Mike Collier, the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Texas, appeared on MSNBC(05/30/22) where he dropped a bombshell telling host Katy Tur, that the gun violence problem in Texas begins and ends with one person–Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. Collier added that in his conversations with many state legislators, he has found out that there are many Republicans who are open to common sense gun reform laws, but are afraid to publicly support such measures for fear of reprisals by Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, the most powerful politician in the state.
Mike Collier(video at 2:55):“The fundamental problem is that the political leaders that run this state, and I’m talking about Dan Patrick now, let me be very very clear. Dan Patrick who’s Lieutenant Governor in our constitution, the most powerful political leader in the state, has worked aggressively to block even the slighetst suggestion of gun laws in the state. Now, I know from talking to legislators, Democrats in the last session proposed reasonable gun laws, and Republicans actually were lining up behind them, until they heard from Dan Patrick who said, ‘You stop this, or I’m going to get even with you’, and they are afraid of him. The problem in Texas is Dan Patrick, and he’s got to go.”
Mike Collier added towards the end of the interview(video at 6:25):“I know from talking to Democrats and Republicans alike, that the[Texas]legislature wants to act on these problems. They don’t want to see children killed, but they can’t move forward because of one individual, Dan Patrick, and they all know that. That’s why he’s got to go.”
Bottom line folks, if what Mike Collier said on MSNBC holds up, that there are indeed Texas Republicans who want sensible gun reforms but are scared of super Trumper Dan Patrick, then the blood of innocent school children at Santa Fe, Robb Elementary and elsewhere in Texas, are surely on his hands, and he has zero business holding public office in Texas any longer. I’m sure he can secure a cushy job at the NRA, where he belongs.
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Rep Mo Brooks(R-AL) on Fox News Sunday(05/29/22) with host Sandra Smith
Rep Mo Brooks(R-AL), who has an A rating from the National Rifle Association, appeared on Fox News Sunday(05/29/22) to discuss the horrific shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Asked by host Sandra Smith whether he would support stricter laws regarding the sale of firearms as a way of reducing gun violence, Rep Brooks gave an interesting response, saying the solution to our gun problems is to teach our young people proper moral values. Yup, lax Republican laws that make it easier for teens to acquire deadly weapons are not the problem, just teach the young ones proper moral values.
Host Sandra Smith(2:40):“Gallup research does find that a majority of Americans, 52% of them, are in favor of stricter gun laws when it comes to the sale of firearms. So to the majority of Americans who feel that way, you say what?”
Rep Mo Brooks:“Back when I was growing up we didn’t have these mass killings, okay, they weren’t there, they didn’t occur, or if they did, I certainly was not cognisant of them, and they were very very very rare, so rare, that I cannot recall a single instant in which one of those things occured during my youth. Today they are much more common. What’s the big difference between when I was growing up and today? The big difference is a decline in the moral values, a decline in the respect for human life. If we teach proper moral values, if we teach respect for human life, if we properly address mental health issues that may somehow or another be associated with all these things, then that is the way to fix the problem.”
Now, folks, one doesn’t have to be a Havard educated genius to realize that the kind of fix Rep Brooks is recommending(moral values reset) for our clear and present gun violence problem, will take generations to materialize, if it ever materializes. It this is the GOP’s position(moral values reset), even after the horrific Uvalde shooting, where we witnessed innocent 4th graders getting slaughtered in their classroom, then I hate to say it folks, get ready for more mass shooting horrors. There is no solution coming from Congress.
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Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo on MSNBC’s Last Word w/Lawrence O’Donnell(05/24/22)
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo appeared on MSNBC’s Last Word w/Lawrence O’Donnell show(05/24/22) to push for gun reform in Texas, following the tragic shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
Judge Hidalgo(video at 4:11): “The Houston Chronicle just published an oped and they ask in this context of law and order frenzy that’s taking over the country: What kind of a law and order state does so little to prevent the massacre of 18 babies in their own school? That’s what we need to call out. You cannot have a discussion about public safety without discussing the role of guns, of these weapons of mass destruction…”
This is a point that cannot be reiterated enough. Republicans in Texas and elsewhere, cannot have it both ways. They cannot go around screaming about “rising violent crime under Biden/Democrats” while at the same time seemingly totally oblivious to their/NRA’s huge role in the proliferation of such guns. As Judge Hidalgo stated, citing a report from the Harris County Medical Examiner, there’s a direct correlation between rising crime and the lax GOP gun laws(video at 2:05): “Our Medical Examiner just released data that the percentage of homicides related to guns has only increased in Texas and here in Harris County since the state has relaxed gun safety laws more and more.”
