ok so why posy a tread ONLY if a right winger does it? Do you get some kind of self satisfaction because in this particular scenario it wasn't a left winger? Honest question ... If he was a progressive liberal ... would you ... A) Post a thread about it ...B) would you criticize him? Be honest now.
Huh? This JUST happened in the last 36 hours. I get NO satisfaction when gun nuts kill. I have been among the most consistent voices on here decrying gun violence every time it makes the National Headlines. I also realize it's a lost battle. But that won't stop me from posting about it and decrying it.
If he was a violent, left wing Gun Nut who said he shot people because of his radical, left wing beliefs, damn straight I would post about it. But would I start the thread? No, because it would already be 50 posts longs by the time I saw it, as opposed to this one, which wasn't even mentioned. And if you're honest with yourself, you know that. Would I criticize him? Of course, as I always do when one of these gun nuts does his or her thing. Why do you think that was that it wasn't posted about for over 24 hours until I posted about it? Be honest now.
Cliff Schecter [h=3]U.S. News[/h] 06.09.14
[h=1]From Las Vegas to Georgia, the NRA Has Created a Monster[/h]The past month’s mass-shooting death toll is the logical conclusion of the gun group’s leaders’ deluded approach to our safety.
It’s been quite a month for the National Rifle Association: Massacres at universities, in restaurants, and at retail stores from South Carolina to Las Vegas. Gun nuts porting assault weapons to dinner from Chili’s to Chipotle. The leaders of the take-no-prisoners gun-rights organization have been witness to the logical outgrowth of its policies and rhetoric. Much as the GOP helped create the lunatic-fringe Tea Party within its midst, the NRA chieftains have helped birth a beast whose black heart now beats strongly among its most radical adherents.
The NRA’s officials purposefully pipeline propaganda to the most loony-tunes among us. They’ve told these gun cultists that they had best arm themselves with as many weapons and as lethal weaponry as they can get their hands on, because either a black president or a black helicopter will be hunting them down shortly. Simultaneously, they’ve used every electoral and lobbying tactic to best enable these unstable individuals to have access to the weaponry of war from which they and their arms-dealer cronies so handsomely profit.
The result: They’ve watched impotently as this witch’s brew of mental illness, far-right politics, propaganda, and heavy weaponry has led to one shocking—yet wholly predictable—massacre after another, with the most recent targets including the execution-style murders of two lunching police officers in Las Vegas. These very same factors have also provided the impetus for a group of lunkheads to share their passion for taking AK-47s to lunch—even though the rest of us have no interest in sharing their emotionally degraded worldview.
It’s quite a con. And it’s killing us.
Just over the past few weeks, we’ve seen mass murders in Isla Vista, Seattle, Myrtle Beach, and Las Vegas. A catastrophe was barely averted at a courthouse in Georgia—you know, the place that in its infinite wisdom chose to pass its “guns anywhere” bill, because clearly if there was something daycare centers and airports were lacking, it was guns.
Somehow this didn’t stop this self-styled “sovereign citizen.” These are the kind of guys who, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, believe that they get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore. This citizen acted out as his ilk have done across the country, trying to kill local members of law enforcement.
In this case, the shooter entered a Forsyth County, Georgia, courthouse with an assault weapon and explosives and opened fire, hitting a deputy in the leg before he was shot and killed. He had booby-trapped his house to explode, and threw stop sticks in the road to prevent cars from approaching the courthouse while he was to carry out his mass slaughter. Clearly this man didn’t think this up overnight.
We can end this any time we want. We know how. Every other country has done it. But make no mistake, this is the doing of the NRA’s leaders.
But this is America, the NRA leadership’s version, where a man in this mental state was a gun seller and trader (remember how Timothy McVeigh was a gun seller at gun shows?), who got mad because he had—what else?—outstanding firearms charges against him. So yeah, why not kill the authorities and everyone else you can in a blaze of glory? We make it so easy, after all.
In Las Vegas, two shooters, a man and a woman, entered a CiCi’s pizza—right across the street from a gun store, mind you—walked up to two metro cops and shot them at point-blank range, killing them and blathering about “starting a revolution.” They left a swastika and “Don’t Tread on Me” flag on one of the murdered cops’ bodies.
