More info: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-urges-house-to-kill-bill-that-could-give-trump-admin-power-to-crush-dissent-and-go-after-political-enemies

The assault was one of at least 439 mass shootings in the U.S. this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that defines mass shootings as incidents involving four or more victims.

Ah, a @YourChildhoodRuined moment. Just great. :-(

New article with more details: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/oct/16/12-year-old-who-brought-loaded-handgun-to-school-t/ .

Court records say another student was skipping class and hanging out with JV near the stairs when she saw the barrel of a handgun inside his backpack. When she asked about it, he said he was holding it for someone.

The student criticized JV for bringing a gun to school and he responded, “If you snitch, I will pop you in your head the next time I see you,” records say.

Another student who was skipping class told police JV showed her the gun and asked her not to judge him. He said he had it because another student would be coming to the school, records say, but didn’t give any more details.

The semi-automatic, 45-caliber Springfield model handgun found in the backpack had bullets loaded in the magazine, but no round was yet chambered in the barrel.

I don’t understand what the word “certified” is supposed to mean in his rant. Is this some new teen-speak redefinition that he’s trying to appropriate? “power certified”? Huh?

“MAGA is eating out” - this is happening to the colleges in N. Idaho as well, possibly all of ID. Schools losing accreditation, admin and faculty bailing, students unable to xfer credits… a big shit-show that fucks over students but makes the local Fascists think that they’re “taking back education”. Got kids? Send 'em to FL or ID and they can get an unaccredited PhD in Ignorance Studies in a year or less.

At the scene, multiple people pulled over in a car and fired with at least one automatic weapon at one person before getting back into the vehicle and fleeing the scene, Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurmond said in an update Sunday morning. More than 100 shell casings were collected at the scene, among other pieces of evidence, and bystanders were caught in the crossfire.

Thurmond said the shooting was not random and may have stemmed from an alleged murder-for-hire against an individual in the Five Points South entertainment district at the time. No one is in custody, but police are asking for businesses and witnesses to report any information they have.

City and police officials believe a switch — a small device that can convert a semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic weapon — may have been used in the shooting.

https://wbhm.org/2024/birmingham-police-4-dead-dozens-injured-in-five-points-south-mass-shooting/

Spokaners do not drive across the border into Coeur d’Alene for cheaper groceries or a half-price Big Mac.

I actively boycott any and all ID businesses, because of the state’s shitty labor and reproductive-rights laws and its nurture of Christofascism. They can Gilead all they want but it won’t be with my financial support.

I haven’t bought anything via the Amazon site in years. At least three, possibly five or more. Anything I need I can get elsewhere either online or in person without supporting Amazon’s anti-union, worker-exploiting policies. I won’t even use AWS for business purposes because of how they treat their workers. Boycott away, there are plenty of Amazon options that are “good enough” if not actually better.

Ah yes, the fumes. That “Waste To Energy” incinerator is west of town in the area known as “West Plains”, near I90, near the airport, and not far from Fairchild AFB which these days is a locus of refueling operations and other support functions. Huge, 4-engined planes coming and going all day long. Long ago the AF firefighting ops polluted the groundwater there with PFAS chemicals and much of it is no longer fit to drink. Between that, the air pollution from military and civil air operations, and whatever comes out of the stacks at the W2E plant, I have to imagine the denizens of the area have evolved some powerful pollution-resistant genetics. Or maybe they just die young from cancer and respiratory and neurological diseases. Fortunately it’s a pretty low-income zone (think ‘typical military town’ - old skool Bremerton-ish) so all that disease can just be blamed on personal poor decision-making (like the decision to live there). A shame really, West Plains now has a ginormous Amazon warehouse that the residents could slave at (in addition to the super-Wally’s and the casinos) if they’d Just Say No to cancer and all those other tempting diseases.

Spokane burns its ordinary trash. It also accepts plastics and other “recyclables” at an every-other-week curbside pick-up, using a separate bin, just as you’d expect. Then they burn it. Yes, just like the trash. But wait, they do the burning at a facility they call the “Waste To Energy” plant, so that makes it all OK.

It’s all a big expensive greenwashing game, but everyone seems perfectly fine with it. La di da di da.

A Biden aide said that it was “not an ideal start” for the president at the beginning of the debate, but that there was “no mass panic” at the campaign headquarters in Delaware.

When Arizona passed the legislation that allowed for private school vouchers, the program was projected to cost $65 million in 2024 and $125 million in 2025. But the most recent estimates put that cost at a staggering $940 million per year, more than 1,000 percent of the initial estimate.

The Christofascists won’t be satisfied until every school is a 100% Christian-run, 100% taxpayer-funded, stone-age-war-god-ideology fascist brainwashing center.