAY

 









For the Union Dead

 - 1917-1977

"Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam."

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now.  Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back.  I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile.  One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common.  Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse, 

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now.  He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die--
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic. 

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year--
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast.  Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone.  Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.

Sunday, May 29, 2022

SOMETIMES, PEOPLE GET WHAT THEY DESERVE.

 




AMERICA'S SICKNESS.

 I don't know where this is, but the young boy has a t-shirt on with "Texas" on it, so maybe it's somewhere in that benighted state.

Think of all the money these morons spent on this arsenal when they could have put it toward something that builds instead of kills. 

We are a sick, sick country.





YOUR SUNDAY MOMENT OF ZEN

 





Saturday, May 28, 2022

Thursday, May 26, 2022

 







Via Democratic Underground:

Today we heard the devastating news of Irma Garcia’s husband dying of a heart attack. A horrific reminder that the murders continue long after the bullets stop. 

Jeremy Richman-died by suicide 7 years after his daughter Amelie was murdered at Sandy Hook. 

 Austin Eubanks, survived Columbine. Spiraled into addiction within 1 year of surviving that Massacre. He got clean, became a motivational speaker. He died of a heroin overdose in 2019. 

Sydney Arielle- survived Parkland. Died by suicide in 2019 

 Calvin Desir- also survived Parkland. Died by suicide in 2019. 


IS THE RIGHT TO OWN AR-15s MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE LIVES OF THESE CHILDREN?



Guns killed more youngsters than cars for the first time in 2020

 



These are just a few photos of the children who were slaughtered yesterday.




This country is sick.

I blame the politicians who refuse to do anything about this sickness. 

President Clinton banned the sale of AR-15s. That ban lapsed when George Bush became president, and he refused to renew it (as he had promised while campaigning for the presidency).



"...compared with the 10-year period before the ban, the number of gun massacres during the ban period fell by 37 percent and that the number of people dying because of mass shootings fell by 43 percent. But after the ban lapsed in 2004, the numbers in the next 10-year period rose sharply — a 183 percent increase in mass shootings and a 239 percent increase in deaths."







Wednesday, May 25, 2022

A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

This is your current Trumpublican party and its gun-worshipping/fetishizing politicians:











REMEMBER THIS?

 

The gutless @GOQ ghouls cheered this. 


#RepublicansAreTheProblem #GunReformNow 

Texas Republican leaders promised action on gun safety after the El Paso shooting. Instead, they passed permitless carry. 

The Texas Legislature passed a bill allowing Texans to carry handguns without a license or training — an expansion of gun rights so divisive Republican leaders in previous years refused to touch it.

 







Mitt Romney has taken more than $13mil from The NRA, far more than any other Senator. He's right that prayer/condolence are grossly inadequate. But the fact that he won't do more proves his soul is, too. It's not enough to be better than Trump, Mitt.



Joni Ernst has taken:

$3,124,773 from the NRA.
Quote Tweet
Joni Ernst
@SenJoniErnst
·
A senseless, horrendous act of evil. My heart is with all those in Texas right now.




26 years ago, a gunman entered Dunblane Primary School in Scotland, killing 16 kids and a teacher. The UK govt responded by enacting tight gun control legislation. In the 9400+ days since, there have been a total of O school shootings in the UK. #Uvalde


Twenty minutes in response to a peaceful protest of less than 100 people. And it will do nothing for those dead kids
Quote Tweet
Kieran Healy
@kjhealy
·
Ten days ago it took the Senate about twenty minutes to unanimously pass a bill extending security protection to the family members of Supreme Court justices when it looked like a house might be picketed.