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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
It's O'Rourke's birth name. "Beto" is a common Hispanic nickname for Roberto; the right insists on calling him Robert Francis as a way to try and make him seem like he's appropriating Hispanic culture.
Extra bonus points for the death threat tweet: Robert Francis is also the full name of Robert F. Kennedy, so whether or not that was intentional by Cain, well, it's bad optics, which is also why it's even easier to interpret the tweet as a death threat.
Edited by ITNW1989 on Sep 13th 2019 at 3:36:36 AM
Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2019/09/13/day-967/
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/13/politics/donald-trump-ethics-lawsuit/index.html
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/10/740258653/appeals-court-dismisses-emoluments-lawsuit-against-trump
📌 Day 144: In a separate case, the Justice Department argued that Trump can accept payments from foreign governments while he is in office. Advocates from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington brought the suit against Trump in January, asserting that because Trump-owned buildings take in rent, room rentals and other payments from foreign governments he breached the emoluments clause. (Washington Post / Politico / The Hill)
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/09/trump-foreign-payments-emoluments-feds-239380
2/ Trump plans to pay for his border wall using funds from more than four dozen Air Force construction projects poses a variety national security risks, according to a report composed by the Air Force. Some of the affected Air Force projects include money for a project to build facilities to store more than $1 billion in munitions at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, replacing a boiler at a base in Alaska, "whose failure is 'imminent'" and could result in the evacuation of the base, a new entry-control point at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey to protect troops, and construction in support of the European Defense Initiative, a program to boost U.S. military presence and discourage Russian aggression. (NBC News / Axios)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/trump-s-plan-pay-border-wall-air-force-funds-risks-n1054091
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-pentagon-idUSKCN1VP2VY
📌 Day 957: The Trump administration will divert $3.6 billion this week from 127 military construction projects to build to build 175 miles of Trump's border wall. Trump declared a national emergency in February to draw funding from federal accounts to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said about half of the funding will come from military construction projects outside the United States and half will come from projects within the country. (Politico / Washington Post)
3/ The Air Force sent crews to Trump's Turnberry resort in Scotland on 40 different occasions since 2015. That number is much higher than previously known, and it represents the preliminary results of an Air Force review launched last week after news reports about the Air Force sending crews to Trump's properties. The preliminary tally does not indicate how many of the stays at Trump properties occurred since Trump became president, but the Air Force significantly increased the number of stops in Scotland under Trump after signing a deal with the Prestwick Airport at the end of the Obama administration. (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/air-force-trump-scottish-resort-1493624
4/ Trump is not planning to name Mike Pompeo as national security adviser while also keeping him as Secretary of State. Trump confirmed that he spoke to Pompeo about the idea, but said that Pompeo "likes the idea of having somebody in there with him, and I do, too." Trump said he has 15 other candidates in mind to replace John Bolton, who Trump fired as national security adviser earlier this week. (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/trump-wont-name-pompeo-national-security-adviser-1493611
5/ The U.S. is preparing to send 150 troops to patrol northeastern Syria. Trump announced a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria last December, but the new troop deployment is part of an expanding series of military and diplomatic steps the U.S. has taken in recent weeks to defuse tensions with Turkey, which opposes U.S. support for the Syrian Kurdish fighters. The U.S. currently has around 1,000 troops in Syria. (New York Times / The Hill)
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/461228-us-could-deploy-150-troops-to-syria-report
6/ Ivanka Trump told a crowd of high-end donors that she got her moral compass from her father after being asked to name the personality traits she inherited from her parents. Ivanka said that Melania gave her an example of how to be a powerful, successful woman. (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/13/ivanka-trump-donors-1488704
7/ Trump complained that energy efficient light bulbs make him "always look orange." Trump also complained that energy-efficient light bulbs are "many times more expensive than that old incandescent bulb." (CNN / Mediaite)
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/13/politics/trump-orange-light-bulbs/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/climate/trump-light-bulb-rollback.html
poll/ 38% of Americans say climate change is a "crisis" – up from 23% five years ago. Another 38% say climate change is a "major problem." (Washington Post)
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/trump-democratic-debate-1493699
Andrew Yang announced a $120,000 giveaway during last night's Democratic primary debate. Yang said his campaign plans to randomly select 10 families and give them a total of $120,000 over the next year as part of a pilot program for his universal basic income plan. (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/andrew-yang-120000-giveaway-for-ubi-pilot-program-1493622
Biden incorrectly claimed that the Obama administration didn't separate families at the border. The Obama administration did not separate families as a matter of policy, as the Trump administration did as part of its "zero tolerance" border policy in 2018, but separations occurred on a case-by-case basis for parents being prosecuted on more serious charges than illegally crossing the border or in cases when an adult was suspected of not being a child’s parent. (CNN / The Hill)
Biden tried to clarify his record on Iraq War during Democratic debate. Biden is still struggling to explain his vote for the war and when his feelings about intervention evolved. (NPR)
Beto O'Rourke: "Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47." O'Rourke said that as president, he would prioritize mandatory buybacks of assault-style weapons. (NPR / CNN)
Fact-checking Democratic candidates on the issues at the ABC News debate in Houston. (ABC News)
Bernie Sanders said his administration will "cancel all student debt in this country." Sanders also pledged that under his administration every teacher in America will make at least $60,000 a year. (ABC7)
x4 And that statement is exactly why Gun Control debates get absolutely nowhere. Even if that was meant to be a sarcastic quip.