The maniac suspects then killed another person in a Walmart, and then themselves. Did I mention the man had lived on Cliven Bundy’s ranch for a bit (and was kicked off… one wonders what it took for that to happen)?
As he shared on Facebook:
I will be supporting Clive Bundy and his family from Federal Government slaughter. This is the next Waco! His ranch is under siege right now! The federal gov is stealing his cattle! Arresting his family and beating on them! We must do something, I will be doing something.
He also liked the NRA, had pictures of open-carriers at Chipotle, loved the Paul Family (Rand and Ron), and was a fan of “Three Percenter Nation”—which advocates for “no compromise, no surrender.” Many other posts were screeds filled with hatred for the United States government and its rules, a la sovereign citizens:
Mark one up for freedom today. I stood before a fascist judge today and implied that he was a Nazi. I told him I did not recognize his authority over me and reminded him that 2 states now have legalized weed for recreational use. I also informed him that now, since the fast and furious scandal, that continuing the war on drugs is treason. He said to me “I may not agree with the law, but it is my duty to enforce it.” To which I replied “Nazis during the war criminal trials stated that they were just following orders and enforcing the law, and we hung those people.”
This is a disease, one that the NRA’s leadership is helping to spread. In fact, in Las Vegas almost exactly a year ago, two “sovereign citizens” were arrested for planning to kidnap and murder cops.
(You know it’s getting ridiculous when I Google these events for exact details, with terms like “cops shot” and “sovereign citizens” and “Las Vegas” and I get more than one result.) Somehow this, and the fact that 39 percent fewer police officers are killed with handguns in states with background checks, didn’t persuade NRA toady Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada to sign universal-background-check legislation the Nevada legislature passed.
So how does this pertain to the NRA? I don’t know—could it be Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s referring to law-enforcement officials trying to do their jobs as “jack-booted thugs?” Could it be that LaPierre says things like this:
“We know that sooner or later reckless government actions and policies have consequences, that when government corrupts the truth and breaks faith with the American people, the entire fabric of society, everything we believe in and count on, is then in jeopardy.”
Or when he says that: “Government policies are getting us killed.” I could go on, but we’d run out of space if we tried to include all of LaPierre’s sedition, or even his greatest hits in inciting riot.
Put simply, the NRA’s leaders have demonized anyone whose job it is to enforce our laws and protect the United States in its pamphlets, emails, speeches, TV ads, Web shows, radio programming, and anywhere else they can unleash this cancer on the American public. So is it then shocking when their more unstable allies and adherents use the same language when planning or executing the mass killing of policemen, judges or other government officials?
If Wayne LaPierre were instead named Wayne Mohammed, do you think we’d still be hearing from him? Or would he be in a black site in Romania somewhere?
Then there are the others who take the NRA official line to heart, the open-carry movement. In an America where gun rights for three decades were constantly expanded, where one can wear a handgun in a holster in many states quite openly, these geniuses feel a need to bring their long guns with them to restaurants and other places where families like to gather, generally without the presence of AK-47s. It has nothing to do with gun rights, but a lot to do with intimidating others and making the rest of us not only accept their guns, but have as irrational an attachment to their weapons, or property if you will, as they do.
It brings to mind this famous line from President Abraham Lincoln’s speech at Cooper Union College:
…what will convince them? This, and this only: Cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly—done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated—we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
This zealotry, ironically, has led these atavistic shut-ins to accomplish more for sane gun regulation than any gun-safety advocate could, with pathetic public displays of affection for their inorganic significant others. This led NRA headquarters to initially call the open-carry crowd “weird” and tell them to stop these displays, but then backtrack and grovel when predictably the Frankenstein they’ve created no longer felt the need to bow before its maker. Once they started tearing up their NRA membership cards and threatened the only thing the group’s leaders actually care about—money—the NRA’s officials of course caved and said bring your guns anywhere you want, except our headquarters in Virginia!
