White Men, Guns…And That Masculinity Thing

About 50% of the guns in the US are owned by only 3% of the gun owners.

Think about that. What if 50% of the cars were owned by 3% of the drivers? Houses with attached parking lots instead of lawns would not be totally uncommon.

When I used to shoot at local ranges as common site was of a white man who had been frightened into buying a gun to defend his home ( a statistical probability of a inner city gangbanger wandering out into the ‘burbs or rural areas to “rob de whidte folks” being on the order of winning the Powerball lottery) – acquiring his first, and probably only pistol. Fumbling with the damn thing during the Free  Hour” of range time, trying to hit a man sized target at 15 feet. Discovering it just doesn’t work like in the movies, where everyone but the “bad guys” is a crack shot. Few, if any of these guys ever realized that by the simple act of gun ownership, they had increased the chance that  someone in their house would be shot by something on the order of 2,000% Ten or twenty thousand times more likely someone would be shot in the house by a family member, than of said mythical black gangbanger out to rob only moderately better off poor white folks.

I know it is popular with the racist buffoons and their associated black conservative Lawn Jockeys to talk about the city “murder rate”.

Fact is –

In 2016, there were more than 38,000 gun-related deaths in the U.S. — 4,000 more than 2015, the new CDC report on preliminary mortality data shows. Most gun-related deaths — about two-thirds —in America are suicides, but an Associated Press analysis of FBI data shows there were about 11,000 gun-related homicides in 2016, up from 9,600 in 2015. The increase in gun-related deaths follows a nearly 15-year period of relative stasis.

Meaning 2/3rd of all gun deaths every year in the US are either accidental or suicide. If you break that down, nearly 27,000 folks – mostly white, died by suicide or accident vs 5,000 homicides committed by black folks, whose victims were over 90% fellow black folks, and 90% of the homicides were committed within 10 miles of an urban center.

So what is the real problem?

Manhood.

And specifically the manhood of the low educated white male Trump supporter.

The AR-15…Mas Murder Weapon of Choice

Why Are White Men Stockpiling Guns?

Research suggests it’s largely because they’re anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market and beset by racial fears.

Since the 2008 election of President Obama, the number of firearmsmanufactured in the U.S. has tripled, while imports have doubled. This doesn’t mean more households have guns than ever before—that percentage has stayed fairly steady for decades. Rather, more guns are being stockpiled by a small number of individuals. Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, says a recent, definitive study from the Injury Control Research Center at Harvard University.

So, who is buying all these guns—and why?

The short, broad-brush answer to the first part of that question is this: men, who on average possess almost twice the number of guns female owners do. But not all men. Some groups of men are much more avid gun consumers than others. The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male—but not just any white guy. According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.

These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives. Taken together, these studies describe a population that is struggling to find a new story—one in which they are once again the heroes.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HARD WORK?

When Northland College sociologist Angela Stroud studied applications for licenses to carry concealed firearms in Texas, which exploded after President Obama was elected, she found applicants were overwhelmingly dominated by white men. In interviews, they told her that they wanted to protect themselves and the people they love.

“When men became fathers or got married, they started to feel very vulnerable, like they couldn’t protect families,” she says. “For them, owning a weapon is part of what it means to be a good husband a good father.” That meaning is “rooted in fear and vulnerability—very motivating emotions.”

But Stroud also discovered another motivation: racial anxiety. “A lot of people talked about how important Obama was to get a concealed-carry license: ‘He’s for free health care, he’s for welfare.’ They were asking, ‘Whatever happened to hard work?’” Obama’s presidency, they feared, would empower minorities to threaten their property and families.

The insight Stroud gained from her interviews is backed up by many, many studies. A 2013 paper by a team of United Kingdom researchers found that a one-point jump in the scale they used to measure racism increased the odds of owning a gun by 50 percent. A 2016 study from the University of Illinois at Chicago found that racial resentment among whites fueled opposition to gun control. This drives political affiliations: A 2017 study in the Social Studies Quarterly found that gun owners had become 50 percent more likely to vote Republican since 1972—and that gun culture had become strongly associated with explicit racism.

or many conservative men, the gun feels like a force for order is a chaotic world, suggests a study published in December of last year. In a series of three experiments, Steven Shepherd and Aaron C. Kay asked hundreds of liberals and conservatives to imagine holding a handgun—and found that conservatives felt less risk and greater personal control than liberal counterparts.