An irresponsible idiot with a gun is an irresponsible idiot with a gun, first, last and nothing second. Assigning partisan optics to it is beyond stupid.
> inb4 Most nutters are far-Right
It would be the same no matter what they profess to believe. A life taken in the end is still a life ended. What ideology it was taken in the name of is completely irrelevant.
Edited by TechPriest90 on Sep 13th 2019 at 10:00:27 AM
I hold the secrets of the machine.Hypotheticals don't change reality, the reality here being what you just admitted: that most mass shootings are enacted by far-right extremists.
So no, the ideology isn't completely irrelevant.
Frankly, one of the real reasons why gun control debates never go anywhere is that you can never talk about the type of people doing these shootings without somebody seemingly taking personal offense somehow.
Edited by PhysicalStamina on Sep 13th 2019 at 10:16:09 AM
i'm tired, my friend
So what’s the plan here then? Pass a law saying registered Republicans aren’t allowed to buy guns?
There’s not really any way to turn the point you’re making into effective legislation. Obviously we should be doing our best to combat extremism in the US, but that is sort of tangential to the topic of gun control.
Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 13th 2019 at 7:23:26 AM
They should have sent a poet.@Charles: Well, I'm not fond of the police as an institution, I think it is a Necessary Evil at best, but in theory any given cop has full training and psychological conditioning to be able to remain levelheaded in times of stress and only fire his gun when it is absolutely necessary.
Emphasis on "theory", here.
"An irresponsible idiot with a gun is an irresponsible idiot with a gun, first, last and nothing second. Assigning partisan optics to it is beyond stupid."
A gun crime can be committed by a registered, background-checked previously law abiding citizen, who handles his or her gun responsibly. It's not a question of responsibility, it's a question of malicious intent, and that's fucking everywhere in America. The people committing these crimes aren't blundering into gunning down dozens of people — they're ticking time bombs, people who escape notice because they dot every I and cross every T, and still somehow they end up shooting up a school, because they had a really bad week and the gun was available.
So when Charles asks whose are the right hands, the only logical answer is "no one's."
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Feels like we're tilting away from gun control as a topic in current political going-ons, and more like we're talking about gun control policy in general. We have a thread for that.
Actual approaches to gun control are flat out impossible when background checks represent the furthest from the status quo that any sitting politician is willing to venture. While gun ownership is a fundamental right enshrined in the Constitution, massacres are as American as apple pie.
Bringing it back to the topic, I sympathize with Beto's righteous fury over gun violence, but he's a fool if he thinks what amounts to compromise solutions to gun control can be achieved as the culmination of his policy aims while gun ownership is so deeply ingrained and normalized in our culture.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Sep 13th 2019 at 12:28:56 PM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Here's the relevant statistics on gun ownership in the USA as per Gallup:
What Percentage of Americans Own Guns?
About 30% of adults personally own guns, while 43% live in a gun household (meaning someone in their family is a gun owner).
Disgusted, but not surprised

Twitter has deleted the tweet of Texas state Representative Briscoe Cain (R-Webster) which said "My AR is ready for you Robert Francis," which was in response to O'Rourke's comments on his support for mandatory gun buybacks during last night's Democratic debates.
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."