Cheers & Jeers
Associated Press
Robert Kennedy Jr.
Courtesy of Joe Carei
Ellie Carei, 13, and Enzo Carei, 11, prepare cupcakes.
Cheers: Fayette County is full of people who are always willing to give of themselves to help others. On the Saturday before Easter, siblings Ellie and Enzo Carei, 13 and 11 respectively, prepared take-and-eat dinners for those in need. Their helping hands, led by their father, local chef Joe Carei, aimed to prepare about 250 dinners of ham, potatoes, green beans and dessert this year 鈥� all at no cost to those who needed an Easter meal. Both students at Benjamin Franklin Elementary-Middle School in the Uniontown Area School District, Ellie and Enzo said they enjoyed the feeling of helping those who need it. The siblings also appear together in the YouTube show, 鈥淟ittle Eez Cooking Camp,鈥� where they share cooking tips and recipes.
Jeers: Fewer and fewer Americans alive today remember the presidency of John F. Kennedy, and the hopes that the optimism and glamour of Camelot could somehow be restored if another Kennedy reached the White House. For the first time in more than 40 years, a member of the Kennedy clan has become a declared presidential candidate, but it has generated barely a whimper of interest, and deservedly so. Robert Kennedy Jr. has said he is challenging President Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, even though he has never held elected office before. And while he has done commendable work as an environmental activist over the course of his career, Kennedy has in recent years become a crank. He has peddled conspiracy theories and spread misinformation about vaccines, earning the condemnation of members of his own family. Predictably, he also spoke out against the COVID-19 shots that have done so much to prevent serious illness and death. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children鈥檚 Hospital of Philadelphia, told the Huffington Post that because of Kennedy and other anti-vaxxers sowing doubts about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, 鈥測ou had to watch children suffer and occasionally die. That is Robert Kennedy Jr.鈥檚 legacy.鈥�
Jeers: The other morning on the MSNBC program 鈥淢orning Joe,鈥� the host Joe Scarborough, a onetime Republican congressman from Florida, highlighted a sobering statistic 鈥� there have been more than 11,000 deaths due to firearms in the United States since the start of 2023. That鈥檚 enough people to fill a sports arena in a mid-sized city. As Scarborough pointed out, it also exceeds the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan over a 20-year period. The number comes from the Gun Violence Archive, which can be found at gunviolencearchive.org. As of Wednesday, there were also more than 9,000 Americans injured as a result of guns, 147 mass shootings, and 73 children under the age of 11 who died due to gunplay. More than 400 teenagers have died due to gun violence since Jan. 1, and almost 1,000 have been injured. To put this in perspective, Canada notched a total of 297 homicides where guns were used in all of 2021. Granted, Canada has a smaller population, but it also has stricter gun laws. To paraphrase a line from a long-ago Pete Seeger song, when will we ever learn?