President Obama made the announcement today:
Thanks, Obama! Open thread.
Stonewall Inn Now 1st National Monument to LGBT RightsPost + Comments (167)
by Betty Cracker| 167 Comments
This post is in: Gay Rights are Human Rights, Open Threads
President Obama made the announcement today:
Thanks, Obama! Open thread.
Stonewall Inn Now 1st National Monument to LGBT RightsPost + Comments (167)
by Betty Cracker| 215 Comments
This post is in: Ammosexuals, Gay Rights are Human Rights, Open Threads, Assholes, General Stupidity
For non-wingnut Floridians, one irritant at the edge of the shock and grief we feel after the massacre in Orlando has been watching our state’s wingnut politicians try to reconcile their past efforts in service of a similar brand of the bigotry that animated the killer with newfound public concern and sympathy for the slain. The pols have approached it in a variety of ways.
Florida’s incomparably vile governor, Rick Scott, who has spent millions of taxpayer dollars promoting and maintaining anti-gay laws, stole a page from Ronald Reagan’s “How to Ignore the AIDS Crisis” handbook, refusing to even utter the words “gay” or “LGBT” during his many post-massacre statements and TV appearances, as if the victims were targeted at random.
Slimy opportunist Marco Rubio, who opposes marriage equality, LGBT employment protections and adoption rights for gay couples, acknowledged that gay people were targeted in the attack but crassly used the massacre as an excuse to reconsider his decision not to run for reelection to his senate seat, now that he’s washed out of the presidential race and will soon have to find a real job.
And then there’s Florida AG Pam Bondi, who campaigned on a full-metal wingnut platform, vigorously opposed marriage equality with taxpayer dollars and is now trying to paint herself as a champion for LGBT Floridians. Anderson Cooper was having none of her bullshit:
Way to grill some Pammycakes, Mr. Cooper!
Next up, Samantha Bee expresses what many of us have been thinking in the wake of the latest mass shooting, including President Obama and Hillary Clinton, i.e., that it’s pretty fucking stupid to allow stores to sell a weapon capable of mowing down a room full of people in under a minute as if it were a common garden implement:
In the clip above, Bee refers to the assault weapon used in Orlando as an AR-15 because that’s what the early reports said the killer used. We now know it was actually a Sig Sauer MCX. The Washington Post issued a correction on that, no doubt in part to address the rage of the gun-humper community, which becomes weirdly disturbed when someone misidentifies a weapon…almost as if a personal body part were being slighted in some way.
I’m going to outsource my response to that annoying phenomenon to valued commenter Mnemosyne:
I don’t give a shit what the exact model of the gun was. I really don’t. IMO, getting into gun nerd discussions about the exact make and model is a deliberate attempt to get off into the weeds and pull the discussion away from the fact that 49 people were murdered. Forty. Nine. The exact type of gun used doesn’t fucking matter.
I don’t need to speak the gun hobbyists’ language. If they’re more concerned with the exact make and model than the fact that 49 people are dead, then we need to be discussing their lack of fucking empathy and human feeling, not gun models.
If hobbyists want to have that discussion among themselves, fine, but the whole the news didn’t have the exact make and model right! is misdirection, and we all know it.
Amen, sister. Amen.
And finally, a comment from Served, which was posted in that same thread linked above:
Just a note to everyone to reach out to any LGBT friends and family and tell them you love them. They need it more than ever.
Amen, Served. Amen.
Two Clips…Or Magazines, If You Prefer, and a ReminderPost + Comments (215)
This post is in: domestic terrorists, Foreign Affairs, Gay Rights are Human Rights, Gun nuts, Religious Nuts
America is a wonderful melting pot, where lunatics, miscreants, and sadists of all religions & creeds can all come together at the gun store
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) June 12, 2016
Where Trump was born (red) versus where the Orlando shooter was born (blue). pic.twitter.com/a564arL0PX
— Philip Bump (@pbump) June 13, 2016
Charles P. Pierce, in Esquire:
…[B]efore we start talking about banning anyone from a Muslim country, or even before we wring our hands again about how easy it is to get your hands on an AR-15, a weapon that is built for, and exists only, to kill people in this country, we should all accept that, for all the advancements that have been made in ensuring equal rights for our fellow citizens who are gay, there is still a kind of virulent hate that we can see in its more polite forms in our legislatures and some of our courtrooms, and now we can see it in its most raw and unreconstructed form in our nightclubs.
The events in Orlando do nothing more than demolish our most treasured illusions about ourselves and our country and—most trivially—our politics. How many of the congresscritters now sending “thoughts and prayers” to the victims in Orlando, and to their families, spent a lot of time in their day jobs making the everyday lives of those victims more miserable than they had to be? There’s still an audience for clean-shaven, well-tailored bigotry of all faiths.
Yes, it appears that Mateen might have come to his violence through his religion, which will make him no different from practically any homophobe—including, I would point out, Eric Rudolph, who bombed the Atlanta Olympics. Allegedly, shortly before he opened fire, he called the local 911 operator and “pledged allegiance” (whatever that means to a guy walking into a club intending to slaughter 50 people) to ISIL, which has claimed responsibility, which is what it would do, under the circumstances.
The FBI also revealed Sunday afternoon that it had interviewed Mateen twice since 2013. After the FBI had delivered this news, an ATF official on the scene then explained why Mateen was still able to go into some gun store in Florida and buy a handgun and an AR-15 even though the FBI had talked to him twice in the past three years about his possible connection with alleged terrorists. The ATF’s answer, which I am admittedly paraphrasing here, is that this is America, and that’s how that goes.
It is never innocence which gets lost in these episodes. It’s illusions…
Real Q for journos: when was the last mass shooting where the shooter did not have a history of domestic violence? Write that piece.
