Open Thread Feb. 16: Loathsome Asshole Roundup

Filed in National, Open Thread by on February 16, 2018

If you had been in a coma until today, you would still be able to figure out there had been another big gun massacre because all news outlets are running their typical Day 2 Aftermath stories. The Atlantic’s James Fallows points out that nobody knows how to stop this violence, except every other country on earth. This paragraph sums it up best:

[T]here’s substantial overlap between the moderate gun-control measures that international experts think would be reduce killings, and those that have majority or near-unanimous support in opinion polls of Americans. But we know that in the terrain of modern American politics, such measures have no place. We’ll be talking about something else in a week or two.

The hypocrisy of the Republicans is of course a popular subject, in part because it’s as easy as shooting students in a high school (that seems easier than fish in a barrel. I know where to find a high school, but I have no idea where to find a barrel of fish). Sean Hannity, who famously went no farther than high school, wanted to know why there weren’t more guards in the hallways, so USA Today told him: Florida lawmakers voted down spending the money.

Here’s the rundown on the Thoughts and Prayers Gang — their statements after the shooting along with the amount the NRA has contributed to and spent for each during their careers.

As Rachel Maddow pointed out, Trump’s inaugural committee used the cover of the mass shooting to release its tax returns, which revealed a $26 million payout to a Melania crony and only a $5 million donation to charity.

Stories about EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s first-class taste and paranoid security demands have made the rounds for months, but Politico yesterday finally got to the bottom of why he insists his first-class habit is a security issue: another passenger yelled at him that he was destroying the environment. So when Pruitt reaches $1 million in first-class ticket purchases, blame that guy.

Finally, not every story has a happy ending. Remember TransPerfect, the translation sweat shop that was the subject of a long-running dispute between its estranged ex-fiancee owners? It’s finally over, with Liz Elting selling out to Phil Shawe. You might recall that Shawe is the shit stain who attacked the court system and even talked the ever-pliable Colin Bonini into introducing a bill to fuck with it. So I was definitely rooting for him to lose. As Grantland Rice once wrote, the race isn’t always to the swift or the battle to the strong, but that is the best way to bet. In business, he could have added, the battle is usually to the most loathsome asshole. Congratulations, Phil Shawe.

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  1. jason330 says:

    You have to be 21 to buy a beer in America, but your can legally buy a AR-15 assault rifle on your 18th birthday. At a minimum…MINIMUM, we should be able to set the age eligibility for assault weapons at 21.

  2. …or cut back the drinking age to 18, so that you can get drunk and THEN go shoot up a high school.

  3. bamboozer says:

    All for rolling back the drinking age, and for that matter legalizing weed. In your heart, you know it’s right.