Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This fight is for everything.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

This blog will pay for itself.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

No one could have predicted…

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

I really should read my own blog.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / On a Lighter Note

Reader Interactions

110Comments

  4. 4.

    mai naem mobile

    Leonard sounds like such an old persons name. I would have expected a Josh, Eli or Ben for somebody your age. Also too, both of you have pleasant voices.

  6. 6.

    Amir Khalid

    Is Sully really so important that his retirement from blogging means the end of an era? Das ist nicht zu glauben.

    I was in the main food court at Petronas Towers today. (It’s called Scott’s Food Court. Who the hell is Scott?) A young white lady in hijab saw me working on my Spanish and stopped to speak with me. She was curious to know why I was learning Spanish (she herself was Spanish, and taught the language) so I told her learning languages is my hobby. Not the first time this has happened to me; that food court draws quite an international crowd of expatriate office workers and tourists.

    A few minutes later, the young (local) man at the next table asked me the Spanish for “boss”. I told him: jefe. A few minutes later, after he and his girlfriend had left, I found myself half-wishing I’d answered hijo de puta instead. Which of course, would not have been nice, especially if that Spanish lady had heard me.

  8. 8.

    TaMara (BHF)

    I just had this flash of how wonderful it would be if the front-pagers had a weekly 60 minute podcast together. Hilarity would ensue.

    Otherwise, fun to hear Doug and Leonard [[smiles]]. Doug sounds like I expected. I look forward to listening to the rest later today.

  10. 10.

    rikyrah

    it’s interesting how this isn’t being reported…..uh huh

    the suspect is WHITE…so, of course, we have to wait as to speculation on his ‘motive’.

    UH HUH
    …………………………………….

    Chapel Hill shooting: Three American Muslims killed
    By Raziye Akkoc 10:54AM GMT 11 Feb 2015

    Three American Muslims have been shot dead in their home near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the US.

    The three were named by police as Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21 and her sister, Razan Abu-Salha, 19.

    The Salha sisters were students at North Carolina State University and Barakat was a doctoral student in UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Dentistry, according to local media.

    In a statement, the police said they responded to a report of gunshots in the usually quiet area of Summerwalk Circle in Chapel Hill at 5.11pm on Tuesday. Upon arrival, officers found the three young individuals, who were pronounced dead at the scene.

    The Independent reported that some residents were unaware of what had happened until police arrived.

    A 46-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of three counts of murder. He was named by police as Craig Stephen Hicks and in a statement confirmed he had been charged.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11405005/Chapel-Hill-shooting-Three-American-Muslims-killed.html

  12. 12.

    Frankensteinbeck

    If Belafon is around, I finally saw the latest Steven Universe. Wow. I bet all the monsters came out of those holes.

    @rikyrah:
    CNN has it. Come on, they love mass shootings. They’re not going to miss the chance to cover it, even if it’s white-on-brown. I do expect the news to downplay the possibility that it’s a hate crime committed by a conservative.

  13. 13.

    sharl

    @rikyrah: I just heard a BBC World interview with a public radio affiliate in that part of NC. The police just released a preliminary report, citing a dispute over parking as motivation for the killer. [Presumably that is what the killer claimed after he turned himself in. Maybe a different story will emerge with time…]

    AMERICA, FUCK YEA!

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I look forward to listening to the radio program when I have a full hour to do so.

    In the meantime, is anyone else having trouble bringing up Charlie Pierce’s page at Esquire?

  16. 16.

    catclub

    @Amir Khalid:

    I found myself half-wishing I’d answered hijo de puta

    There is a Monty Python bit along those lines about a Czech(?)-English dictionary written by someone who hates either the English or the Czechs. Maybe both.

  18. 18.

    debbie

    This is beyond offensive:

    Not all conservatives used the death of American hostage Kayla Mueller to highlight the brutality of the Islamic State — some decided to focus their disgust on the 26-year-old’s humanitarian work for Palestinians.

    “No tears for the newly-departed Kayla Mueller, the ISIS hostage whose parents confirmed today that she is dead,” conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote on Tuesday, under the headline, “Kayla Mueller: Dead ISIS Hostage Was Jew-Hating, Anti-Israel Bitch.”

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/conservatives-kayla-mueller-israel

    Where are the moderate Conservatives of good will who will ccondemn this?