There’s no other way to interpret this other than Governor Abbott and his Texas Republicans have made the state a dangerous place because of their lax gun laws meant to placate the NRA.
Bottom line folks, Republicans, and especially Texas Republicans, should not be allowed to continue with their faux outrage over “rising crime under Democrats.” Democrats need to do a better job in reminding voters as we approach the 2022 midterms, that lax gun laws passed by Republicans, have a lot to do with the rising crime, especially homicides.
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After the deadly weekend shootings in El Paso Texas and Dayton Ohio, the President’s hateful rhetoric and especially his hardline stance on immigrants has taken center stage. A recent tweet by Senator John Cornyn(R-TX) is also getting closer scrutiny because some claim the El Paso shooter’s manifesto echoed similar anti-Hispanic sentiments as Senator Cornyn’s tweet–that Hispanics are replacing Whites in Texas.
Now we can all agree that it is unfair to pin any national tragedy on a politician’s previous public comments and Yours Truly is certainly not suggesting here that the El Paso shooter read Senator Cornyn’s tweet and then decided to open fire on Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso. What is fair debate however is that President Trump has a well documented history of stoking racial tensions using very incendiary language that has even garnered praise from White Supremacy groups. It is also well known that Congressional Republicans like Senator Cornyn rarely push back on the President when he engages in such hateful rhetoric, the subject of Yours Truly’s recent post “GOP Complicit In Trump’s Racism”
Therefore when a hate crime against Hispanic shoppers like the one that happened in El Paso takes place, it is fair to confront Senator John Cornyn and other Republicans about their decision to remain silent even when the President engages in race-baiting speech. In Senator Cornyn’s case in particular, his tweet pointing out the fact that the Hispanic rate of migration to the state of Texas outnumbers that of Whites by a 9 to 1 margin certainly raises justifiable questions in light of the El Paso shooting.Was Senator Cornyn pushing the “White Replacement” conspiracy theory that is very popular among White Supremacy Groups worldwide?
It is well known that one of the grievances raised by hate groups and especially White Supremacists worldwide is this idea of “White Replacement”—that somehow there’s a global conspiracy to replace the White race with other ethnic groups. You’ll remember during the Charlottesville, Virginia riots, that White Supremacy advocates could be heard chanting “Jews will not replace us”. This “White Replacement” hysteria is fueling the growth of anti-immigrant political groups in Western Europe and some political pundits argue is the same hysteria currently being pushed by President Trump and his GOP with their harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric. It is therefore perfectly in order for Senator Cornyn to be questioned about the motivation behind his 9 to 1 tweet.
It also cannot be left unsaid that during a recent Congressional hearing, Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took Deputy FBI Director Michael McGarrity to task over why the FBI and other law enforcement agencies(like DHS) are not doing more to combat the rising threat of domestic terrorism posed by White Supremacy groups, a subject Yours Truly wrote about in “AOC Exposes FBI’s Terrorism Double Standard” . (AOC is always ahead of the curve folks).
Rep. @AOC confronted this official about why the FBI doesn’t treat white supremacists the way it treats other terrorists pic.twitter.com/latWQqn11N
Deputy Director McGarrity’s response was that there are no current laws/legal provisions that allow the FBI to vigorously go after domestic terrorists. The question then becomes, how does the same FBI and DHS currently target people they perceive to be “Black extremists” or “Black militants”? What current provisions/laws are they basing these surveillance practices on, that they are seemingly unwilling or unable to apply to White Supremacists? There have been numerous credible media reports that surveillance on “Black militants” is indeed happening as we speak in most major U.S. cities–some for reasons as mundane as anti-Trump/DHS social media posts, or even organizing,/participating in Black Lives Matter protests. Are these media reports “fake news”? These are some of the questions the public expects the mainstream media to pose to FBI and DHS brass in light of the two deadly weekend mass shootings.
