Protect Your Home From A Killer!

Very Tired of Idiots

Many in Nation Tired of Explaining Things to Idiots

Of the many obvious things that people are sick and tired of trying to get through the skulls of stupid people, the fact that climate change will cause catastrophic habitat destruction and devastating extinctions tops the list, with a majority saying that they will no longer bother trying to explain this to cretins. 

Coming in a close second, statistical proof that gun control has reduced gun deaths in countries around the world is something that a significant number of those polled have given up attempting to break down for morons. 

Finally, a majority said that trying to make idiots understand why a flag that symbolizes bigotry and hatred has no business flying over a state capitol only makes the person attempting to explain this want to put his or her fist through a wall.

Amen.

An Unbroken Line from Jefferson Davis to George F. Will

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a long article that discusses the origins of the Civil War. It consists mostly of quotes from Southern politicians who justified slavery as being necessary for civilization and even white equality. 

Coates' point is that the Confederate flag is undeniably the emblem of slavery and is why it should be taken down. 

But reading these quotes makes it clear that the political philosophy and economic theory of pro-slavery secessionist Southerners have been directly adopted by modern conservative "thinkers" and corporate elites in the United States.

For example, here's an excerpt of the statement of Mississippi justifying secession:

[A] blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.

Jefferson Davis believed that without slavery, equality among white men was impossible:

[E]quality ... cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race.
— Jefferson Davis

You too know, that among us, white men have an equality resulting form a presence of a lower caste, which cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. The mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of the African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupies where all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our mechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us.

Many southern "gentlemen" held slaves in particular and working people in general in utter contempt (from the Muscogee Herald):

Free Society! we sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern men and especially the New England States are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meet with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery, and yet are hardly fit for association with a Southern gentleman's body servant. This is your free society which Northern hordes are trying to extend into Kansas.

This last was a reaction to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would allow the voters in the two new territories to decide whether slavery would be allowed. People like Jesse James flooded into Kansas and Nebraska to influence the outcome of the slavery vote. Southerners wanted slavery to spread to new states and dreaded the outcome of new territories voting down slavery.

How many poor white Southerners fought for the Confederate Army because Jefferson Davis told them that if blacks were freed from slavery, poor whites would become the slaves?

The wealthy upper classes of the South considered themselves the real Americans, the well-bred, genteel Anglo-Saxon nobility of the United States. They despised a free society. They thought of the vast "northern hordes" as inferior, a lower caste, a servile race, greasy mechanics and filthy farmers.

That is the heritage the Confederate battle flag represents. How many poor white Southerners fought for the Confederate Army because Jefferson Davis told poor whites that if blacks were freed from slavery, whites would become the slaves? Were the men who fought in the Confederate Army fighting to preserve slavery simply to avoid being forced into slavery themselves?

The idea that there must be masters and there must be slaves appears to persist in the South to this day. The best way to do this is to minimize the political and economic power of workers, which means busting unions. If workers are unorganized and intimidated, you can pay them slave wages. That's why "right to work" laws were first enacted in former slave-holding states and have effectively destroyed private-sector unions there. Such laws have slowly spread to northern states as Scott Walker and other northern politicians have been co-opted by corporate elites like the Koch brothers.

Many corporate execs espouse the same slave-holding mindset as Jefferson Davis: the only thing that matters is profit. Today's Republican Party falls in line, parroting the narrative that maximizing the wealth of a few individuals and cutting their taxes will benefit the country much more than paying the people who actually do all the work a living wage.

But union busting still wasn't good enough for corporate America: even non-unionized Americans make too much damned money. So corporate America ships jobs off to other countries.

That brings us to the present day, when in March George Will told us proudly that income inequality is a good thing. Will is making exactly the same argument the well-bred gentlemen of the South: slaves are necessary for commerce and civilization. Will casts this in the light of shipping jobs off to Vietnam, where surrogate slaves perform the "drudgery" of manufacturing cheap shoes and plasma TVs for the United States. But it's just the same argument Jefferson Davis and well-bred Southern aristocrats used a century and a half ago.