  19. 19.

    Betty Cracker

    @Frankensteinbeck: Is the shooter a conservative? It wouldn’t surprise me (most short-fused gun-nuts are), but all the reporting I’ve seen around this speculates that the shooter was a militant atheist.

  21. 21.

    Belafon

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    If Belafon is around, I finally saw the latest Steven Universe. Wow. I bet all the monsters came out of those holes.

    Yep. I loved the big machines that looked almost exactly like bacteriophages. Now, go back through the episodes and you’ll start finding clues (like Peridot mentioning restarting kindergarden). And the conspiracy theory kid: His theory almost completely matches what we were shown.

    And to think it was a 12 minute piece.

  23. 23.

    JPL

    @debbie: Josh had another story about how conservatives are trying to claim christianity as their own. Debbie Schlusser deserves a special place in hell for that comment.

  24. 24.

    MazeDancer

    Noted that Balloon Juice described as a site that “attracts 50,000 views a day”.

    Even if one ascribes 10 hits a day from folks checking in to see if something’s new, that’s still five thousand people a day.

  25. 25.

    Bystander

    So sad.

    “Ethan Czahor, a co-founder of Hipster.com, was hired as “chief technology officer” for Mr. Bush, but was dismissed one day after his appointment was announced after a trail of inflammatory comments was revealed.”. NYTimes.

  26. 26.

    beth

    I’m watching John Boehner telling reporters that he’s waiting for Senate Democrats to “get off their asses” and do something “besides vote no”. The reporters are chuckling. We’re doomed.

  31. 31.

    piratedan

    @Amir Khalid: it’s the end of the era of the polite Republican POV, now it’s all spittle and outrage and parsing statements out of context and being a well paid lackey. Sully only adhered to the latter two and was far too weighted on subtle mocking disdain rather than dialing up the outrage meter to 11. Alas, the salad days are gone and all we have left are crusty croutons of hate.

  32. 32.

    Betty Cracker

    @JPL: If Schlussel staked out a special spot in hell every time she said something unbelievably stupid and offensive, she would have cornered the hell real estate market several years back. IIRC, Pam Geller once called Schlussel out for being a depraved whackjob. That’s like Dick Cheney calling Donald Rumsfeld an incompetent liar.

  34. 34.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @TS:

    Thanks for that. I’ve put the new link on my home page and will delete the old one. Much appreciated.

  35. 35.

    beltane

    @debbie:

    Where are the moderate Conservatives of good will who will condemn this?

    Thanks for the laugh. It was needed on this cold, sad morning.

    I guess that according to Debbie Schlussel, anyone who bears good will towards their fellow humans is an anti-Semite. Where do idiots like her think this attitude will ultimately lead?

  37. 37.

    sharl

    @JPL: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    The fact – assuming it is actually true and represents a primary motivation – that someone would kill even one person over parking suggests the presence of blind rage. Logic and rational thinking won’t be very useful in dealing with someone in that state, though maybe more useful in analyzing what aspects of his life led him to that state of rage. [Again, assuming initial reports are accurate and significant in terms of an explanation of motivation.]

  41. 41.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Belafon:
    Best guess is that the Earth matches the gems’ needs for breeding, but the process would have wiped out humanity. Rose Quartz wasn’t cool with that. Note Pearl’s view of humanity. I’m pretty sure most gems couldn’t give a fig about the widescale death of biologicals, even intelligent biologicals.

  42. 42.

    debbie

    @beltane:

    I just realized while telling a friend about Schussel’s remark just now that it’s really hard to pronounce her name without feeling like you’re about to choke on your own spit.

  44. 44.

    Betty Cracker

    @Frankensteinbeck: Now the cops are saying it was over a parking space. I actually find that somewhat plausible; I’ve seen people have violent meltdowns over parking spaces many times. It’s one of those little things that drive people batshit.

  45. 45.

    sharl

    @Betty Cracker: Plenty of my fellow atheists are conservatives, and plenty are wackaloons. A number of them showed themselves as such during the whole Rebecca W4tson #Elevat0rG4te kerfuffle.

