Images | Commentary | Digital Scrapbook
© Doug Santo
Brian C. Joondeph:
“…After the shooting, other than some virtue signaling by the media, the story has left the front pages, as the narrative may be inconvenient for the leftist agenda. CNN and MSNBC have lived up to their reputation as “drive-by media” by quickly moving on. No interviews with David Hogg or other gun control fanatics. So, what are some of the inconvenient aspects to this story that the media would prefer to drive by without any discussion or analysis?
Let’s start with the weapons. The two shooters, “opened fire with handguns that were concealed in a guitar case”, as reported by the Daily Mail in an unexpected good faith effort at honest journalism. Handguns? What happened to those evil AR-15’s or “assault weapons” that Democrats and the media constantly warn about? These are what the Huffington Post calls “weapons of war.”
The reality is that most gun crimes are committed with handguns not rifles. But this doesn’t fit the media narrative and it’s better to drive-by the story rather than explain this inconvenient truth.
Next are the bystanders. Remember the admonition, “When seconds count, help is minutes away”? This played out in the Colorado shooting. You can “hide under your desk,” as one option suggested by the New York Times.
In Colorado, a student who was also an aspiring Marine, took a different approach. He “jumped into action,” throwing himself on the shooter, and sadly died for his sacrifice.
He was joined by another brave student who “rushed to help his two classmates subdue the shooter.” The point is that these heroic students immediately went on offense, rather than passively hiding, perhaps unnerving the shooter and preventing this from becoming a mass casualty event.
Then there was the school vigil in Colorado, a time for holding candles and chanting about “common sense gun control measures.” Attending were local Democrat politicians, including Senator Michael Bennet, one of dozens running for president. Rather than a receptive audience, the vigil organizer, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, instead saw, “A walkout by students opposing what they viewed as politicization of the tragedy.”
This was not the narrative that the media wanted to report on. They would prefer David Hogg ranting and raving, blaming Trump, the NRA, and toxic white masculinity for the shooting. How inconvenient that the affected students chanted “mental health” and didn’t join in the predictable politicization of a tragedy by the left.
One of the two shooters didn’t fit this mold. He was anti-Christian, critical of President Trump, a registered Democrat, and supportive of left-wing Occupy Democrats. In other words, his views were perfectly aligned with the Democrat Party base, a perspective big media would prefer to avoid discussing.
Colorado is also famous for legal marijuana; the first state to legalize a potential mind-altering substance. Psychology Today tells us that “marijuana increases violent behavior.” The Wall Street Journal agrees, citing marijuana’s “links to violence and mental illness.”
The media turns a blind eye to substance abuse problems, except in the case of opioids when Big Pharma can be blamed. US politicians, including presidential wannabe Senator Cory Booker, want marijuana legalized nationwide. He is joined by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, and Kirsten Gillibrand in wanting to make weed perfectly legal nationally. The media cheers them on without any thoughtful journalistic query over potential adverse consequence.
Ignored is the link between marijuana and many mass killers. Will the media be curious about whether the two Colorado shooters had marijuana in their systems? Probably not as it is against the preferred narrative.
Just a day after the shooting, Denver became the first city to decriminalize hallucinogenic mushrooms. CNN found little fault with the voters’ decision, even on top of another school shooting. Inconveniently not discussed are thedangers of such mushrooms, including unpredictable behavior, permanent brain damage, violent and aggressive behavior, and poor judgement.
Exactly how will schools be safer with students tripping out on magic mushrooms? The media prefers not to discuss this. What about mixing now legal shrooms and weed? What might go wrong? Let’s just drive by that story.
Speaking of violent behavior, the father of one of the shooters is a twice deportedillegal from Mexico, jailed previously for domestic violence against the shooter’s mother. Illegals are revered by the Democrat Party and any connection between an illegal and the shooting will be dutifully ignored by most of the media.
Lastly one of the Colorado shooters was transgender, a female transitioning into a male. I’m sure there is a specific gender identity term for such a person, but I am not woke enough to know what that term is. Suffice it to say, a female becoming a male will be taking testosterone. There is scientific evidence of an association between higher testosterone levels and aggressive or violent behavior.
In the mainstream media, transgenders are the highest form of human evolution. It would be most inconvenient to raise even the possibility of an association between gender transitioning and the recent school shooting, so don’t expect Meet the Press or Face the Nation to discuss any of this.
