Toby Keith: Right and Wrong

Both sides of the gun control debate are weighing in on the terrorist attack on a Charleston church. Hillary Clinton called for "common-sense" gun control laws that keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. NRA board member Charles Cotton blamed the victim for voting against laws that would allow guns in churches. Country music star Toby Keith said stricter laws would have made no difference in the Charleston attack.

I tend to agree with Keith (though with a caveat in a second post). Dylann Roof bought a weapon legally, had no (serious) criminal record or history of mental illness. So there were no red flags that would have stopped him from getting a gun.

That means that we're always going to have some number of people who get guns legally who then use them to commit murder. As Keith points out, this happens even in countries like Norway, where strict gun laws are in place.

So, yeah. Some number of people are going to die each year in attacks like this, regardless of the gun laws.

Where the gun nuts are wrong is claiming that the Charleston terrorist attack could have been prevented by a policeman or armed citizens in the room. The hackneyed lie about guns making us safer.

You see, the bad guys don't play fair. They don't schedule a duel for high noon on Main Street in front of the saloon. They plan for weeks, lurking, practicing, skulking, shooting people in the back and gunning down old ladies while accusing them of "raping our women."

Had there been an armed cop in the room, Roof simply would have shot him first, probably in the back of the head. And then Roof would have another weapon.

Now, the NRA nuts will say: if everyone in the room had a gun Roof would have no chance.  Nope. Not true. Because a lot of people just freeze under stress.

When I was a kid I went into some sandstone caves with two of my friends, Bob and Randy. We were looking at the bins where mushrooms were grown when we heard a truck pull up. We peered out and saw some guys unloading junk. We threw open the door and ran like hell.

At least, Bob and I did. Randy froze. He just stood there stupidly gaping, while Bob and I bolted up a hill and into the woods. They grabbed Randy and called the cops. Bob and Randy got arrested, I skipped town and they didn't rat on me. Thus ended my illustrious criminal career...

When my wife was in high school she and a friend started to cross the street. A car came out of nowhere. My wife froze. Her friend grabbed her and pulled her out of the way. She could have been run down right then and there.

Freezing is a normal human reaction. It might be indecision. It might be a paralyzing fear. It might be emotional shock. In a situation like Charleston, it's probably all three, all at once.

So when people see someone get shot, a lot of them are going to freeze. There were several middle-aged and elderly ladies and men in that church in Charleston. All of them will freeze for several seconds at a minimum. In that time a practiced shooter with a semiautomatic pistol can easily fire 10-20 rounds.

They're going to stay frozen for varying times. Some will totally dissolve in an anxiety attack. Some will come out of it quickly and react. If they have a gun they'll draw it. The killer, who will have positioned himself so he can observe all his victims, will shoot the first one to move. And then the next one, and the next one. Even if they all have guns, they won't react simultaneously, allowing the shooter to deal with one target at a time.

But the idea that all of them will have guns close at hand is ludicrous. Six of the nine victims were women. Women typically keep everything in their purses, including guns. Women frequently don't keep their purses immediately at hand, especially when they're among friends and people they trust. Even men will frequently keep guns in their jacket pockets, which would be hung up on the coat rack.

Which means most of the people in the room, even they were packing heat that night, wouldn't have had their weapons on them when the shooting started.

But some of them might. Let's say the pastor whipped out the pistol from his waist band and started firing at the terrorist. He'd almost certainly miss, because he's emotionally distraught, not really very well trained, and -- this is true even for cops -- the vast majority of pistol shots fired in haste will miss.

And the terrorist, a stone-cold killer who can mercilessly gun down little old ladies without a second thought, will calmly turn and shoot the pastor. And then he'll have another weapon.

Since his targets won't all react simultaneously and scramble over to the coat rack where their guns are in their purses and jackets, the killer will have plenty of time to reload and shoot everyone in the room as they unfreeze, even if they had all brought guns to a bible study in a church basement.