Back then southern plantation owners needed African slaves to maintain their wealth and power. Today, corporate America needs wage slaves to maintain their stock bonuses and profit margins.

We had a Civil War to disabuse Southern slave holders of their quaint notions about "civilization and commerce." As more and more Americans fall into poverty -- especially white Americans in the South -- notions in board rooms will need similar adjustments.

There's some evidence that corporate America is beginning to understand how untenable growing income inequality is (note Walmart's increase to their minimum wage).

Let's hope they don't dawdle too long.

Feel Safe Yet?

Following the Money

A lot of Republicans had a hard time calling for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from South Carolina's capitol in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Charleston, even as it became more and more obvious that Roof's motivations were linked to glorification of the Confederacy, white supremacy and slavery. 

Most said that taking the battle flag down was something that people should "begin discussing," though some -- like Mitt Romney, to his credit -- did quickly call for its banishment to the ash heap of history.

The question is, how can anyone possibly defend the Confederate flag, especially in light of the horrors of slavery and the treacheries of the Civil War that it invokes?

The answer's obvious: money.

It turns out that Republicans get a lot of money -- and votes -- from racists. The Guardian looked into this:

The leader of a rightwing group that Dylann Roof allegedly credits with helping to radicalise him against black people before the Charleston church massacre has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republicans such as presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum.

Earl Holt has given $65,000 to Republican campaign funds in recent years while inflammatory remarks – including that black people were “the laziest, stupidest and most criminally-inclined race in the history of the world” – were posted online in his name.

Additionally:

Holt has since 2012 contributed $8,500 to Cruz, the Texas senator running for the Republican presidential nomination, and his Jobs, Growth and Freedom Fund political action committee, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings. On some filings Holt’s occupation was listed as “slumlord”.

And it's not just presidents: Holt spent his cash affecting election outcomes across the country:

Holt has also distributed tens of thousands in campaign contributions among prominent Republicans in congress, such as Representative Steve King of Iowa ($2,000), Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas ($1,500) and Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona ($1,000). He also gave $3,200 to the former Minnesota congresswoman and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann.

Holt's website and its focus on the fiction of "huge numbers" of heretofore unknown black-on-white murders was what radicalized Roof.  Curiously, the signal event that started Roof down this path was the murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman.

What?! you say. How can that be? Well, following the lead of Fox News, in which whites and Christians are always the victim no matter who gets killed, racists like Holt twisted the killing of a black teenager walking home in the rain into a call to action for white supremacists. Roof's impressionable young mind was warped by Holt's propaganda, just like young Somali Americans whose minds are warped by Al Qaeda and ISIS propaganda on the Internet.

The constant refrain of conservatives is always, "We're the victims! We're the victims!" even when whites kill blacks. To distract from the injustice of Trayvon Martin's murder, racists like Holt manufactured a phony scandal that sucked Dylann Roof in.

Fox News and Republicans like Cruz, Bachmann, King, and Cotton all jumped on the Zimmerman bandwagon, repeat the same stupid chant, knowing that it's what angry racists in the South want to hear. It wasn't the exact same tune that Holt was pushing, but it was an accompanying melody, a sort of racist-light counterpoint that lent mainstream credibility to Holt's ridiculous claims.

Now, Republicans and most of their supporters in former slave holding states don't openly advocate the radical racist agenda of Holt and his ilk. But they use the code words and the dog whistles that let racists like Holt and Roof know where their sympathies really lie. They push policies in Congress -- privatizing Social Security and Medicare, cutting welfare, repealing the ACA -- that are calculated with the express intent to do maximal harm to minorities. This agenda was clearly described by Paul Krugman just today:

Only one former member of the Confederacy has expanded Medicaid, and while a few Northern states are also part of the movement, more than 80 percent of the population in Medicaid-refusing America lives in states that practiced slavery before the Civil War.

