two fascists attempt to assassinate other fascists in Texas: http://t.co/eHKfVCSyG3
— Sarah Jones (@onesarahjones) May 4, 2015
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.
Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.
Come on, man.
Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.
This really is a full service blog.
Bark louder, little dog.
Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?
We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.
An almost top 10,000 blog!
If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.
Let there be snark.
When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.
Accountability, motherfuckers.
I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.
Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.
These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.
No one could have predicted…
Our messy unity will be our strength.
Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.
Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.
Hot air and ill-informed banter
Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.
He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!
… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact
Hunter Gathers
The Wingnut Singularity has been created, and it’s name is Texas.
sharl
I just listened to the wrap-up of a BBC World interview with Garland’s Mayor. He came across pretty well, and – granting he’s the freekin’ Mayor – made Garland sound like a pretty culturally diverse and accepting place. He claimed that most of the participants at this anti-Muslim event were not locals, and – in obvious reference to event organizer Pammycakes – said he really wished they had stayed in New York and held this there.
As Cervantes noted in comments earlier, the Garland Independent School District had held a Muslim-oriented meeting/rally earlier. The Mayor mentioned that January event, and noted that a similar Muslim-oriented shindig had been held at least once before that (previous year IIRC). Hizzoner is quite certain that’s why Pammycakes, Geert Wilder, and her band of islamophobes chose the Garland ISD site, whose policy of non-discrimination made that possible (I assume Pammy found some locals to put their names on the application paperwork to use the facility).
Yup, the Mayor of Garland is not a happy camper about these clowns showing up there, but while he and Garland police apparently had no advanced knowledge of plans for this attack, they clearly knew what kind of trouble Pammy is capable of attracting, so they were ready for this.
sharl
It’s a wingnut ragefest on Twitter, of course, and it’s no surprise that – given his history with Pammycakes – Charles Johnson (no, not the weirdo ginger furby – that’s Charles C. Johnson fwiw) has a very busy timeline:
srv
This is just Stage 1 of Obama’s Black Flag takeover plan.
You people have no idea.
Chet
Already seeing RW types all over Twitter bleating about “Piss Christ” and how nobody got killed over that, even though they damned well deserved to be. (Okay, they don’t actually come right out and say that last part, but it’s always in there between the lines.) It never seems to occur to them that tu quoque is a door that swings both ways.
LWA (Liberal With Attitude)
Man, those guys opened fire on those cartoonists like they were abortion doctors or something….
(too soon?)
PurpleGirl
So, which side were the two (dead) gunmen for/against? My brain hurts trying to puzzle it out.
ETA: I should go back to watching the TinyKittens cam; 5 adorable kittens. And just 5 days old.
Chet
@PurpleGirl: The assumption, of course, is that they were Islamic fundamentalists enraged by the contest.
But we really don’t know that at this point. If you want to take a conspiratorial tack, who’s to say it wasn’t a botched false-flag operation by neocons or fundagelicals or whoever?
sharl
Matt Pearce of the LA Times – a pretty good reporter IMO – reported on the shooting, including information about advanced warning posted on social media (those “jihadi accounts” have since been suspended):
I haven’t seen any word that Garland officials saw those tweets in advance, and in fact their initial statements seem to indicate they did not. That would be no surprise – twitter is filled with melodrama and exaggerated hype pretty much all the time, and separating real threats from the continuous stream of threats of violence and similar crap would be no trivial task. [I’m not sure I’d want to live in the kind of country where it would be so easy. Of course I now expect this incident to be cited in calls for strengthening government surveillance powers, no matter the actual likely negative consequences of doing so.]
Redshift
@sharl: Pammy is stoking anti-Muslim bigotry, and it’s not an election year? Weird.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
The folks who whipped on the mob over the not-mosque at not-Ground Zero have no business presenting themselves as defenders of the First Amendment.
sharl
@Redshift: I don’t follow her closely, but my impression is that this is a full-time thing for her, regardless of election cycles or any other external happenings. One example: getting her provocative ads on city buses has been an ongoing campaign – or at least it was, last time I checked.