When I first heard about this attack it vexed me that he could shoot so many people, pausing to reload several times, without anyone rushing him to stop him. How, I wondered, could they just stand by and let this happen?

But Roof had chosen his victims carefully. Observed them for an hour. He picked middle-aged and elderly people who knew would be easy to kill, lulled them into a sense of safety and then killed them in a blitz attack.

Roof's victims weren't like him at all. They weren't stone-cold killers. They don't want guns near them or their families. Even if they had firearms, most of them would hesitate to use them, because they wouldn't be familiar with them them, they're not used to the recoil or the noise, they're afraid of missing the target and hitting someone else. They think human life is sacred and think killing is wrong.

NRA people can't comprehend this. NRA people spend their every waking moment fantasizing about guns, practicing with them, psyching themselves into the mindset that human life is cheap, planning how to kill people they think are threatening them. They will trade someone else's life for theirs in a heartbeat. For them the ends justify the means: every man for himself.

In short, NRA people think just like Dylann Roof.

Normal people don't want to spend their lives obsessing about guns and death. They just want to carry on with without having to live in constant fear.

Roof and his ilk know that. That's why they do what they do: they want to ratchet up the fear, the distrust and the hatred. They want blacks to react violently and angrily to this act of terrorism, in order to perpetuate the white supremacist dream of resegregating this country.

The Pope On Climate Change

Like me, Pope Francis is a "fake" Christian, according to conservatives. He spends his time worrying about the poor, not judging gay people, and preaching the evils of inequality (see also, the works of Jesus Christ).  Now that he has embraced the objective reality of climate change and what is causing it, he's gone full on commie pinko bastard!

"Those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms," Francis wrote of the impact of climate change in the encyclical titled "Laudato Si," or "Praise Be."

He called on humanity to collectively acknowledge a "sense of responsibility for our fellow men and women upon which all civil society is founded." And he wrote that climate change "represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day."

Francis said that developing countries, as the biggest producers of harmful greenhouse gasses, owe the poorer nations a debt. "The developed countries ought to help pay this debt by significantly limiting their consumption of nonrenewable energy and by assisting poorer countries to support policies and programs of sustainable development."

In one particularly blunt passage, Francis writes: "The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish. ... Frequently no measures are taken until after people's health has been irreversibly affected."

Actually, the pile of filth also extends to the conservative platform on climate change with the party of responsibility taking none of it.

The Sanctity of Marriage

Shoulda Got A Gun

Power and Loss of Control

An excellent summation of the Gun Cult...

Everyone is going to have a different answer. I'm no exception. In my opinion, i believe it all boils down to "power-hunger". Whether you agree with me or not, guns give people a false sense of power. Taking guns away means taking power away. Nobody debates car ownership because nobody derives any feeling of power or control or authority when driving. Half the people i know,who own a car, hate driving. Find me one person,who owns a firearm, that hates shooting. A car and a gun are obviously 2 totally different things. Sure both can be used as a weapon. But only 1 of them IS a weapon. 

People like having the feeling of god at their fingertips. People who are avid gunners, are the ones who proudly show off how enthusiastic they are when it comes to gun ownership. How many people do you know, walk around with shirts and hats that advertise General Motors,Daimler-Benz,or Volkswagen? But how many people do you know who wear clothing that says NRA,or has pictures of guns? I see people all the time with tattoos that depict a skeleton gang member holding a gun. 

Guns make people ,who own them,feel powerful and more importantly....in control. That control is what they're fighting to retain.

And they are thinking with their System 1 brain which is largely emotional.

You'll Never Take The White House Again

Starting at about 6:25...




 Wow...

If A Tree Falls...

The Whole Hate Crime Bugaboo

People (and by people, I largely mean conservatives) seem to get so irate about the category of crimes known as hate crimes. Why? I think a big part of it is they can't accept the negative aspects of their own personal ideology (racism, prejudice, bigotry) so they blame the victim. More importantly, they have a profound lack of understanding of how the law works.

