Evacuations, Gunfire, and GOP Tour Groups

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

American politics are off to an ugly start in 2024.  

Yesterday nine state capitol buildings across the United States had to be temporarily evacuated so that police could respond to bomb threats which had been emailed in to the offices of state officials and legislative leaders.  The FBI is investigating, and in the event that arrests are eventually made, the criminals who sent the false warnings likely expect to be pardoned and hailed as folk heroes by the next presidential administration.

The nine states on yesterday's bomb threat list were:  Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, and Montana.

The concept of emailing, or telephoning, or posting some sort of false alarm is called "swatting," a term apparently coined by people whose lives and world views are shaped by Facebook.  Certain politicians seem to consider being "swatted" as a badge of honor and are quick to use it to get their names in the press.   

Did I mention that wasting the time of emergency personnel and causing the shutdown of government offices via bomb threats are illegal activities - and they pose dangers to people who are being hustled out of harm's way.  That's fairly despicable stuff - not as bad as rioting in an open insurrection and ultimately causing the deaths of uniformed police officers, but pretty damned god-awful nonetheless.

But those false bomb reports weren't the only political outrages of the first few days of the new year.  This past Tuesday at about one a.m. an armed 44-year-old white male shot his way into the Colorado Supreme Court Building where he fired off several rounds inside of the building and caused extensive damage.  During his foray into the judicial enclave, the armed intruder also set a fire in a stairwell and managed to take the lone security guard hostage.  The fellow was later arrested and had a court appearance yesterday.

Police in Colorado are maintaining that, as far as they know, the incident in the Supreme Court building is not related to the state's Supreme Court ruling just two weeks ago that barred Donald Trump from having his name on the Colorado Republican primary ballot this year due to his alleged incitement of the rioting at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.  Yeah, right.

And, just to add to the overall ugliness of 2024 politics, yesterday US House Speaker Mike Johnson led more that sixty House Republican members on a publicity stunt to a border crossing at Eagle Pass, Texas - and, of course, once the gang assembled there, they held a press conference - their ultimate purpose in going to Texas in the first place.   

Hey Mike, how much did that presser and photo op cost the taxpayers?   Airline tickets, meals, hotel rooms, ground transportation, time away from the office???  It could not have been cheap!   How much did your stunt cost us, Mike?  How much?

Politics is often an ugly business, but this year it seems to be uglier earlier.  The good news, if there is any, is that ten months from tomorrow the country will vote and then it will all be over -  or at least it should be.