— Robyn Swirling (@RSwirling) June 12, 2016
A guy who praises both ISIS and Hezbollah – groups in conflict vs each other – is not an adherent to either. Hate seeking a political excuse
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) June 13, 2016
This whole "guns are just a tool" argument would be so much more persuasive if 50 people were just killed with a fucking carpenter's angle.
— (((I Hate Nazis))) (@Johngcole) June 12, 2016
If you use a weapon that shoots 40 bullets a minute to hunt, you probably eat a lot of microwave burritos because you suck as a hunter
— TBogg (@tbogg) June 12, 2016
Brendan I. Koerner, in Wired:
… [A]s of now there is no evidence ISIS knew of the shooter or the attack beforehand. And the history of ISIS-related attacks in the US suggests that much about the Orlando tragedy will always perplex, no matter how much we delve into Mateen’s past or his hard drives. That is because when Americans perpetrate violence in the name of the Islamic State, they tend not to be strict adherents of the organization’s ideology, but rather disturbed individuals who hope to layer a political façade atop their personal grievances—grievances sometimes known only to themselves.
These people elect to wrap themselves in the Islamic State’s brand because of its unparalleled notoriety, an image that the group has cultivated through a sophisticated propaganda campaign that has taken advantage of social media’s power and pervasiveness. As I wrote earlier this year, the Islamic State’s media operation is focused not just on luring recruits to emigrate to the “caliphate,” but also on tapping into the psyches of twisted souls searching for meaning…
…[T]hese lone-wolf actors—terrorists like Mateen—have a historical precedent: The American airplane hijackers of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It’s easy to forget, but “skyjackers” commandeered nearly 160 commercial planes before metal detectors and X-ray machines became ubiquitous in airports. Many of these hijackers claimed to be acting on behalf of militant groups when they seized flights and demanded passage to Cuba or seven-figure ransoms.
Yet few had bona fide ties to those groups; they were, instead, people whose worldviews had been warped by personal crises, from run-ins with the law to romantic disappointments. In their darkest hours, they encountered play-by-play media coverage of other hijackings, which often dominated the evening news, and glimpsed a dramatic solution to their problems—a way to indulge their narcissism by becoming what America professed to fear most.
Once the airlines’ resistance to tighter security melted away, the hijacking epidemic was rather easy to curtail. That will not be the case with the open source system that the Islamic State has created, which will be studied and replicated by the organization’s inevitable successors…
The Islamic State wants us to question our commitment to pluralism, to make us view it as a vulnerability rather than a strength. Its greatest dream is that we turn against Muslims and Islam right now. In being vigilant about avoiding that well-laid trap, we can demonstrate why our vision for society is the one that offers the world a true way forward…
Chuck Todd asks Sanders to stop ‘trying to politicize’ Orlando shooting with gun talk https://t.co/BIVqbCbXiK pic.twitter.com/z4jSo2USNr
— Raw Story (@RawStory) June 12, 2016
Chuck Toad, the Peter Principle made flesh.
ISIL Can’t Kill Us (But They Can Encourage Us to Kill Each Other)Post + Comments (128)
This post is in: Gay Rights are Human Rights, Open Threads
Equality Florida has set up a @gofundme page to help the families of the victims of the #PulseNightclub shooting https://t.co/45RxYJXdDH
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) June 12, 2016
From the GoFundMe page:
Equality Florida, the state’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization is collecting contributions via this GoFundMe page to support the victims of the horrific shooting at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub…
Funds raised on this page will be going directly to the victims and families affected by the horrific shooting at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub. Equality Florida is working with local organizations – who are also helping to raise funds – to ensure the money is distributed properly. Thank you for the support!
You can also visit http://www.eqfl.org/news/pulse to get more information on vigils, counseling, and blood drives happening across the state. We’re also posting updates on Equality Florida’s Facebook page here: www.facebook.com/equalityfl…
Remember, circulating this link around your social media network helps, too. Let everyone know that we’re not defined by the monsters…
Like the GOP’s presidential candidate:
Trump: I’m Getting So Much ‘Congrats for Being Right’ on Terrorism After Orlando https://t.co/Bsg0v85qP2 pic.twitter.com/2nIU4j1vQa
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) June 12, 2016
And the guy who’s probably jumped to the top of his VP queue…
by Adam L Silverman| 252 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Gay Rights are Human Rights, Open Threads, Politics
Update: The next law enforcement press update/briefing is now scheduled for 2 PM EDT.
Here’s the link to the WFTV Orland Channel 9 live stream for the 1:30 2:00 PM EDT law enforcement update;
http://www.wftv.com/watch-live
It may get pushed back because President Obama will deliver a statement at 1:30 PM EDT.
Here’s the live feed for the President’s remarks:
This post is in: Gay Rights are Human Rights, Gun nuts
That is all.
This post is in: Gay Rights are Human Rights, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Assholes, Clown Shoes
Remember the a-LOO-mo https://t.co/JUUG0Thy1v
— Wyeth Ruthven (@wyethwire) May 17, 2016
Texas will not give in to President Obama's attacks on our values pic.twitter.com/JAcZaxtxxn
— Dan Patrick (@DanPatrick) May 17, 2016
@PatrickSvitek @DanPatrick Meanwhile, Texas continues to go down the shitter.
— D'Void Of Decency (@janphar) May 17, 2016
Dan Patrick is not just any homophobic schmuck — he’s the Lieutenant Governor of the state of Texas.
And a fine illustration of the ancient joke about the deceased Texan too tall for any available casket: “… so they gave him an enema, and buried him in a shoebox.”
Late Night Clown Shoe Open Thread: Everything’s Bigger in TexasPost + Comments (77)