There are a variety of categories of what constitutes murder. This is also true of stealing. Yet they don't seem to have a problem with any of these. Each of these laws illustrate how complicated the law can be as it responds to the uniqueness of various criminal acts. Hate crimes is merely another category that offers a more muscular prosecutorial punch. If someone breaks into an NAACP chapter, for example, and writes "Niggers, we will kill you" all over the walls, without hate crime laws, they would be charged with a couple of petty crimes and maybe terroristic threats. With them in place, the punishment is far worse and it should be because we have zero tolerance for this sort of behavior in our culture today.

So, as we learn more of the Charleston shooting and hear more about hate crimes, we are likely to hear adolescent assholes foam at the mouth about hate crimes and how they are all gay and shit. Ask them if they have the same feelings about the hundreds of laws regarding theft:)

Fox News Claims to Be the Victim in Charleston

For years Fox News has taken up the mantle of defending Christianity from the devils on the doorstep. They invented the pretend war on Christmas. They portray the requirement that for-profit corporations pay for birth control is a terrible burden and the most extreme violation of religious freedom. Fox New contributor Mike Huckabee claims gay marriage will lead to the criminalization of Christianity. And on and on.

Two days ago a white supremacist assassinated a black state senator in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the oldest black churches in the country. That day, June 17th, was the 193rd anniversary of a slave revolt planned by the church's founder, Denmark Vesey. Vesey and five slaves were hanged after a secret trial, and 30 other slaves were tried and executed in short order, all in secret.

When Dylann Roof killed those nine African Americans he said, “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” He said this as he was shooting six black women, one of whom was 87 years old!

Before the shooting he talked to an acquaintance:

Joey Meek reconnected with Roof a few weeks ago and said that while they got drunk together on vodka, Roof began complaining that "blacks were taking over the world" and that "someone needed to do something about it for the white race." 

This echoes the standard refrain of the Tea Party -- the creation of Fox News -- "taking America back."

Roof was a fan of racist symbols, from the flags of Rhodesia and apartheid-era South Africa to the Confederate flag he proudly displayed on his car.

Now Fox News is selling the lie that Roof's racism-fueled terrorist attack was an attack on Christianity, and an another excuse to call for more guns. Christianity -- and by proxy Fox News -- was under attack in Charleston! Christians are the victims! Woe is us! We're the victim! More guns!

It's not a fluke that this happened in South Carolina, the birthplace of the Civil War. A state that still flies the Confederate flag, the symbol of slave holders. Streets in Charleston are named after Confederate generals, traitors to the United States of America. They still celebrate Confederate Memorial Day, which is held on the birthday of Jefferson Davis in some states.

They say they're just celebrating their heritage. What is that heritage? Enslaving human beings and then executing men like Denmark Vesey for trying to achieve the same freedoms that the American Revolution was fought for.

The Confederate flag stands for slavery and white supremacy. And as long as South Carolina flies that flag, and puts it on its license plates, South Carolina will endorse and promote the same racist hatred that Dylann Roof expressed when he assassinated nine African Americans to inflame the nation with his terroristic goal of inciting a race war.

The Disparity of Response

Thoughts On Charleston

I have several thoughts going through my head right now regarding the shooting in Charleston but the one that sticks out predominantly is that we have, yet again, lost another young man to violent psychosis. Why? How did this keeping happening in our culture?

It's the magic cocktail all over again...male, young, white, mental illness, takes SSRIs, parents divorced, parents nutso, plays violent video games, and easy access to guns. Boom!...literally. Now, we haven't discovered yet whether or not he takes SSRIs but look for that bit of information to come out in about two weeks. That's the way it always works. Here is a piece that details Dylan Roof's background.