Bottom line, the mainstream media fails the public miserably in the way it covers national tragedies. Specifically, the questions that need to be answered are often not answered because other incidents usually pop up and take the cameras/spotlight away. The El Paso shooting has raised two very important questions that needs to be addressed the first one being how surveillance capabilities of the FBI and DHS are being misused/abused. Are the FBI and DHS wasting surveillance resources needlessly chasing down perceived “militants” of color while totally ignoring the actual threat of domestic terrorism by White Supremacists?The second question (a no-brainer), is whether the hate-filled rhetoric emanating from President Trump and his Republican party is fueling the rise White Supremacy groups in the U.S.? These are two questions the mainstream media must seriously delve into in the aftermath of the two deadly shootings in El Paso and Dayton. The Mainstream media will likely give Trump and Senator John Cornyn a pass as they usually do with Republicans. However you can rest assured that Yours Truly, your trusted grassroots journalist, will not only hold Sen Cornyn’s feet to the fire regarding this racist tweet, but will also and make it the citadel upon which his 2020 reelection prospects fail. Stay tuned.
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In case you missed it, there was a very interesting observation(as usual) on the 7/16/2018 Rachel Maddow show regarding Russian agent Maria Butina. The main story was that the FBI had arrested her the previous night for “conspiracy to act as an agent of Russia” in the U.S.
However in the same segment, Maddow threw in some additional details about Maria Butina that Yours Truly found quite interesting.
The most interesting fact was that as early as 2015 Maria Butina and by extension her Russian sponsors were confident that the GOP would win the election in 2016. Even more interesting, she apparently said in 2015 that they(Russians) “had a right to negotiate” with the incoming GOP administration. Maddow, like Yours Truly wondered out loud why Kremlin-tied Russians would think they “had a right to negotiate” with any U.S administration? The implication is obvious folks–The Russians had delivered something to TeamTrump/GOP and thus felt they had a “right to negotiate” over U.S. policies affecting Russia. This in itself is a very strong indication that as early as 2015 there was already collusion between Kremlin-tied Russians and the GOP/TeamTrump
There are other interesting tidbits from the must watch Maddow segment(see full segment below). For example the Russians apparently sent a Kremlin-approved delegation to the Prayer Breakfast, a very popular event among U.S. Evangelicals. Why would a Kremlin-approved delegation attend the Prayer Breakfast? This raises questions that the Mainstream Media never asks Trump Evangelicals–and that is their ties to Putin’s Russia. In other words there is a yet untold story about how the strong support Trump gets from Evangelicals is all part of the larger TrumpRussia scheme of things.
Are Trump Evangelical leaders and their Churches beneficiaries of monies from Putin-tied oligarchs? These are questions the media never asks but hopefully soon they’ll start delving into.
Maria Butina communicating with Alexander Torshin about the Russian delegation to the Prayer Breakfast
Dems and the Mainstream Media need to start asking some of the Trump Evangelical leaders whether they worked with Kremlin-tied Russians to help Trump get elected. Somehow the Evangelicals are left out of the collusion debate yet it is very clear that they played a major part in the TrumpRussia collusion scheme.
Maddow also reported that on 2016 election night, after it became apparent that Trump had won, Maria Butina sent Alexander Torshin a message saying she was “waiting for further orders”. This raises the interesting question as to whether Torshin has sent messages/instructions to Maria Butina after Trump assumed the Presidency and whether any such messages/instructions have been acted upon by President Trump. We talk about TrumpRussia collusion only in the pre-election context. Could there be TrumpRussia collusion still taking place even after Trump became President?
Maria Butina’s message to Alexander Torshin on election night after Trump won
Bottomline Dems and the Mainstream Media need to do some serious inquiry as to why Kremlin-tied Russian agent Maria Butina was so sure back in 2015 that the GOP would win the White House giving them(Russians) a “right to negotiate” with the GOP over U.S. policies affecting Russia. Any reasonable person would conclude that the Kremlin-tied Russians had done the GOP a favor which they believed earned them the “right to negotiate”–the quintessential TrumpRussia collusion.
