Posted: 6/18/15 at 7:59pm
Do you think the Fox News people actually believe that crap about this being an attack on Christianity and not blacks, or do you think they're just being trolls and trying to get hits on their site and stir the pot?
Posted: 6/18/15 at 8:26pm
Posted: 6/18/15 at 8:31pm
But we were going to do that after Sandy Hook.
Posted: 6/18/15 at 8:38pm
"We need to declare war on the Second Amendment. It's time for it to be repealed."
I agree. My views have evolved despite my libertarian bent. To me, that particular amendment has overstayed its welcome.
That stated, do you @PalJoey ever expect a viable candidate seeking the office of POTUS, as a Democrat, to publicly call for the repeal?
I suspect that the odds favor a proposal for amendment by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures over a leading Democrat contender assuming that risk.
Posted: 6/18/15 at 8:55pm
Just a few years ago, a Presidential candidate who embraced marriage equality would have been considered to have committed political suicide. Part of the sea change is simply an aging and declining opposition but also a gradual shift among even the older segments of the population, as well as the young.
There has to be a point where these shootings shift attitudes, I am curious as to how the numbers per the younger people actually pan out per gun control.
Updated On: 6/18/15 at 08:55 PM
Posted: 6/18/15 at 9:00pm
The writer John Weir, dreaming really big:
"I'm not voting for any candidate for US President who doesn't speak up in the next 24 hours and explicitly and in so many words condemn the racist violence that is destroying lives and hopes across the country, who doesn't offer a plan for restoring voting rights protection to black Americans, who doesn't lay out a schedule for re-investment in black neighborhoods that have been abandoned by businesses and industries, who doesn't show how they intend to oversee the re-desegregation of public schools, who doesn't show a plan for releasing people of color from the prisons that have been constructed to prevent their participation in our democracy, who doesn't say precisely how they intend to demilitarize the police and immerse them in racial and ethnic sensitivity training, who doesn't open a national conversation about reparations to our black citizens, who doesn't say in detail, word by word, where they are going to get the money to improve our public grade schools and high schools and make public universities free to all Americans."
Posted: 6/18/15 at 9:00pm
Posted: 6/18/15 at 9:15pm
More importantly, the Fox audience turns to Fox to explain the world. That's the nature of a propaganda machine: offer narrow absolutes masquerading as clarity when the masses are overwhelmed with facts inviting nuanced thinking outside ideology (here, so egregious, an alternative to the truth). In this case, they are substituting a pre-existing plank of their rigidly maintained platform, making the adjustment instantaneous and entirely within audience comfort zones (oh, it's like the War on Christmas thing; phew).
Posted: 6/18/15 at 9:30pm
That's a noble position on the part of John Weir but it falls way short of calling for a repeal of the 2nd amendment. To me, anything short of a call for a repeal is political posturing. The problem as I see it is that in 2015 Americans of all hues are shooting each other, at times with reckless abandon.
Yes, the Charleston, SC shooter fits the profile of a certain category of mass murderer. But, as a black man I'm more likely to get my azz capped by Tryon or Peanut while visiting family members who live in some of DC's more dicey neighborhoods or by Pablo or Pepe while visiting my lady friend in a certain Central American barrio in the next town over as part of a random gang initiation rite.
I have a number of family members in the old south who are frightened out of their gourds by the rash of bills being pushed through state legislators in the red states that would expand their open carry provisions to places that serve alcoholic beverages. I've seen enough bar room brawls with knives involved to know that the guns & alcohol & testosterone combo is a recipe for wholesale disaster.
Please check out GeorgiaCarry.Org is Georgia's No-compromise Voice For Gun Owners.
Pal Joey is onto something. I strongly suspect that there are many gun-huggers who would fight a repeal of the 2nd amendment with their very lives or force state succession. I've not witnessed that same resolve from the marriage equality camp.
Updated On: 6/18/15 at 09:30 PM
Posted: 6/18/15 at 9:57pm
I think we need to take small steps, we are seeing that now, it's up to people who despise the gun culture to make the gun lovers want stricter laws. That should be where the bulk of our effort goes. We all have family and friends who want their guns but want stricter laws. We have to side with them and make them feel comfortable. Time will heal this nonsense, we'll grow up, like with other things.
Posted: 6/18/15 at 10:00pm
Namo, the OP to this thread is spot on.
Posted: 6/18/15 at 10:05pm
I really don't understand how they can say it was an attack against Christianity when it was reported by a survivor that when the shooter was plead with to stop while reloading replied, "You rape our women." and "You are ruining our country!".