It would have been so much more convenient for Morning Joe or Jake Tapper if the Colorado school shooters were cis-gendered, white, Christian males, members of the NRA, wearing MAGA hats while brandishing AR-15s. But since that wasn’t the case, don’t expect the media to linger on this shooting. Instead they will focus on Trump’s real estate tax losses from 30 years ago…”
Paul Caron:
“…In the 2018 NACUBO Tuition Discounting Study, 405 private, nonprofit colleges and universities reported an estimated 52.2 percent institutional tuition discount rate for first-time, full-time students in 2018-19 and 46.3 percent for all undergraduates – both record highs. This means that for every dollar in gross tuition and fee revenue collected from all students, institutions used nearly half for financial aid, including grants, scholarships, and fellowships. Over the past decade, these private colleges and universities have increased their average institutional grant for first-time freshmen by 91 percent, from $10,586 in 2008-09 to $20,255 in 2018-19. This year, an estimated 89.8 percent of freshmen received financial aid from their private colleges and universities, which covered nearly 60 percent of the listed tuition and fees. More than three-quarters was awarded as need-based aid or was merit-based aid that helped meet demonstrated financial need…”
TYLER O’NEIL:
“…this is part of a growing inability among progressives to accurately convey the findings of science. “Anyway, this is part of a larger problem of a complete meltdown, in elite progressive spaces, of the ability to accurately convey science on stories having to do with social justice. Journalism, academia, social media — same story everywhere. It’s a slow-motion disaster…”
Salena Zito:
“…When Brian Sims first ran for state representative in 2012, he ran as a new pro-business voice. He was going to be a bridge-builder, brimming with commonsense ideas on pocketbook issues.
Sims never met that promise.
Instead, he became many other things: an outdoor adventurer who climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, a partisan attack dog who accused fellow state Rep. Martina White of saying she wanted to deport all immigrants, something his staff had to admit she never said, and a celebrity activist whose lucrative, nationwide speaking circuit earned him an ethics investigation.
He also became the guy who tweeted a photo of himself wearing a suit and a smirk and raising his middle finger to the vice president of the United States as Mike Pence headed to Philadelphia.
Sims wrote: “Let me be the first to officially welcome you to the City of Brotherly Love and my district! We are a city of soaring diversity. We believe in the power of all people. Black, Brown, Queer, Trans, Atheist, & Immigrant. So … get bent, then get out!”
Last week, Sims decided to film his own harassment of a woman outside an abortion clinic here in Philadelphia, calling her an “old white lady” and her beliefs “grotesque” to her face and to the camera. The clear plan was to incite his audience against this peaceful protester, whom he saw as clearly bigoted and evil.
The whole act opened the window for Twitter observers into a dark, dark place in American culture, a gaping divide none of us quite know how to navigate…”
David Marcus:
“…Imagine that members of a religious minority were being frequently physically assaulted in America’s largest city at alarming rates. Imagine if members of that minority were being cold-cocked or spit on randomly for doing nothing more than being who they are and dressing how they dress. Imagine what a powerful and important story this would be to our country, how mobilized the media and government would be to stop it. But what if I told you that this is happening in New York City right now, and nobody seems to care very much? …”
Scott Jennings:
“…Republicans have come a long way since 2012, when I ran Mitt Romney’s campaign in Ohio. President Barack Obama took an op-ed Romney had written with the headline “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” four years earlier and used it to slam the GOP. Romney never had an answer to Obama’s attack depicting Romney as a heartless corporate raider who cared more about profits than people.
“When some wanted to let Detroit go bankrupt, we made a bet on American workers, on the ingenuity of American companies,” Obama said in a Columbus speech in May of 2012. He was still at it in October: “[We] refused to throw in the towel and do nothing. We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt. We bet on American workers and American ingenuity, and three years later, that bet is paying off in a big way.” I had nightmares about that “bankrupt” headline; I couldn’t turn on a TV or pick up a newspaper without seeing Obama’s team relentlessly hammering that nail.
The gambit worked perfectly: Obama bested Romney by three points in Ohio, en route to winning a second term.
But four years later, Ohioans, like many other Midwestern voters, had soured on Democrats, with Trump owning Hillary Clinton by eight points. In fact, Trump’s margin of victory in Ohio was bigger than Georgia (5) and Arizona (3.5), states that pundits routinely think of as being redder than Ohio. And Trump’s work in the state will make it more likely than not that Trump will outperform any earlier poll that predicts a Democratic edge…”
Sam Dorman:
“…Former Vice President Joe Biden, while a senator in 2006, advocated for a southern border wall and punishment for employers who hired illegal immigrants.
Biden told a South Carolina rotary club that he voted for a border fence despite other Democrats opposing the measure.
“Folks, I voted for a fence, I voted, and unlike most Democrats — and some of you won’t like it — I voted for 700 miles of fence,” he said, in the video unearthed by CNN.
“But, let me tell you, we can build a fence 40 stories high — unless you change the dynamic in Mexico and — and you will not like this, and — punish American employers who knowingly violate the law when, in fact, they hire illegals. Unless you do those two things, all the rest is window dressing,” he added…”