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In a previous post, Yours Truly pointed out that the FBI was investigating the powerful gun lobby group NRA for allegedly being used by Russians to funnel money into the Donald Trump Campaign
Well in a bombshell new piece, the news site McClatchy is now reporting that there is photographic evidence of Putin allies meeting with top NRA officials in Moscow. Until recently, most of the public were only aware of Russian banker and Putin ally Alexander Torshin in relation to FBI’s money funneling investigation. Well it now turns out according to McClatchy’s piece that during the hustle and bustle of the 2016 campaign season top NRA officials also met Dmitry Rogozin, who until last month served as a deputy prime minister overseeing Russia’s defense industry, and Sergei Rudov, head of one of Russia’s largest philanthropies, both close allies of Putin. In the picture below Rogozin is front right, Rudov is the bearded guy in the back, Torshin is in the back with black shirt, NRA President Pete Brownell is to the left of the women. Also in the picture is none other than the controversial former Milwaukee County Sheriff Dave Clarke(back turned to photo)
NRA Officials Meeting With Putin Allies
It is still unclear whether these two new individuals funneled money into the NRA but the fact that they are close Putin allies who met the NRA during the thick and thin of the 2016 presidential election will certainly be of great interest to the FBI. It bears pointing out that using foreign money to influence a U.S. election is a federal crime punishable with prison time. Simply put this is serious business.
Also remember that the NRA spent more than $30 million on the Trump campaign, more than double what they spent on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012. If some or all of this money was illegally funneled from Russia, it could subject Trump and his campaign staff to criminal penalties, and possibly ensnare the NRA, top Republican Party officials and even candidates. Bottom line folks, this is a big deal and Yours Truly will keep you posted on the latest developments.
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One of the biggest obstacles for Democrats, especially in the battle for control of State Legislatures has been the powerful gun lobby group National Rifle Association(NRA). Unlike other powerful lobby groups that influence both the Republican and the Democratic Party, the NRA literally has a stranglehold on the Republican party. NRA’s stranglehold on the GOP is so bad, even President Trump recently had to ask GOP Members of Congress not to be “afraid of” the gun lobby group when discussing sensible gun control proposals. Marion Hammer, a powerful NRA lobbyist in Florida for example is so feared by Florida State GOPers, that she’s dubbed “The Real Gov of Florida.” Such is the power the NRA wields over the GOP
The troubling news therefore that the FBI is investigating the NRA as a possible vehicle for funnelling Russian money to help Trump in the 2016 elections should be of great concern to Democrats. New York Times Columnist Frank Bruni said on CNN’s Outfront with Erin Burnett that the NRA spent a whopping $30M to help Trump get elected, which is more than they spent the last two Presidential cycles combined. A Russian banker Alexander Torshin who has ties to Putin is an NRA life member and the key suspect in the alleged funnelling scheme. Torshin apparently wanted to create a “back channel” between the Trump Campaign and Russia and one of his associates reportedly told a Trump campaign staffer that “Putin is deadly serious about building a good relationship with Mr. Trump.”(see YouTube video from 14:00 onwards)
Under normal circumstances this would be just another questionable daliance between a powerful U.S. gun lobby group and a foreign financier. However against the backdrop of an ongoing Special Counsel investigation into U.S. election meddling by the Russians, this strange relationship between the NRA and the Putin-allied Russian financier has become a much more serious issue, one that Americans trust Mueller and Co. will get to the bottom of.
It also bears pointing out, as New York Times Columnist Frank Bruni did that Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr, is a major NRA supporter and activist. Trump Jr you’ll remember is already in the middle of a very questionable meeting with Russian lawyer Natalya Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower. Veselnitskaya has since confessed that she’s an informant for Putin’s Kremlin
Simply put, the NRA-Russia story is a major story that could affect the Dem political fortunes from here on out. According to CNN Political Correspondent Sara Murray, the NRA is privately, very concerned about the FBI’s investigation into its ties to the Russian Banker(vid at 14:00). Obviously we Dems have to be patient and allow the feds to conduct their investigation into the NRA but just like Trump used the ongoing Clinton email probe to hamstring her 2016 campaign, there is no reason why the DNC should not pummel NRA-allied GOP candidates over Russian money as we head to Midterms 2018, the perfect target being Sen Ted Cruz
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