Posted: 6/18/15 at 10:19pm
I think there is significant overlap between the GOP presidential candidates who keep saying "we" need to "take our country back" and the ones who are saying this was "an attack on religious freedom."
Posted: 6/18/15 at 10:44pm
"I'm not voting for any candidate for US President who doesn't speak up in the next 24 hours and explicitly and in so many words condemn the racist violence that is destroying lives and hopes across the country..."
Posted: 6/18/15 at 10:47pm
But ESPECIALLY race! And I am so sick of always hearing how somebody doing something is going to "start the talk on race in America" because for Christ's sake. (My personal favorite was when Mr Roxy said that Mamet play was going to "Really jumpstart the discussion about race in this country." How did that ever go, anyway?)
Posted: 6/18/15 at 11:20pm
A very powerful Daily Show tonight with the fortunate happenstance booking of Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.
Posted: 6/19/15 at 7:25am
Watch the Confederate Flag and heat-packing boys lovin' Nickki Haley sidestep issues of cause, effect and weapon choice. Her tears after her legislative record do not move me.
Posted: 6/19/15 at 8:02am
I thought she came off as completely fake. I didn't believe her for one second.
Posted: 6/19/15 at 8:23am
Please. And if one more white talking head ponders "what the motive was..." Already we're hearing murmurings of "mental illness" and my favorite "the face of pure evil" (the aforementioned Ms. Haley). Notice how "evil" lands with a generic thud that offers no window into intention or impetus, merely a vague negative state of being. It's the new quasi biblical sidestep, to swallow up any sociopolitical debate in a wash of horror movie-speak.
"The face of pure evil" means -- and I bet we hear this uttered before sundown -- the devil made him do it, not something as palpably real, ubiquitous and deeply embedded in our national consciousness as racism.
Updated On: 6/19/15 at 08:23 AM
Posted: 6/19/15 at 9:39am
And of course the confederate flag is still flying high at SC capitol building! Absolutely disgusting! It's time for South Carolina to take it down once and for all. The tragedy was a hate crime! That is clear. I don't know why idiots at Fox keep trying to classify this as an attack on religion, but it's not! This had nothing to do with religion! This was a bigot trying to start a war. I am appalled at how the state capital is handling the situation. Take that disgusting racist flag down.
And while I am on the topic of this, I am sick and tired of hearing the word "persecution" when it comes out of christian mouths. They think they are being persecuted for their beliefs. You think you are being persecuted because gays want the right to get married? whah whah cry me a river! The Jews were persecuted in Nazi Germany, The Blacks were persecuted in the 1800's and the The 1960's, The Japaneese were persecuted in the 1940s, The gays are being persecuted right now in Russia.
Homosexuality is a death sentence in some countries. And some of you religious folk have the nerve to say YOU are being persecuted??! Because the rest of the country doesn't want to follow your bigot beliefs about marriage!? Shut the hell up and get over yourselves.
Updated On: 6/19/15 at 09:39 AM
Posted: 6/19/15 at 9:48am
"don't know why idiots at Fox keep trying to classify this as an attack on religion, but it's not! This had nothing to do with religion!"
I don't watch Fox News so I didn't hear that. Every report I saw or heard mentioned the fact that Roof stated that blacks "rape our women and try to take over the country" and that he wanted to start a race war. I haven't heard religion mentioned on any report.
Posted: 6/19/15 at 9:54am
It's kind of amazing to watch Fox news try to twist every which way to make this be about anything but race.
Every person I saw interviewed that was trying to justify flying the confederate flag was saying that it is important to some people because they lost ancestors who were fighting in the war under that flag.
Well people in Germany lost a lot of ancestors fighting under the Nazi flag and you don't see them flying it over government buildings.
Posted: 6/19/15 at 10:09am
Larry Wilmore's Nightly Show was also great last night and he said Fox was making his head explode. He pointed out that the killer stated his motive clearly, that he told one of the women he was sparing her life so she could tell people his motive and even though being "anti-faith" had nothing to do with that reason, Fox keeps going with it.
And Jane, to your point, it ain't just Fox. Apparently every single Republican GOP candidate for presidential nomination has run with the "attack on faith" angle.
Posted: 6/19/15 at 10:14am
"It's kind of amazing to watch Fox news try to twist every which way to make this be about anything but race."
Yeah, that must be amazing. It would make me too angry to watch.
Re calling him mentally ill. First of all, I don't think you have to be mentally ill to be a racist, they come in all stages of mental health. My question is this - does it qualify as mental illness to pick up a gun and shoot someone to kill? I do think about this. Does being so full of hatred qualify as mental illness?
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