[Crabcakes]

I've read several tweets this evening about Trump falling asleep in court and farting in court. Small things like this could be more damaging to his campaign than any evidence or any verdict. He keeps attacking Biden for being too old but if Trump keeps falling asleep in court his attacks on Biden quickly start to diminish.

The reason he keeps falling asleep is going to bite too - it may not be true, but there are a ton of rumours it’s because he can’t take his usual drug cocktail of uppers and last the whole day. Those midday starts at the white house were already well known - this is just going to play in to that.

[Yug]

I hear* Marjorie Taylor-Green has said Americans shouldn't support Ukraine because they can't find it on a map.

Using that criterion, a lot of Americans should stop supporting America.


*on r/Facepalm

[Philip Marlow]

I can’t help but wonder if the difference is that what American power brokers think counts, in terms of world affairs, in a way that the yapping of sweet British politicians simply doesn’t.

[davidjay]

The Columbine shooting was 25 years ago today. And the lessons learned are?

[Philip Marlow]

The Columbine shooting was 25 years ago today. And the lessons learned are?

An American friend I was at university with was a high school student at the time, and the security measures and general distrust of anyone ‘weird’ which came in in the aftermath were apparently seriously intimidating if you were at all at odds with the mainstream. There was also a concerted campaign, which remains ongoing, to ignore the significance of bullying as a trigger for these sorts of mass shootings.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I suppose if your son's just shot someone, people probably don't want to hear about him being a victim of anything. But it must be true in some cases, and with knife crime here too.

[satnav]

I think some lessons have been learned last week two parents were convicted after their son killed four students in a college shooting. They were accused of neglecting their parental duties because they gave their 15 year old his own pistol which he used in the shooting.

Schools in a America and some in this country now have practises to show staff and students what to do if there is a shooter on campus. The only problem with this is that you are basically normalising the fact that shootings might take place.

[davidjay]

I watched Bowling for Columbine and was impressed by Marilyn Manson, who was asked what he'd have said to the shooters (they were fans of hos) and saying, "Nothing. I'd have listened to them. I might have been the only one who ever did."

[Philip Marlow]

Michael Hofmann - fine poet, fine translator - over at the LRB blog, on the subject of a certain governor, and on education in general.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/april/in-florida

From early on in DeSantis’s governorship, it was apparent that here was someone who took extreme pleasure in malice and cruelty. In him, the political is personal. Which is to say he has no politics beyond the reach of his shadow, neither care nor imagination nor interest. Here was someone who had witnessed and approved force-feeding at Guantánamo. He told asylum seekers there was something waiting for them, and flew them to the middle of nowhere (he alone had the pleasure of knowing it was the playground of the enemy, Martha’s Vineyard). He took funds away from schools that, against his wishes, kept mask regulations in force. He sacked a public prosecutor in Tampa who said he wouldn’t criminalise abortion, and another in Orange County who refused to turn a blind eye to police crimes. He fired a data scientist who collated coronavirus statistics. He seems to have special antennae attuned to the category ‘small opposition’. And these individuals – librarians! – he goes after with his thunderbolts, with the astonishing array of state power. Not bad for a party that claims to want to drown it in a bathtub.

This fucker was being touted as an alternative to Trump, once upon a time.

[Youngian]

Couldn’t see how this crackpot would damage Biden more than Trump and it looks like he isn’t.

[satnav]

I'm getting a bit tired of news channels in this country broadcasting Trump's rants from outside of court without attempting to correct any of the lies he churns out. Today he said Biden was the worst president in history and then said that his own poll ratings are getting better all the time which is clearly untrue.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Good telly, innit...

[The Weeping Angel]

I suppose if your son's just shot someone, people probably don't want to hear about him being a victim of anything. But it must be true in some cases, and with knife crime here too.

The whole the kids who did Columbine were bullies is actually a myth

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ory-behind

Fuselier warned how appealing the myth might sound to social misfits, but he could not foresee the power of social media five years before Facebook was born. Decades later, a perverse fandom has recast the Columbine killers as champions of the nobodies.

Eric Harris ridiculed the nobodies. Neither he nor Dylan Klebold were loners, misfits, or outcasts. They were not in the Trench Coat Mafia. They were not Nazis or white supremacists, and they did not plan the attack for Hitler’s birthday. (An ammunition problem delayed it a day.) So much of the legend hinges on bullying, but the killers never even mentioned it in the vast trove of journals, web posts, and videos they left to explain themselves. They both did enjoy violent movies, industrial music, and video games, but there is no evidence any of that played a role.

They did not target jocks, Christians, or African Americans. They targeted no one. They shot randomly and designed their bombs to kill indiscriminately. They mocked earlier school shooters and would have been horrified to find their attack immortalised as a mere shooting. That was supposed to be the “fun” part, but the bombs were the main event: hundreds dying in the burning wreckage before the first shot.

Their bombs failed. Yet the legend made them heroic to their progeny and gave birth to a sprawling fandom. By the tenth anniversary, I was encountering a small band of “Columbiners” online. They soon gravitated to a new name, “True Crime Community” (or TCC), to include more mass killers, but Eric and Dylan remain the megastars.

[Youngian]

This is the kind of tacky rat fucking political ads that used to win Republicans the White House. What’s good for the goose etc

[Oboogie]

Couldn’t see how this crackpot would damage Biden more than Trump and it looks like he isn’t.

I saw somewhere that his own family are supporting Biden.

[davidjay]

Couldn’t see how this crackpot would damage Biden more than Trump and it looks like he isn’t.

I saw somewhere that his own family are supporting Biden.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Trump's own family are supporting Biden.

[Youngian]

I read that Bannon was instrumental in persuading RFK to run. He’s lost his political antennae if that’s his idea of a spoiler candidate to aid Trump. I’m no expert at electoral college number crunching but George McGovern’s popular vote was over 40% when he only gained one out of 50 states.

[Tubby Isaacs]

If Trump shipped votes to Kennedy Jnr, he'd still win quite a few states. Of those he won last time, he'd lose North Carolina and possibly Texas but would likely keep all the others.

[Andy McDandy]

The electoral math for Trump to win without Texas is pretty much impossible. Aside from Florida, all the other big hitters are solidly Democrat (or at least anti-Trump).

He can still look at GOP control of the senate though.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Ah, yes I forgot Florida.