And it’s not just health reform: a history of slavery is a strong predictor of everything from gun control (or rather its absence), to low minimum wages and hostility to unions, to tax policy.

These policies are intended to keep black and other minorities on the lowest economic rungs of society. The downside is that with increasing income inequality, much of it due to jobs shipped overseas and union busting, more and more white Americans are falling into the same trap. But to Holt, that's a good thing: the poorer whites become, the more scared and pissed-off they get.

Holt wants white kids like Roof, now facing the same dismal prospects that blacks have faced for the last 150 years, to blame blacks for their problems. It's an easy sell in the South, where racism is always bubbling below the surface.

Now Cruz and the other Republicans are falling over themselves to return Holt's donations. But it's a sham. They'll keep the millions of dollars of donors who are smarter than Holt and don't put their racist rants online, couching them in gentler terms like "combating voter fraud," "states rights," "balanced budgets" and "tax reform" that have the ultimate goal of crushing minorities.

But everyone still knows who's calling the shots in the Republican Party.

Let Them Live On Their Own

Today, I'm wondering why the GOP candidates for president are hedging on the Confederate flag still being flown in South Carolina. Could it be because their base is filled with old, white southern racists? Nah, that can't be it. It must just be me and my bias against them:)

In objective reality, they simply can't face the negative aspects (see: racism, prejudice, bigotry) of the people in their base and the core tenets of their ideology. They should face it and consider what it's like for black people who live in Charleston (and other places in the South) who have to see the confederate flag every day when they go to work. Or drive on a road named after a Confederate general who fought to keep them in human bondage.

The fact that we are even still debating this makes me fucking sick to my stomach. The South is filled with racist assholes like Dylan Roof who have a profound warped sense of reality. Take a look at this photo of Roof from trip to a Confederate museum.

One of the slaves is fucking SMILING? Yes, that's right. They were all really happy and comfortable during the time as slaves.

I've really had enough of these assholes. They hate the federal government? Great. Kick them out and let them live on their own.

Political Preachers

It shouldn't be surprising to anyone that Michele Bachmann is fleecing people, similar to an evangelical preacher, to pay off debt from living a lavish lifestyle. Stupid people are always willing to part with their money, eh?

I think what's kind of surprising is that her donors don't seem to have noticed that she doesn't hold public office anymore. They are still giving her money as if she is some sort of candidate. Is this the future of failed GOP candidates? Just begin to ask people for donations so they can continue on with their private club memberships and pricey dinners?

Well, they do love themselves some aristocracy...

Do These Pictures Clear Things Up about Dylann Roof?

Through Internet sleuthing the New York Times and other outlets have reported on Dylann Roof's white supremacist web site, The Last Rhodesian, and a trove of pictures of Roof apparently in his back yard and at various slave plantations and Confederate landmarks.

Fox News and Republicans have been expressing confusion and uncertainty about what could have possibly motivated Roof to commit a terrorist attack on a bunch of old ladies in a church basement.

These pictures should answer that question:

In every Congress between 1995 and 2006 Republicans put forth "flag desecration" amendments. The last time it failed by a single vote.

And here's Dylann celebrating his Conferate heritage:

Here's Dylann celebrating his Southern pride with the Stars and Bars and a .45:

And here's Dylann showing his white supremacist and Nazi sympathies:

"1488" is white supremacist code for "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. Heil Hitler!” The othala rune beneath that is another symbol used by white supremacists.

How representative is this young man of the citizens of Dixie who have "Southern pride" and speak fondly of their "Confederate heritage?" How far removed from Dylann Roof are the Tea Partyers who angrily shout about "taking our country back" from a black president? Or the secessionists in Texas, who fear the Army is set to invade them any day now and are itching for a rerun of the Civil War?

American conservatives have to stop waffling and call a spade a spade. They must stop exercising Republican partisan correctness. They must call these people out for continuing to honor the racist, anti-American, flag-burning traitors who caused the deadliest war in our history. 