    No one knows the full story here (I doubt even the police do, at least not yet). But that an atheist could do this wouldn’t surprise me in the least, anymore than someone with green eyes or an 11-shoe size. Atheism is just absence of religious faith. Now if it were a democratic secular humanist (do they/we still self-describe this way? – I haven’t kept up on the literature since before Paul Kurtz died), that would add a bit more sad to the whole awful tragedy.

  47. 47.

    srv

    President Obama on Wednesday opened the door to “limited” ground combat operations against the Islamic State, as he asked Congress to formally authorize military force against the terrorist network.

    Let the Crusades begin.

  49. 49.

    rikyrah

    @sharl:

    The police just released a preliminary report, citing a dispute over parking as motivation for the killer

    the many anti-Muslim sentiments all over his social media would hint otherwise.

    I’m just sayin’.

  50. 50.

    Belafon

    @srv: I saw that he’s asking that this AUMF be a replacement for the “war on terror” AUMF for dealing with ISIS. He also wants it to include a 3 year sunset.

  51. 51.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Some good news, and perhaps even a Big Fucking Deal

    Now Cook is putting his prodigious sums of money where his mouth is, proclaiming the “biggest, boldest and most ambitious project ever,” an $850 million agreement to buy solar power from First Solar, the biggest U.S. developer of solar farms. The deal will supply enough electricity to power all of Apple’s California stores, offices, headquarters and a data center, Cook said Tuesday at the Goldman Sachs technology conference in San Francisco.

  52. 52.

    Mike in NC

    Andrew Sullivan, Brian Williams, Jon Stewart. The Titans of the Media are all Going Galt. Whither Bill O’Reilly?

  54. 54.

    sharl

    @rikyrah: Ah, I totally forgot to click your link…

    If those cited social media links are actually his – and I suspect they are – then he may have been already pumped up and ready to kill, and parking just happened to be the thing to set him off. If he had all that hate inside him, then IMO this would be a hate crime. But from what I’m hearing right now on the news, authorities are saying it wasn’t a hate crime. Which I’m guessing is wrong, but actually proving a hate crime in court might be very challenging (IANAL).

  55. 55.

    Roger Moore

    @rikyrah:

    the many anti-Muslim sentiments all over his social media would hint otherwise.

    It might be more complicated than that. The news I’ve seen says the parking dispute was ongoing, so it’s possible that his problem with this specific group of Muslims triggered his more general hate. Even if the hatred was longer-standing, the parking dispute was almost certainly the reason he picked those specific targets for his hatred and the reason that hatred advanced to actual murder.

  58. 58.

    Fred Dickinson

    The readiness of the American Left to defend Bronze Age religious superstitions so long as said Bronze Age superstitions are not “white*” never ceases to amaze me.

    *Never mind that Christianity is now very much a Black-and-Brown religion globally

    All religion is the tool of oppressors and must be resisted , whether the tool says Jesus or Muhammad on it. In my ideal society, all priests, pastors, bishops, sheikhs, imams and rabbis would get one way tickets to Alaska.

  61. 61.

    SatanicPanic

    I have never been one to say “why don’t moderate ____ condemn his/her actions?” and if it’s true that a fellow atheist killed three people for, possibly, religious reasons (is that how I should say it?), I can confirm that if someone asked me to condemn his actions I would. As a human. As an atheist? Here’s my feeling on it- that guy doesn’t speak for me.

  62. 62.

    D58826

    @sharl: from the Charlotte paper

    Police said in a statement Wednesday morning that a dispute about parking in the neighborhood of rented condominiums may have led to the incident.

    “Our preliminary investigation indicates that the crime was motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking. Hicks is cooperating with investigators,” Lt. Joshua Mecimore, a police spokesman, said.

    Well I guess a nut with a gun is better than than anti-Muslim bigot with a gun. At least the former is acceptable within ‘polite’ society. (sigh)

  64. 64.

    Betty Cracker

    @Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): I didn’t mean to lump ALL atheists into the “liberal” camp, but, as an atheist myself, my guess is that MOST atheists aren’t conservatives. I’ll see if I can dig up some stats when I have a sec, but my guess would be around 80% of atheists are Democrats / liberals / moderates / not-conservatives.

    ETA: I was pretty close — according to Pew in 2012, 73% of atheists / agnostics leaned Dem.

  67. 67.

    PurpleGirl

    @JPL: I have an acquaintance who has told me I’m wrong to support Doctors Without Borders… don’t I know that they help the Palestinetians.