Much is being made of the racial angle with conservatives falling all over themselves in a most amusing attempt to redirect the attention away from the fact that this occurred in the South...in a deep red state...the same state where the Civil War began...where a lot of Republicans voters reside. I'm curious to know where Roof's parents are in all of this. He had to learn his white supremacy stuff somewhere, right? I'm betting it was from his dad who gave him a gun less than two months ago.

At this point, the racial thing is secondary to me. We have to figure out why our culture produces people like this. Is it the Columbine Effect? More importantly, how can we engage young men at an earlier age so they don't end up becoming spree shooters? In many ways, this is the same issue that communities with gangs have when they are trying to stop young men from turning to violence. It's also the same issue the world has in preventing young people from joining ISIL.

I'm convinced that had a few key people engaged Dylan Rood earlier in his life and steered him on a more positive path, this shooting never would have happened. This was a failure of mentorship in his life that should serve as a lesson for other mentors out there who might have someone they know like Dylan.

Do something now. Enlist the help of others in your community. Help these young men out!

Well, That Didn't Take Long

As I predicted...

NRA board member blames pastor for Charleston deaths 

What an ugly bunch of fuckers...but, hey, that's that Gun Cult for you!

It's Not a Hate Crime: It's Terrorism

There's a serious double standard. When Sunni and Shia Muslims kill people in mosques in Iraq we call it terrorism, but when white guys in America shoot a bunch of people in houses of worship we call it a "hate crime."

To wit: last night 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof shot and killed nine African Americans at a church in Charleston, SC. Roof has now reportedly been captured in North Carolina.

It's just another such incident in a long list of right-wing terrorist attacks:

In 2012, a white supremacist shot and killed six worshipers and wounded four others at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. A shooting rampage by a right-wing gunman in 2008 killed two people and wounded seven at a Unitarian Universalist church in Tennessee. 

The granddaddy of these terrorist attacks was the Ku Klux Klan bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, when four black girls were killed. For good measure, let's not forget forget the right-wing terrorist bombings of the 1996 Olympics, abortion clinics and gay clubs, or the right-wing terrorist shootings of abortion providers, shall we?

Roof sat with the victims during prayer before opening fire. He said, “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” Then he shot six women and three men, one of them a state senator. The shooter reportedly left one woman alive so that she could bear witness to the crime. Roof's Facebook page shows him wearing a jacket emblazoned with apartheid-era South African and Rhodesian flags.

It is clear that Roof committed these murders as a political statement in order to intimidate the African American community in the United States.

Now, there's a difference between a hate crime and terrorism. A hate crime is when a white guy beats up a black guy for dating a white woman, or a homophobe kills a gay man for hitting on him at a bar. The shooting in Charleston was a premeditated terrorist attack, calibrated to incite fear in all African Americans.

Attacks on churches aren't the only double standard on American right-wing terrorists. Police stations are frequently targets of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Less than a week ago an American gunman attacked Dallas police headquarters in an armored van. James Boulware planted a bunch of pipe bombs around the building. And the cops knew about this guy:

In 2013, Boulware was arrested after attacking a relative at their home and leaving the scene with "several firearms, ammo and body armor." Boulware then allegedly made phone calls in which he threatened to kill family members and attack churches or schools, which prompted the local school district to go into lockdown mode. He was arrested without incident and assault charges against him were eventually dropped.

Yes, the authorities just let him go, and let him buy more guns, an armored van, body armor, materiel for bombs and lots and lots of ammo.

But everyone's already forgotten about this guy, partly because he didn't kill anyone, but mostly because he was a white guy. And every time a white guy goes on a shooting spree everyone just says, "He was obviously unbalanced, maybe schizophrenic, just a deranged wacko with a fetish for guns and bombs."

They make excuses, such as, "Well, he wasn't connected to an organized terrorist group. He was just a lone-wolf nut job who hated the government." Which is usually followed by the sentiment, "They drove him to it!"

And this is the difference: whites are held individually responsible for their crimes (usually with a large dollop of blame attached to society for making them do it), but the entire African-American and Muslim communities are held collectively responsible for any crime committed by one of their own.