If any flag should be burned, it's the Confederate battle flag that was still flying high over the capitol in South Carolina, while the American flag was at half-staff to honor the victims of Roof's terrorist massacre.

Climate Change Warrior

Let's just make today a climate change day!

Check out this piece from the New York Times.

Dr. Oreskes’s approach has been to dig deeply into the history of climate change denial, documenting its links to other episodes in which critics challenged a developing scientific consensus. Her core discovery, made with a co-author, Erik M. Conway, was twofold. They reported that dubious tactics had been used over decades to cast doubt on scientific findings relating to subjects like acid rain, the ozone shield, tobacco smoke and climate change. 

And most surprisingly, in each case, the tactics were employed by the same group of people. 

The central players were serious scientists who had major career triumphs during the Cold War, but in subsequent years apparently came to equate environmentalism with socialism, and government regulation with tyranny.

Hmm, those people sound awfully familiar...:)

It's both sad and devastating, but entirely understandable given their System 1 brain thinking, how easily manipulated people are by these actors.

The Caveat

In my previous post I said that my initial reaction was that I didn't think that gun laws could stop Dylann Roof's terrorist attack on the church in Charleston. But as I've considered it, I'm not so sure. Roof was on the cops' radar, and if he hadn't been white, things likely would have played out differently.

In particular:

Mr. Roof has had two previous brushes with the law, both in recent months, according to court records. In February, he attracted attention at the Columbiana Centre, a shopping mall, when, dressed all in black, he asked store employees “out of the ordinary questions” such as how many people were working and what time they would be leaving, according to a police report.

Clearly the cops suspected Roof was casing the mall for some sort of burglary or other nefarious activity. If he'd been black and caught doing this, what are the odds they would have just let him go on his way?

Buying a gun should require a license, practical testing and a rigorous background investigation. Roof's suspicious behavior at the mall is exactly the kind of thing that should show up on a criminal background check. The logical conclusion is that Roof was trying to buy a gun to commit a robbery.

That shouldn't prevent a person from getting a gun out of hand. But it should trigger a deeper investigation. They should talk to his family and friends. Had the authorities done that, they might have remarked upon his recent racist behavior. Had they checked him out on the Internet, they might have learned of his racist sympathies from his Facebook page, which might have led them to his Last Rhodesian white supremacist web site, where he divulged his racist plan to attack Charleston.

That level of investigation would cost money, of course. Which means a gun license would have to cost a fair amount of money. Which might have prevented Roof from getting a gun in the first place.

Admittedly, that's a lot of ifs. But as we already know, it's impossible to prevent all murders. But the higher the bar is for gun purchases, the fewer guns will be sold, especially to angry losers like Dylann Roof.

The only possible goal is to reduce the number of deaths without imposing undue burdens on the rest of society. Making sure that gun buyers aren't white supremacists planning to rob malls or murder old black ladies in church isn't an unreasonable burden.

Now, suppose Dylann Roof had been a Muslim. What do you think the cops' reaction at the mall would have been? A Muslim skulking around a mall, wearing black, asking questions about employees and closing times. They would instantly suspect he's preparing for a terrorist attack, looking to sneak into the mall after hours to plant a bomb. If they didn't arrest him for this on the spot, at a minimum they would have placed him on a watch list, which would have been flagged when he tried to buy a gun.

American conservatives are more than willing to allow the authorities to invade our privacy by x-raying us, rifling through our personal belongings and making us take off our god-damned shoes every time we board an airplane.

Yet somehow they think everyone in the country should have complete and untrammeled access to weapons of mass murder at their local gun stores. They can shoot up churches and schools and malls with impunity -- why would any terrorist bother with an airplane anymore?

NRA people don't seem to understand that lax gun laws they insist upon also allow Muslim terrorists to obtain guns easily -- just like the guns Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem provided the jihadists who were killed in the Muhammad cartoon ambush contest in Texas last month.

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