  69. 69.

    Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)

    @rikyrah:

    Im guessing it’s both/and — a parking dispute with a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant probably wouldn’t have driven him to murder, but a parking dispute with three Muslims who shouldn’t even be living in his nice neighborhood could easily put someone who was already prejudiced over the edge.

  72. 72.

    Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)

    @Betty Cracker:

    I think you’re going to turn out to be wrong. :-). Don’t forget, most libertarians are also avowed atheists. I think you’re going to find pretty even numbers all across the board, politically.

    I’m guessing that, living in the Bible Belt, most of the atheists you know are liberals who broke away from the religion they were raised in, but less religious parts of the country don’t necessarily follow the same pattern.

  73. 73.

    Amir Khalid

    @Fred Dickinson:
    A very interesting observation. Now let me add one of my own, which is possibly as relevant as yours: three university students were killed by an atheist who had previously declared his hostility towards religion and the religious.

  74. 74.

    Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)

    @Betty Cracker:

    There’s also this a little deeper in the survey:

    Within the unaffiliated, about half of those who call themselves atheist or agnostic identify as liberal (51%), compared with 13% who identify as conservative. The margin is narrower among those who identify their religion as ”nothing in particular,” with 31% of that group calling themselves liberal and 23% conservative.

    As we have noted here many times before, “Democratic voter” =/= liberal.

  76. 76.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @PurpleGirl: along those lines, somebody linked to Pudge Carlson’s vanity site the other day, and I got a pop-up ad that said “Defunding Amnesty International is Defending America”

  78. 78.

    Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)

    @Betty Cracker:

    I can’t edit from the iPad for some reason, but I would also note that “atheist” is itself a somewhat political declaration these days — notice that the “nothing in particular” numbers skew more conservative that avowed atheists.

  80. 80.

    Betty Cracker

    @Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): I wasn’t claiming all atheists are flaming liberals or that liberal = Democrat. I originally said, “…my guess is that MOST atheists aren’t conservatives. I’ll see if I can dig up some stats when I have a sec, but my guess would be around 80% of atheists are Democrats / liberals / moderates / not-conservatives.” The stats bear me out, I think.

  81. 81.

    Fred Dickinson

    @srv:

    And when he’s not getting his own cock sucked, he’s the one doing the sucking – in this case sucking off the global billionaire class to line his pockets with the blood of the global working class.

    But the American Left is obsessed, above all, with race and gender over and above a proper class based analysis. They don’t mind the worker getting fucked so long as the deed is being done with a black dick or a strap – on. The ruling class knows this, which is why we get Obama followed by Billary.

  82. 82.

    JPL

    @PurpleGirl: Gee.. Your friend might be anti-semetic. I am taking out a long time friend who went to the dark side after Obama’s election for lunch today. It’s her birthday. Sometimes it’s difficult to just fake it.

  84. 84.

    PurpleGirl

    @David in NY: Yes, they do.

    WRT Doctors Without Borders: My standard come back is that I prefer to think my money was used in Haiti or Sub-Saharan Africa, or wherever. There’s just SO many places that need help from Doctors Without Borders.

  85. 85.

    Amir Khalid

    À propos of nothing, I was just listening to a Chuck berry song. Was there ever a model of refrigerator called the Coolarator?

  86. 86.

    David in NY

    @Fred Dickinson: Oh, yeah, all those crazy leftist kids and union members complaining about the 1% controlling our politics — they’re just obsessed with race and gender alone, no concern for class analysis.

    Just shut up, OK?

  87. 87.

    rikyrah

    I’ll say it again..

    They are PHUCKING OUT OF CONTROL.

    This man’s crime: WALKING WHILE NON-WHITE

    ……………………………….

    Grandfather visiting Alabama from India stopped by police while taking walk, left partly paralyzed

    By Challen Stephens | [email protected]
    on February 10, 2015 at 2:35 PM, updated February 11, 2015 at 9:29 AM

    Madison police last week roughed up a 57-year-old Indian citizen who was walking on the sidewalk outside his son’s home, leaving the older man temporarily paralyzed and hospitalized with fused vertebrae.

    “He was just walking on the sidewalk as he does all the time,” said his son, Chirag Patel, this morning. “They put him to the ground.”

