It is January 25th...

And there have been 970 deaths from guns (NOT including suicides) since the first day of the year. On average, that's 40 lives blown to bits, EVERY GODDAMN DAY. Since the very first day of the year, 181 teenagers and 41 younger children have been killed, snuffed out by some asshole with a gun.

Yesterday’s terrorist – oh wait, the shooter was white so I guess that makes him just another troubled loner, eh – perped the 11th school shooting of this very young year and the 3rd for this week alone.

This morning, the parents of Bailey Nicole Holt and Preston Ryan Cope can weep, mourn and feel utterly betrayed by our bought-and-paid-for elected officials. The Republican on-the-take government does not care. Horror-show Prezident Menace tippy-tapped those blindingly infuriating, empty words thoughts and prayers and, doubtless, felt he’d done something big and "presidential." His reliably Renfieldian mouthpiece came out to defend, prevaricate and flat out lie for him, as uszh.

Bailey Nicole Holt

This is busines as usual here in Republican America. They are ALL complicit.

I am beyond disgusted.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
~ W.B. Yeats 

Preston Ryan Cope

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, eyes –
I wonder if It weighs like Mine –
Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long –
Or did it just begin –
I could not tell the Date of Mine –
It feels so old a pain –

I wonder if it hurts to live –
And if They have to try –
And whether – could They choose between –
It would not be – to die –
~ Emily Dickinson 

“How do you know if you are going to die?”
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
“When you can no longer make a fist.”
~ Naomi Shihab Nye