We can end this any time we want. We know how. Every other country has done it. But make no mistake, this is the doing of the NRA’s leaders. We are reaping what they have sowed. Their rhetoric, their firearms policies, their followers. If we want to change things, it starts with not sugar-coating or ignoring the treasonous and murderous role played by the leaders of the NRA, but by acknowledging it and taking them on every day.
John Avlon [h=3]U.S. News[/h] 06.09.14
[h=1]Hatriot Politics Created the Las Vegas Killers[/h]Jerad and Amanda Miller, the Wingnuts whose killing spree left two policemen, a civilian, and themselves dead, were inspired by fright-wing radio hosts and militia movement groups.
The obsessively anti-government Hatriot movement moved from cultivating conspiracy theories to real killing on Sunday in Las Vegas.
The Wingnut Bonnie and Clyde duo, Jerad and Amanda Miller, stormed into CiCi’s Pizza and shot two metro cops, Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo, at close range while shouting “This is a revolution!” They flung the Tea Party’s favorite coiled snake Gadsden flag and a swastika on the still-warm corpses and then moved to a nearby Walmart to murder a shopper before turning the guns on themselves.
But the crime scene chronology only tells part of the story—because the Millers’ Massacre had been brewing for a long time, visible online. Their Facebook pages detail a descent into a murderous rage, railing against a tyrannical government and parroting talking points from fright-wing radio hosts such as Alex Jones and militia movement groups such as the Three Percenters while “liking” the pages of conservative activist groups ranging from the Heritage Foundation to FreedomWorks and the NRA. Miller’s profile picture was a skull wearing an American flag bandana against a backdrop of crossed knives over the word “Patriot.”
“There is no greater cause to die for than liberty,” Jerad Miller posted on May 2. “Yes, standing before despots is dangerous and most likely does not end well for you. I know this, my wife knows this. Soon they will come for us, because they don’t like what we think, and what we say. They don’t like the fact that we, simply will not submit to fascist rule.”
The “fascist rule” Miller wrote about was the U.S. government—and his intended targets were broader than two police officers.
Police sources confirm that the Millers conspired to infiltrate an unidentified court building and execute public officials. The Las Vegas *************** reported Monday that Kelley Fielder, who called the Millers “best friends,” said they left her with a box of documents that officials report included a written plan to murder court officials. The box was recovered Sunday during a police search of Fielder’s apartment. The search also found three empty rifle cases and an empty box used for handcuffs.
These are the wages of hate: two dead police officers and one innocent civilian, all with young children, sacrificed to fulfill a twisted vision sold by online snake-oil salesmen and professional polarizers.
Jerad Miller’s anti-government frenzy was whipped up by the extreme right wing echo chamber. Earlier this year, Miller responded to calls to stand with Cliven Bundy in and declared common cause with the renegade rancher. “I will be supporting Clive Bundy and his family from Federal Government slaughter,” he wrote. “This is the next Waco! His ranch is under siege right now! The federal gov is stealing his cattle! Arresting his family and beating on them! We must do something, I will be doing something.” When Miller returned from Bundy’s ranch, he posted that “BLM [Bureau of Land Management] snipers were all over the place.”
Miller’s anti-government rants ramped up after he served seven days in jail for a pot-related conviction. After his sentencing in 2013, he proudly posted: “Mark one up for freedom today. I stood before a fascist judge today and implied that he was a Nazi.”
According to Amanda Miller’s Facebook page, she worked at the Hobby Lobby as head of the needlework department. (Hobby Lobby has been embroiled in a faith-based lawsuit over covering contraception as part of the Affordable Care Act.) In addition to dressing as The Joker and his date for a Halloween party and exchanging gun-related gifts, the couple’s favorite book according their Facebook page was the Bible. They apparently skipped over some key sections, such as the New Testament.
There have been reflexive attempts to associate some recent mass shooters with the right-wing politics of incitement. The common denominator in most cases has been mental illness and access to guns, as in the case of Rep. Gabby Giffords would-be assassin, Jared Lee Loughner.
But in the Las Vegas case, the extremist political fingerprints are clear. Jerad Miller was a product of his environment, the unhinged right wing echo chamber and its constant drumbeat about government tyranny being imposed on freedom-loving citizens. “Either you stand with freedom, or you side with tyranny,” Miller wrote on his Facebook page in March. “There is no middle ground. We have deluded ourselves into such a notion. There is no grey area.”