    No crime had been committed. Madison Police on Monday issued a statement saying the department had suspended the officer and were investigating the use of force in this case. The police statement wished the man a “speedy recovery.”

    Chirag Patel, an engineer for one of the many government contractors in Huntsville, said he had just bought a one-way ticket for his father, bringing him from the small Indian town of Pij to his new home in fast-growing suburbs of Madison.

    He said his father, Sureshbhai Patel, was to help his wife care for their new baby, a 17-month-old son, so he could pursue his masters degree in electrical engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

    “This is a good neighborhood. I didn’t expect anything to happen,” said Chirag Patel, who recently bought the new house on Hardiman Place Lane.

    http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/02/indian_citizen_stopped_by_madi.html

  89. 89.

    gvg

    @Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): I think Betty is right because any atheist who had conservative tendancies would be driven out of the republican groups across the country, not just in the Bible belt. Not in the past, but now. The evangelicals have taken control across the country. Look at the pandering Mitt had to do. That trend has been building for awhile but I think it accelerated when the rational moderates switched and voted Dem in 2006.
    The GOP was reeling from backlash caused by Iraq turning bloody and pointless and compounded by the GOP having a number of messy personal scandals. People often change their vote when things like that happen and later after a clean up may go back. However that time it seemed to me only the rabid right was left and they insisted on actions that kept the former moderates from drifting back so the party seems to have tipped over into crazy ocean.
    There was a time when Hispanics were thinking they could be republican but got driven away by racism on display. Other ethnics concluded any minority could be turned on and headed away too. Atheists haven’t been in the news as much, but every once in awhile some GOP speaker lets out some really deranged anti atheist stuff too. If you are kind of apolitical I guess you could be a conservative atheist & vote GOP but the majority can’t help being aware they can’t let the christianists get power.

  92. 92.

    Citizen_X

    @rikyrah: Yeah. I think it looks like a case of Stereotypical (sigh) Armed Angry White Middle-Aged Guy Rage:

    Hicks reportedly identified as an atheist, and a page believed to be from his Facebook has a post that reads, “When it comes to insults, your religion started this, not me. If your religion kept its big mouth shut, so would I.”

    From D58826 , comment #27 in this post.

  93. 93.

    David in NY

    @Fred Dickinson: Very informative. Invective, followed by a fellow commenter’s pertinent counterexample refuting the point of invective, followed by more invective. If that’s your argument style, welcome aboard, we need a more target-rich environment here.

  94. 94.

    Chris

    @Betty Cracker:

    Let me complicate it further by pointing out that leaning Dem doesn’t automatically clear you of anti-Muslim bigotry. Even if you’re not a Christian. I’ve met more than a few people who’re solidly Democrat because they agree with them on most things (economics, social issues, take your pick) but are just fine with profiling, Guantanamo, and our various crimes in the ME.

  95. 95.

    catclub

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    is putting his prodigious sums of money where his mouth is

    Doesn’t Apple have a cash hoard of something like $180B, so this is like me, with say, $100k in savings, buying a new refrigerator for $1k and saving on my electric bill?

    Except I bet Apple will expect to at least break even on this investment, if so, they will end up with the same $180B cash hoard as before.

  96. 96.

    catclub

    @rikyrah: Digby linked it to a speech where Comey ( head of FBI)
    was telling people to be very afraid and watch out for dangerous strangers ( lone wolf terrorists).
    Comey apparently gave that speech in Alabama.

    The 911 phone call that got the police there also will remind one of the Cleveland Walmart phone call. Making up dangerous things not actually happening.

  97. 97.

    Mike J

    @Citizen_X: Atheists can be religious bigots too. Some of them are just as toxic as any Christian bigot or Muslim bigot. I think it’s because in all three cases they’re humans and their belief systems don’t automatically make them good people.

  99. 99.

    sharl

    @Mike J: Yep. People who should be thoughtful enough to know better rush to the defense of horrible things that come out of Bill Maher’s mouth, and the “logic” of their arguments are often cringe-worthy.