This shooting will work out really well for her in terms of getting further support and credibility from low-information types. American Muslims gotta be nervous right now, and I don’t blame them. Look for more mosque fires in the near future – hope I’m wrong though…
I wonder if the state of mind of those two shooters was similar to that of the Baltimore guy who, post-Ferguson and post-Eric Garner, drove up to NYC and murdered those two cops: (apparently) a need to feel like heroes, and go out in a blaze of glory. Sad and pathetic if so, but at least in this case it wasn’t tragic beyond the wasted lives of the attackers.
sharl
Welp, in response to the Garland mayor’s wish that Pammy and her crew had not come to town – see my comment upthread – BBC spoke with the Pamster herself, who was classy as always. She compared the mayor’s statement to blaming a girl for her own rape, and she is vewy, vewy, disappointed.
Yeah, she’s gonna milk this incident for all it’s worth. THANKS DEAD ATTACKER DUDES, you fucking morons.
OzarkHillbilly
Pamela Geller yearns for martyrdom.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: They have no business doing anything aside from returning to the rock they crawled out from under.
bago
Second amendment remedies to second commandment issues.
F
We’re never going to hear the end of this one.
NotMax
Has Lord High Moron Rick Perry released any statement?
Anne Laurie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Fixed that for you.
balconesfault
@Hunter Gathers:
Don’t blame Pam Geller on us – born and lives in NY, educated at Hofstra.
Arclite
Police with assault rifles. Remember when that was something you only saw in 3rd world dictatorships? Yeah, me too.
Villago Delenda Est
@NotMax: He certainly isn’t shy at all about chiming in on shit in the most get a brain moran way imaginable, as we saw the other day on the Jade Helm stupidity.
scav
Wasn’t guns being drawn rather the point of the art show? They’ve certainly got the drawing of attention and guns down to one. Put it on a matchbook: Can you resemble this caricature?
Zinsky
I just wish these gun-addicted right-wing doorknobs would go off into the Idaho wilderness and kill each other off and avoid populated areas!
OzarkHillbilly
@Anne Laurie: Yeah, and if the Muslim extremists are smart, that is the way they will always approach her. She is too good a recruiting tool for them.
Ian
@Zinsky:
I do not wish that on the beautiful natural areas of Idaho. Sheldon Adelson’s casinos seem a more appropriate setting for that.
Ian
Darn it I said the C word and got thrown into moderation…
different-church-lady
I don’t get why the wingnuts are freaking out. Everyone involved had guns, so what’s the problem?
different-church-lady
@scav:
DRAW GUN! OVER $5000 IN PRIZES AWARDED MONTHLY!
chopper
@Chet:
sure got a lot of death threats tho.
beltane
@chopper: If “Piss Christ” was also a form of birth control, these threats would have been carried out.
chopper
@scav:
I’m sure the moment pam found out some assholes were outside shooting she dropped to her knees and thanked Jesus. “it worked! long as someone else gets shot…”
free expression chickenhawks.
EconWatcher
I’m quite certain I would have nothing in common with the organizers of this cartoon constest. But out of curiosity, what is the difference (moral, practical, whatever) between what they were doing and what Charlie Hebdo did?
HRA
Seriously, would you pull a tiger by it’s tail? Even Charlie Hebdo had a prior event in the Netherlands to shout out the danger of it beforehand. This moran woman did this on purpose when she learned the Muslims had a peaceful event at the same place. The hate in this country oozes from some people’s pores and sickens me.
Davebo
@EconWatcher:
There is no difference at all in the act however I’d say there is a big difference in the motivation.
And who knew Phoenix was a hotbed of muslim extremists? I though Sheriff Joe didn’t allow that sort of thing on his turf.
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: I hope she receives it one day, in a very painful manner.
D58826
@EconWatcher: Isn’t Charlie Hebdo a satirical magazine that went out of it’s way to offend everyone, not just Muslims? Geller on the other hand is just holding these events to stoke hatred among her followers, offend Muslims just for the sake of giving offense and not incidentally making a nice living off of it. She claims first amendment protection but she is coming dangerous close to crossing into the ‘fire in a crowded theater’ or fighting words exceptions. that still doesn’t excuse violent actions against her and her group,
Dupe70
@sharl: There is a large Islamic population in Garland and Richardson (essentially part of Dallas.) I had a Muslim roommate (he just moved out) so I am sad that idiot Pam is bringing her hate here. But worse that it brought out other idiots to attack it. I would prefer all the zealots to just get into one large Thunderdome and duke it out.
