by Lowell
Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Friday, February 16.
- Inside the Senate’s ugly immigration breakdown (“The failure of a months-long effort to help Dreamers is the latest display of legislative ineptitude.” Mitch McConnell’s Senate, ladies and gentlemen.)
- Krugman: Budgets, Bad Faith and ‘Balance’
- Senate Kills Every Immigration Proposal
- Gun dysfunction is a Republican problem, not a “Washington” problem (“NBC News helps obfuscate the GOP’s culpability in mass shootings” I really despise media that does this shit.)
- As Florida Shooting Survivors Beg for Action, Trump Opts to Lie Low
- Guns Make Republicans Feel Safe. So We Can’t Be.
- President Trump’s Victim-Blaming Response to the Mass Shooting in Florida (“Does the President believe that high-school students who had to huddle in closets, holding on to one another, before a swat team rescued them, are somehow to blame for not having done enough to raise the alarm?”)
- The N.R.A. Can Be Beat (“The gun lobby’s stranglehold on our elected officials does not need to continue. Vote them out of office.” Basically, if your representative has an “A” rating from the blood-on-their-hands NRA, vote them out of office. Period. The end. This is NOT complicated.)
- These are the victims of the Parkland shooting (“Seventeen people died on Wednesday.” And in a sane country, not one of them would have. But we do NOT live in a sane country.)
- After Parkland shooting, far-right media immediately starts pushing fake news (Why is this legal?)
- Republicans leave immigrants’ lives hanging in the balance, say it’s time to move on
- Senate Republican rejects gun control, wants to make schools more like military checkpoints (“Sen. Rounds describes gun control as an ’emotional’ one — for gun owners.” Beyond parody.)
- Don’t let Scott Pruitt’s first class travel distract you from an even bigger scandal (“Environmental enforcement under Pruitt has dropped 44 percent compared to previous administrators’ first years.”)
- Most Americans — and most Republicans — want stricter gun laws: Why doesn’t it happen? (“It’s easy for liberals to blame the NRA. But the pro-gun agenda is backed by a passionate subset of GOP voters” Right, it’s like 80%-90% of Americans vs. 10%020% of Americans on this one.)
- GOP looks for Plan B after failure of immigration measures
- Trump’s Stormy Daniels problem gets worse (“The porn star, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, says she is ready to spill the beans about a 2006 extramarital sexual encounter with the president now that Michael Cohen, the president’s personal attorney, has acknowledged he paid her $130,000 to not discuss the allegations publicly.”)
- White House left feeling rudderless as Trump hangs back in crisis (“After failing to arrest and even extending the scandal over a senior aide’s clearance status amid domestic abuse allegations, the president took a low-key approach on the Florida shootings.” He’s not a leader.)
- Student survivors of Florida school shooting call out NRA and legislators pushing more guns in schools (“They’re not supposed to be listening to the NRA about our protection” Not “legislators” generically; “REPUBLICAN legislators” specifically.)
- Right-wing media figures are blaming everything but guns for the Parkland shooting (These people are evil.)
- Senate Rejection May Mark End of Chances for Immigration Deal
- Watch: Jimmy Kimmel rips Trump and the GOP’s ‘allegedly Christian men’ who refuse to do anything about guns
- Watch: Mother of slain Florida student screams at Trump live on camera — and CNN’s Brooke Baldwin falls apart
- ‘I’m angry’: CNN’s Don Lemon rails against Trump’s empty promises on gun violence (We all should be!)
- Maddow rains hell on Trump for ‘sneaking’ bombshell in the middle of Parkland tragedy: ‘They have ice in their veins’
- MSNBC’s Chris Hayes rolls supercut of Paul Ryan warning against ‘knee-jerk’ gun control after mass shootings
- Mitch McConnell Is As Mitch McConnell Does
- The Currency of Trumpism Is Insincerity (“Why would you expect a school shooting to change that?” Nothing will; the guy’s a sociopath.)
- Ban these weapons of war (There is absolutely no reason why anyone needs weapons like these.)
- The Second Amendment is being turned into a suicide pact (“No other country experiences this kind of terror on an ongoing basis — save those that are actually at war.”)
- A vicious vortex of irrationality is sucking in the Republican Party (“Blame the ability of social media to spread craziness and the embrace of that craziness by Trump.”)
- Republicans’ indifference to the massacres of innocents will lead to their ruin (“Only when politicians break the hold of the NRA will meaningful dialogue on guns take place.”)
- Why is it so hard for Trump to say that evil things are evil? (“Nazis, domestic violence, the epidemic of mass shootings — the list goes on.”)
- White Supremacists Claim Nikolas Cruz Trained With Them; Students Say He Wore Trump Hat in School
- Gov. Ralph Northam to sign Patrick County hospital bill Friday
- Williams: On same-sex marriage, Virginia still clings to exclusion (It’s not “Virginia,” it’s “Virginia REPUBLICANS.” Why is this SO hard for newspapers to do???)
- Atlantic Coast Pipeline receives key federal approvals (Mark my words, this pipeline will turn out to be a huge waste of money.)
- ‘We’re just surrounded by this issue’: Virginia schools see spike in number of threats
- Prominent lawmaker from southwest Va. breaks the ‘Republican Dam’ for Medicaid expansion (Mmmmmayyyybe)
- Bipartisanship in Virginia does not extend to gun legislation (Or much of anything, really.)
- Trump’s victory enraged Kate Ranta; so, she took a class in running for office
- The three Democrats seeking to challenge Dave Brat square off in Goochland forum
- Senate committee punts on school bus advertising, ‘Kings Dominion Bill’
- Rain dented Virginia’s drought, and the forecast calls for more improvement
- Richmond council panel punts on proposed cigarette tax amid stiff opposition and skepticism
- Cooler today with periodic showers, then a wintry mix arrives late tomorrow
