This Is Not Normal

on this show. And that is because, as of the end of April, right which I think it was over one hundred days don't question me on the math, there have been over one hundred and eighty six shootings, more shootings than there are days so far in this year. And I say that and I know that sometimes, you know, for folks, it just falls on non listening ears where it's just like, ah, you know, that's just what it means to live in America these days. It's not normal.

And I say this because I have to say it out loud to remind myself as well as all of you, that how Republicans are forcing us to live is not fucking normal. It's not normal when you have several countries that issue travel warnings and guidance to people for coming to the United States, which is what happened with Canada and Germany. And I believe New Zealand and others that have been issuing travel warnings for tourists coming to the

United States. I have long since said that I believe that maybe if tourism were to take a huge hit, that maybe then something would be done about the rampant gun violence in this country. Because it doesn't matter, doesn't matter where the polls fall, It doesn't matter that here is where a majority of Americans agree. Those that are

gun owners are not that. You know, they would like to be able to go about living their day to day lives or dropping their kids off at school, or going to the grocery store, or going to a house of worship or any place without being fearful of being shot and killed. Right. You know. I have come home to Long Island to spend time with my family, and my mother says to me, you know, it's just like, the more I watch the news, the more I don't

want to go outside. And She's just like, but it doesn't even matter, because I could be shot dead in the house. Right. I draw your attention to, you know, the latest shooting that made headlines, because, of course, folks, I want you to understand that for every news story that makes national headlines, there are so many local stories

that won't see the light of day nationally. Right So the latest story to make national headlines, of course, happens in the state of Texas, where five neighbors were gunned down, including a eight year old boy, because they had the audacity to walk down the street to ask a man that was firing off AR fifteen rounds in his front yard, because just pause for a minute, because that's fucking normal that you just sit and you're just firing off an

AR fifteen. As if you live on a military base, you don't, or this is someplace in the midst of war. It's not. But that's what I guess people do when you own AR fifteen teens in your front yard. And so because the infant that they had could not go to sleep because of rapid gunfire, they asked their neighbor, could you stop maybe, And instead of doing what any normal person would do, that gunman turned around, loaded up his gun in his home, walked down the street, and

assassinated his five neighbors. The little boy, who, according to his father, who was shot dead, saw his mother get shot, ran to her aid, and then was shot killed. Three children. As I've stated before, were also discovered covered in blood, alive,

but covered in blood of their parents. And Texas Governor Greg Abbott, after days of not saying a fucking thing, then comes out with a statement that is so reprehensible, you know, folks, I am running out of words to describe how heartless, how were moral, how disgusting, how just gross Republicans are. Greg Abbott comes out with a statement that says that these people were illegal immigrants, which they

were not. A few of the people, the human beings that were murdered in cold blood, were residents of Texas and residents of the United States. And to think that a governor who had multiple tragic deaths happened in his state would see to discuss the citizenship of the people who were killed rather than the humanity of those people, just goes to show you who the governor is, and

he is a piece of absolute fucking shit. The sheriff in the county where this shooting took place, however, did what the governor couldn't bring himself to do because he has no heart, which was to, with tears in his eyes, expressed very clearly that it didn't matter whether or not these people were documented or undocumented. He said, I don't give a damn. There are members of my county people who lived here a child, and that's what matters, and

that is where my heart is. You know. I spoke about this earlier in the week because I really can't get over it. I really, folks, that I just I can't wrap my mind around how this Republican Party has been allowed to say that they are a party of family values, has been allowed to say that they are

pro life when they or anything. But we are just a few weeks removed from the mass shooting that took place at the Kentucky Bank, from the mass shooting that took place at the Tennessee Private Elementary School, from the mass shooting that took place at the Sweet sixteen in Alabama, and from every single mass shooting that I'm forgetting about

that took place before all of those. Lauren Bobert, the fucking dummy who represents a district in Colorado, she thought that it would be really cute this week, following all of those mass that left several children dead, bodies ripped to shreds, with a T shirt, a T shirt that she thought made a whole bunch of sense and was funny. Was funny. She thought the T shirt that she holds up with a stupid shitt eating grin on her face reads, since we're renaming everything and there's a picture of an

AR fifteen, this is a cordless hole puncher. She thought it was really funny. She thought she was being witty by mocking the transgender community, mocking the queer community, and also mocking the victims of gun violence and mass shootings at the same time. A TikToker decided to do a video where he clearly laid out that there was nothing funny about the T shirt and how fucking heartless she is.