    Then there was the case of the late Christopher Hitchens, a die-hard atheist and (IMO) an awful human being. He made some good intellectual arguments, e.g., in his criticisms of the Roman Catholic church hierarchy (and even the “saintliness” of Mother Theresa), but he was also a raging sexist and a full on supporter of our Glorious Iraq Adventure. Regarding the latter, IMO he existed somewhere in that territory occupied by racism and, if not specifically American Exceptionalism, at least Western/Occidental Cultural supremacism. All those innocent dead and forever damaged casualties {dismissively waves hand eastward} were just necessary collateral damage, I’m afraid. ‘Oh, they were people,’ you say? Eh, whatev, couldn’t be helped.

  100. 100.

    Paul in KY

    @sharl: Making it a ‘hate crime’ prosecution isn’t as big a deal when going for murder 1. It is a big deal when prosecuting lesser assault/battery style crimes.

  101. 101.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @gvg:

    There are a lot of libertarians in Arizona, Nevada, and other Western states who would call themselves “non-affiliated” at best (and probably actual atheists) and yet vote solid Republican, because the promise of lower taxes and smaller government is more enticing than the prospect of Christian hegemony is frightening. Since they think religion is bullshit, they see no reason to take it into account when they vote.

    As I said, I suspect it’s a regional difference — atheists in the Bible Belt are probably going to be more liberal, but all bets are off once you get to the less religious parts of the country. Here in California, I run into about equal numbers of liberal and conservative atheists, and my parents knew a lot of libertarian atheists in Arizona who were also staunch Republican voters (well, the ones who weren’t too paranoid to vote, anyway).

  103. 103.

    Paul in KY

    @rikyrah: Poor guy. Sure hope it is nothing permanent. Hope he sues the Hell out of them, plus the officers who did this get fired (at least).

  104. 104.

    Amir Khalid

    @Paul in KY:
    As commenters japa21 and a hip hop artist from Idaho note, Coolerator refrigerators did indeed exist. Alas, the manufacturer went out of business a decade before Chuck released C’est la Vie.

  106. 106.

    sharl

    Adam Weinstein ‏@AdamWeinstein

    Police in Chapel Hill and family of the deceased are giving different accounts of the motivation for the murders. http://www.newsobserver.com/2015/02/11/4547742_chapel-hill-police-arrest-man.html?rh=1 …

    CHAPEL HILL — The father of two of three students shot to death in Chapel Hill on Tuesday says the shooting was a “hate crime” based on the Muslim identity of the victims.

    Chapel Hill police said Wednesday morning that a dispute about parking in the neighborhood of rented condominiums near Meadowmont may have led Craig Stephen Hicks to shoot his neighbors, Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, and his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and Abu-Salha’s sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, of Raleigh.

    But the women’s father, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, who has a psychiatry practice in Clayton, said regardless of the precise trigger Tuesday night, Hicks’ underlying animosity toward Barakat and Abu-Salha was based on their religion and culture. Abu-Salha said police told him Hicks shot the three inside their apartment.

    “It was execution style, a bullet in every head,” Abu-Salha said Wednesday morning. “This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime. This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt. And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far.”

    Abu-Salha said his daughter who lived next door to Hicks wore a Muslim head scarf and told her family a week ago that she had “a hateful neighbor.”

    “Honest to God, she said, ‘He hates us for what we are and how we look,’” he said.

    Karen Hicks, the ex-wife of Craig Hicks, said Wednesday afternoon that she does not think religious bigotry was behind her ex-husband’s actions…

  107. 107.

    sharl

    Classic Charles ‏@Ugarles

    “I don’t hate Muslims. I love parking,” said the person who doesn’t want to get charged with a hate crime. “Parking is what I live for.”

    3:52 PM – 11 Feb 2015

    maryloubethune ‏@maryloubethune

    @Ugarles @pareene One more white loser killing cause he feels like it. I’m in Chapel Hill and it’s all anyone can talk about.

    maryloubethune ‏@maryloubethune

    @Ugarles @pareene He is just another hateful white loser who loves his guns more that humans..he will rot in jail. NO parking there….

  109. 109.

    Arclite

    @Betty Cracker:

    @Frankensteinbeck: Is the shooter a conservative? It wouldn’t surprise me (most short-fused gun-nuts are), but all the reporting I’ve seen around this speculates that the shooter was a militant atheist.

    My uncle is a wingnut atheist. Orange County, CA is too liberal for him, so he’s planning on moving to AZ. Bought property there and everything already.

Comments are closed.