Cervantes
@sharl:
Gellerman, not to mention all her unnamed followers … Are they blinded by hate? If so, do they act unaware of the likely consequences? Or are they fully aware, inciting a reaction on purpose? If the latter, what reaction are they seeking to provoke? And if they get that reaction, then what?
Rhetorical questions, some of them, but even asking makes me sad beyond words.
As for the people who are provoked by the likes of Gellerman, whose reactions end up making things worse and not only for themselves … Is there something we could have done, something we could have said publicly to the provocateurs, something we could have said about them or about ourselves or about the larger community, that might have forestalled these terrible reactions?
More sadness.
J R in WV
You have to admire the ability of those cops to respond that quickly and appropriately. No one killed but the would-be terrorists, only one guy wounded by the terrorists, pretty much the way you would hope this kind of terrorism would wind out.
Hope the cops don’t have PTSD problems, they shouldn’t as they did what was necessary.
Agree that Ms Geller is a fruitcake spoiled from sitting out too long.
Citizen_X
@EconWatcher: Legally, there is no difference whatsoever. These guys deserve the full protection of the law.
But in terms of my sympathies? These are the guys that would appear heavily armed to counter-protest a pro-gun control rally. That call in death threats to abortion doctors. That try to warp teaching in this state to their own fundamentalist beliefs. In other words, the mirror image of the jihadists. They have the right to hold this event, but I’m not going to equate their deaths to that of satirists.
Jason Smith
Didn’t Texas just pass a law saying carrying around a gun wasn’t a police matter?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Cervantes: This was the reaction she was praying for. Her only regret is that no innocents died, but at least one got shot.
Way I read it, she’s an asshole and the two dudes who showed up shooting are assholes as well. I’m only regretful that the security guard got shot. And that Geller didn’t get what the two murdering pieces of shit in the car got.
Also gotta recognize the cops, they used their guns for what they’re supposed to be used for this time and didn’t kill any bystanders. Sad to say, but these days that’s enough to get a “good job, guys” from me.
Shit’s fucked up, guys. I’m done with the religious extremists. Geller, these two knuckleheads, all the Jesus freaks and Muslim psychopaths, I wish they’d all kill each other or all set up shop out in the middle of the Negev and duke it out there. Sick of their shit. Maybe there’s a Superfund site they can all go play in.
libarbarian
Bingo.
I’ll bet she’s drinking champagne now. This was as big a win as she could hope for. They got the reaction and the only dead are the attackers. To her peeps this is probably seen as vindication of 2 tenets
1) They are inherently violent and this proves it.
2) America, Fuck Yeah! “We” used our guns to kick their asses unlike those pansy French.
Marc
I don’t want the Westboro Baptist people to get shot for doing what they do either. I supported the right of Nazis to march in areas with Jews. I don’t need to like Geller et al. to just flat out condemn the lunatics who tried to murder people at her event.
Cervantes
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
@libarbarian:
Thanks for the comments. I agree (more or less) with both of you.
Two things give me pause: (1) Just as these two men were reacting to Geller’s provocation, she also, in her life, must be reacting to something. Whatever it is, real or imagined, I don’t like her response. (2) I know a little about Ms. Geller but I know nothing whatsoever about these two men — not even (officially) their names.
(Also: I realized too late that I had Ms. Geller’s name wrong in the original comment.)
Bobby Thomson
@Jason Smith: that’s not what it says.
Paul in KY
@Marc: I wouldn’t mind it if all the ‘adults’ from that cult got the shit beat out of them once or twice.
Kyle
Texas, gun violence and religious bigots. If this happened at a Wal-Mart it would be the most Republican news event of all time.
pseudonymous in nc
Pamalot has a pile o’cash from her dead ex-husband, and I assume a pile o’cash from running a hate group, which will only increase now that some fuckers have taken shots at her hatefest. There’s wingnut welfare, and then there’s this.
Tree With Water
@Chet: “…who’s to say it wasn’t a botched false-flag operation by neocons or fundagelicals or whoever?”.
Code name: operation Aluminum Tubes