And so he went on to say, let me show you the faces of the lives that have been taken by your cordless whole puncher, And he showed in his video the pictures of children from Uvaldi, children from Newtown, the grieving parents of those at funerals putting their children in the ground because their bodies holes weren't just punched through them, their bodies were ripped apart. Because that's what

weapons of mass destruction do. They ensure that the shooter, when hitting their victims, doesn't just kill them, but destroys their bodies in the process. You see, we don't know what these parents and frankly law enforcement authorities see when they go to the site where they have to identify

the bodies of their loved ones that are unrecognizable. I remember that after Newtown, one of the parents saying that they had to identify their child, their six year old, with their dental records because their little six year old body was ripped to shreds, riddled with bullets, not from

a whole puncher, but from a weapon of war. When I see the likes of a. Greg Abbott and Lauren Boubert and those members of the Republican Party who removed their American flag pins to place ar fifteens on their lapels, I think about how they are beyond heartless. I think about how they are so devoid of humanity that they

have no business representing anyone. Lauren Bobert has no business being in Congress, not to mention the fact that she's a fucking idiot, and that if we actually gave exams in the way that you have to enter into law school or grad school program we're at college and have

to take the SATs and get a certain score. I wonder how many Republicans would remain in office if they had to face I don't know a basic test of let's say, the contents of the Constitution, or you know, just basic laws, basic you know, Supreme Court cases that policies are based around. If they would be able to even get a passing grade. I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't put out by QAnon, Marjorie Taylor Green wouldn't be able to wrap her small, little reptile brain around it.

The fact is is that these people, by their actions show you who they are on a regular basis, And Lauren Bobert sees fit and the people that put her in office, and we know that she hung on by a threat. I think, what was it? Just a handful of votes? Right, so when people say, oh, my vote doesn't matter, it was a handful of votes that kept that piece of traction office in Colorado. But I can't imagine.

I would like to at least believe that most people in the United States actually have a heart, that most people in the United States, when they hear stories of mass shootings, whether they happen at concerts or parades, or schools or synagogues or churches, or mosques or movie theaters or Sweet sixteen parties, that most people, when they see the heartbreak, the tears, and how communities and families are

ripped apart, that there would be compassion. But you see, the Republican Party has become so detached from humanity, so detached from reality, that they think that this shit is funny. I find nothing funny about death. I find nothing funny about mass murder. I mean, we supposedly have ethics rules, but apparently they don't apply to actions being taken like this. Again, if this were any other country and an entire political party was wrapped around the ideology of mass murder and violence,

we would be invading, we'd be withholding funds. But in America, so long as that party is led by white evangelical Christians, I guess it's okay. It's okay to applaud terrorism, it's okay to wear T shirt. It's in smile at the trauma that we are forcing generations of children to live through. You know, I saw recently No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen,

who I interviewed on Democracy Ish. My colleague and I wajahat Ali interviewed on Democracy Ish last year, and he reposted this tweet by Bridget Gabriel, a Republican, and she tweeted this, raise the voting age to twenty one, Bring back the draft. Gen Z is a disaster that requires emergency correction. So I want folks to think about what she tweets here. Raise the age to twenty one? Really, so you should be eighteen to go to war, but

twenty one to vote? Right? Raise the age because what Generation Z is showing themselves to be one of the most conscious and politically astute generation Maybe because the prior generations are handing them a fucking pile of shit in the form of a country and the planet for that matter. Bring back the draft. So send this generation to war to die so that they don't vote. How about you, motherfuckers create policy that people actually want to get behind.

But no, you're not interested in that. You're just interested in suppressing the vote. This is not the first Republican

to say this. There's a multiple Republican members that have said, oh, we need to pass legislation to ban the use of college id's in order for young people to vote, because they don't want young people voting, because you see the more young people that vote and are able to vote on their college campuses, the more young people that are engaged with what is going on, you think that they're voting for Republicans. What the fuck policies are Republicans passing

that young people are going to get behind. You're banning abortion, you're banning books, you're banning curriculum. You're voting against the actual environment in the air, clean air, and clean water. So what policies are you giving them to vote for? So you just don't want them to vote at all, and you are saying because there is no quiet part,

you are saying everything out loud. So when people say I don't know what's in the hearts of Republicans, well you don't have to wonder, because they are telling you. You know I people have said before that you can tell where a country's values are by what they place their money in. And we know that every year we have the same conversations that circulate on mainstream media with

regard to the debt ceiling. Republicans want to hold America's debt hostage in order to just fully decimate the middle class and the working class by basically saying, as terrorists do, either you cut social safety nets or else. Right, the Pentagon received hundreds of millions of dollars over their actual budget request. I think it was last year or the year before, hundreds of millions of dollars over they asked for.