Boulware's attack was clearly terrorism, a political statement intended to intimidate the police and retaliate against the justice system which he blamed for his miserable life.

Was Boulware schizophrenic and crazy? Quite possibly. Almost by definition suicide bombers are mentally ill. It doesn't matter. That's why the word "terrorist" is so frequently preceded by "crazed." If they commit terrorist acts, they're terrorists, regardless of their mental health.

Boulware and Roof aren't alone. There are lots of people just as crazy as they are. The Department of Homeland Security reports that right-wing terrorism is a greater threat than Muslim extremism. These guys aren't just lone wolves: they roam this country in packs:

Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that by some estimates, there are as many as 300,000 people involved in some way with sovereign citizen extremism. Perhaps 100,000 people form a core of the movement, he said.

The right-wing sovereign citizen groups claim the police have no authority over them, and have killed lots of cops to make the point.

These guys have been skulking in the background for decades, spinning conspiracy theories, setting up their militias, killing cops over pizza, evading grazing fees in Nevada, and occasionally blowing up federal buildings in Oklahoma City.

Are they crazy? Sure. Why not. It doesn't matter. Their victims are just as dead.

Fox News and conservative politicians encourage these kooks and feed their paranoia with their crypto-racist, anti-government, hate-filled rhetoric. And then Republicans bow down to the NRA to enable them to buy guns, ammo, body armor and armored vehicles on demand.

These right-wing terrorists will keep on shooting cops and innocent church-going Christian African Americans as long as the right gives them the license to kill.

Charleston Shooting

Another young white man has gone on a shooting spree. This time it was in a black church in the South. Police are investigating it as a hate crime so it seems that this was racially motivated.

Most interestingly (and really not surprising), all the major news networks except Fox are covering this story as a big story. Last night, Fox had a story about Donald Trump. Today they are talking about the trade deal.

Wow.

I suppose the next word out of unicorn fart land will be about how those folks in the church should have armed themselves and this would not have happened.

Looking Forward To The GOP Debates

The Clown Car Gets Colorized

Now that the GOP clown car includes Donald Trump, the 2016 presidential campaign has gotten a whole lot more interesting. By "interesting," I mean big fucking trouble for the GOP. Take a look at Trump's campaign announcement.



Based on what he says here, I have to wonder if he is a secret Democratic plant that's going to beat the crap out of GOP candidates.

In so many ways, he is the epitome of conservatives today...arrogant and full of hubris, shameless money worshiper, deep belief in an aristocratic class, angry and hateful. What a great way to illustrate what the GOP stands for to independent voters!

It's The Librals' Fault!!

Remember that Dallas police station shoot up?

Dallas police shooter’s father says ‘liberal people’ drove son to ‘breaking point’

Wow...talk about playing the victim...:)

HIllary Not Talking To The Press?

So, the word in unicorn fart land is that Hillary isn't talking to the press and refuses to answer tough questions...





Really? This was yesterday.

So much for objective reality...

Good Words

I am going to do all I can to pierce the collective amnesia that the Republicans are trying to impose on people. We're not supposed to remember that the 12 years preceding Bill Clinton quadrupled the debt of our country? We're not supposed to remember that when he left office we had a balanced budget with a surplus? And if it had been continued would've paid off the national debt? We're not supposed to remember that Barack Obama inherited the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and had to pull us out of the ditch? And did a better job than he gets credit for?

---Hillary Clinton.

This is the objective reality that the GOP fears heading into the election. Keep reminding the voters about it.

Moses A Founding Father?

Apparently so...

Texas approves textbooks with Moses as Founding Father 

It's always something with that wacky board of education in Texas. Of course, the histrionics about this is kinda funny to all the teachers out there. Most end up doing their own thing anyway. Add in the fact that a significant number of students never read their textbook assignments and the mouth foaming is unjustified.