Miller was a vocal supporter of libertarian Ron Paul, posting during the fall of 2012: “Ron Paul is the only hope for america and we have all failed him, our children and our grandchildren by failing to demand fair coverage of all presidential candidates. Today and everyday that passes by our country falls deeper into the clutches of fascist hands. Hope you wake up before its to late, hell, it may already be to late.”
Miller reposted articles from Alex Jones’s InfoWars website, promoted slogans about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives being a domestic terrorist organization, and was deeply into Second Amendment advocacy organizations. Significantly down the political food chain, Miller also seemed to identify with the sovereign citizens movement and the Three Percenters organization, whose founder Mike Vanderboegh’s homepage warns, “All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war.”
But the murderous Millers did not appear on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s exhaustive Hatewatch list. They were relatively new recruits whose radicalism was cultivated in online conversations about conspiracy theories ranging from ChemTrails to fluoride in the water supply. They were unhinged souls looking for a cause and found it in the belief that hating the government was patriotic.
When news of their attack filtered into the echo chamber that inspired them, Jones attempted a desperate but typical flip of the script, claiming that the attack was a false flag operation perpetrated by Harry Reid. “There is so much proof of this being staged yesterday, when I first read about it, and this morning, that my mind exploded with hundreds of data points, and quite frankly it’s conclusive,” Jones told his audience of enthusiastic dupes. “I kept telling, they’re getting ready to false flag, and it happens right in Harry Reid’s district, right in his state, right in his city, with his police department.”
These are the wages of hate: two dead police officers and one innocent civilian, all with young children, sacrificed to fulfill a twisted vision sold by online snake-oil salesmen and professional polarizers. The politics of incitement has a real cost when it comes in contact with armed alarmists who cross the crucial dividing line from being willing to die for a cause and being willing to kill for one.
—Additional reporting by John L. Smith in Las Vegas
Wow! What left wing hack site came up with that bullshit title? So it's the NRA's fault now this guy pulled the trigger? face)(*^%
You want blame? I'll tell you what; this shooting would not have happened had Congress done their constitutional duty and investigated the lawless Kenyan fraud YEARS ago.
Fair enough, but I can assure you plenty of the regulars down here heard about it, but weren't too eager to start a thread about it. And if you're honest, you know precisely why. Because until he did this horrific deed, he espoused and ardently followed the same extreme radical, Anti Government, views that they do.
Also, since the shooter loved Frosted Flakes your left wing hack sites should also be smearing Tony the Tiger...
Right, because I'm sure he subscribed to lots of Frosted Flake propaganda websites, and that shaped his world view. This is the hypocrisy of you disgusting hypocrites. It was rightfully pointed out that the Tsarnev idiots were radicalized, subscribed to Radical Islamist Websites espousing hate, and took it way to far, and eventually did what they did. Same situation here, except it's Radical Right Wing, Anti Government, espousing hate websites. And they took it way to far. But you guys are loathe to admit that had any bearing on the acts they did.
I said this during the Bundy ranch stand-off, I'll repeat it here:
With a lawless regime like the one we have now, this type of shit is bound to happen.
You want to blame the "radical right wing" and the Gadsden Flag, be my guest.
I blame the illegal Kenyan and his trampling of individual rights, freedoms and the Constitution.
Right now the United States is ruled by one man, not the rule of law - a true Thugocracy. Just ask any of his "enemies" who are being "punished" for speaking out against the self-anointed King.
So your scenario is, if it's a radical Right winger who does this kind of act, it's Obama's fault. If it had been a radical Left Winger who supports Obama, it's Obama's fault? That's why you're the irrational wingnut, filled with irrational hate, that you are Casper.
And of course, if you're last sentence was even remotely true, none of you Wingnuts would be posting on Extreme Right Wing Blogs like this one, or the numerous ones that are everywhere in America, because they'd be shut down. The insane birther websites exposing the "Kenyan" that you post at wouldn't exist, and you'd have to limit your insane railings to Your own Country in Canada.