I'd call me crazy, but the next ten countries, according to one of my fellow nerd Avengers on the Mary Trump Show, the next ten countries, which are our allies, have budgets that are minuscule in comparison. If we were to just level out or maybe just give back and redistribute the money that was given to the Pentagon over what they asked for, this country, in so many ways would be in better shape. People say, oh, well, we need to be able to defend ourselves from who because

no one else's military budget matches ours. And even if we were too, I don't know. Again, redistribute the of millions of dollars over that we gave, and let's say I put it into something crazy like education or healthcare. American citizens would be better off. It's our tax dollars, right. You see, we've created this culture of fear and the

belief that we're always under attack. Somebody's always coming to get us, so we must we must pump up our military, except that is just thinking that extends from white supremacy

and manifest destiny. We have created most of the problems that we have, and by we, I mean our military, and our military by virtue of the politicians that you know, get to create policy that use human beings as toy soldiers and put them in places in order to rape and pillage literally natural resources, disrupt economies for the betterment of America. It has never been really about democracy, are

we fucking kidding? That's the biggest lie. It's always been about plundering other nations and having a large enough military that they can't fight back. We look at our issue like immigration, and we want to blame it on those people that are being forced to leave their homes, in their whole lives in seeking out something better, a better

life for them and their kids. But nobody tells you the side of the story that has had them fully in the first fucking place, The way that America and our politics are responsible for the instability that their country's face, their lack of economic development, the fact that we have moved around different prime ministers in presidents and put them in place so that it benefits our bottom line, not those of the country, the countries that we get to

label as underdeveloped because we've purposefully underdeveloped them and kept them indebted to the United States. Colonialism may be done on its face by name, but not in action. So I want people to understand that when we are told by politicians that live in this ideology of scarcity and fear that my god, we couldn't possibly redistribute the over budget that we are paying for the Pentagon into other areas, understand that they make money because they have stocks and

don't owner interests in war in defense contracts. This isn't about safety, It's about fucking greed, and both Republicans and Democrats in this vein are responsible for perpetuating this lie. You know, I want to end today with, you know, just a little bit, just a little bit of good news, and it's not even really good because you know, unfortunately too many horrific things need to happen, right, and then

we just pray for a monicum of justice. But one of the last of the four officers who were responsible for the murder of George Floyd. The paper is referred to it as the death of George Floyd but I'm gonna call it what it is, which was a public execution in lynching so Hannipen County in Minneapolis, Judge of Peter Cahill said in a verdict that the former officer the last officer, and I believe it's Tow Tao t o U t h a O, who had waived his

right to a jury trial. The judge said this when convicting him of aiding in a bedding in the murder of George Floyd. Quote he actively encouraged his three colleagues dangerous prone restraint of Floyd. That he was guilty on Monday of aiding in a bedding in second degree manslaughter of George Floyd. And you know, I want to remind folks, as if you need reminding, that George Floyd was killed

during the height of the pandemic in twenty twenty. It's set off global protests in the midst of a pandemic against the killing of an unarmed black man in broad daylight. Mister Taw, the former ex police officer, is currently serving a three and a half year federal sentence for failing to provide medical help to George Floyd and to stop Derek Chauvin from killing him. So he's already in federal prison, and he is going to now be sentenced again, and

that hearing will take place on August seventh. Now, while again we can say, oh, well, you know, justice has quote unquote prevailed. What justice looks like is George Floyd being able to go home after police were called for a routine, you know, counterfeit twenty dollars? Did you know that it was counterfeit? Here's a ticket and go along

your way. That's what justice would have looked like. Justice would look like being able to believe that most police officers are good instead of a part of a poisonous orchard. Justice would look like not having to hold your breath and wonder whether or not officers who were filmed would be found guilty. In America, this, while is news, is not really good news. I'm confused about what good news

and our justice system would look like. Maybe it will look like the conviction of Donald Trump for rape in a civil suit. Maybe it'll look like the federal indictments and then guilty verdicts for Donald Trump and his sycophans for over trying to overturn an election and destroy our democracy.

Maybe it will look like white, wealthy people and police officers being held accountable for their wrongdoing, and that not being a hope and a prayer that the people of this country have that it would just be this is what happens. You break the law, regardless of who you are, how much money you have, and whether you have a shield or not, you're held accountable. We live in a really unjust, injust country where headlines like this give us brief comfort when it shouldn't. That is it for me

to day. Dear friends on woke f as always power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.