This wasn’t about familiarity with real-world guns—gun ownership and experience did not affect results. Instead, conservative attachment to guns was based entirely on ideology and emotions.

WHO WANTS TO BE A HERO?

That’s an insight echoed by another study published last year. Baylor University sociologists Paul Froese and F. Carson Mencken created a “gun empowerment scale” designed to measure how a nationally representative sample of almost 600 owners felt about their weapons. Their study found that people at the highest level of their scale—the ones who felt most emotionally and morally attached to their guns—were 78 percent white and 65 percent male.

“We found that white men who have experienced economic setbacks or worry about their economic futures are the group of owners most attached to their guns,” says Froese. “Those with high attachment felt that having a gun made them a better and more respected member of their communities.”

That wasn’t true for women and non-whites. In other words, they may have suffered setbacks—but women and people of color weren’t turning to guns to make themselves feel better. “This suggests that that these owners have other sources of meaning and coping when facing hard times,” notes Froese—often, religion. Indeed, Froese and Mencken found that religious faith seemed to put the brakes on white men’s attachment to guns.

For these economically insecure, irreligious white men, “the gun is a ubiquitous symbol of power and independence, two things white males are worried about,” says Froese. “Guns, therefore, provide a way to regain their masculinity, which they perceive has been eroded by increasing economic impotency.”

Both Froese and Stroud found pervasive anti-government sentiments among their study participants. “This is interesting because these men tend to see themselves as devoted patriots, but make a distinction between the federal government and the ‘nation,’ says Froese. “On that point, I expect that many in this group see the ‘nation’ as being white.”

Investing guns with this kind of moral and emotional meaning has many consequences, the researchers say. “Put simply, owners who are more attached to their guns are most likely to believe that guns are a solution to our social ills,” says Froese. “For them, more ‘good’ people with guns would drastically reduce violence and increase civility. Again, it reflects a hero narrative, which many white man long to feel a part of.”

Stroud’s work echoes this conclusion. “They tell themselves all kinds of stories about criminals and criminal victimization,” she says. “But the story isn’t just about criminals. It’s about the good guy—and that’s how they see themselves: ‘I work hard, I take care of my family, and there are people who aren’t like that.’ When we tell stories about the Other, we’re really telling stories about ourselves.”

HOW TO SAVE A WHITE MAN’S LIFE

Unfortunately, the people most likely to be killed by the guns of white men aren’t the “bad guys,” presumably criminals or terrorists. It’s themselves—and their families.

White men aren’t just the Americans most likely to own guns; according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they’re also the people most likely to put them in their own mouths and pull the trigger, especially when they’re in some kind of economic distress. A white man is three times more likely to shoot himself than a black man—while the chances that a white man will be killed by a black man are extremely slight. Most murders and shoot-outs don’t happen between strangers. They unfold within social networks, among people of the same race.

A gun in the home is far more likely to kill or wound the people who live there than is a burglar or serial killer. Most of the time, according to every single study that’s ever been done about interpersonal gun violence, the dead and wounded know the people who shot them. A gun in the home makes it five times more likely that a woman will be killed by her husband. Every week in America, 136 children and teenagers are shot—and more often than not, it’s a sibling, friend, parent, or relative who holds the gun. For every homicide deemed justified by the police, guns are used in 78 suicides. As a new study published this month in JAMA Internal Medicine once again shows us, restrictive gun laws don’t prevent white men from defending themselves and their families. Instead, those laws stop them from shooting themselves and each other…(More)

 

Alabama Students File Protest Against White Wing Indoctrination in Class

Now they want to teach hate and racism in public schools –

Alabama students confront school board over right-wing teacher who compares Obama to Hitler

Students are revolting at one Alabama high school over the right-wing lesson plan pushed by a government teacher.

Baldwin County School Board members heard complaints Thursday from students about Spanish Fort High instructor Gene Ponder, who assigned at least five books by right-wing talk radio host Michael Savage and compared President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler in one lesson, reported AL.com.

The students complained Ponder relied on outdated published materials and blog posts to back up his political claims the in the AP class and used unscientific reasoning on issues such as gun control.

“This is not a small group of students misinterpreting or challenging a viewpoint,” said student Julia Coccaro, who also raised concerns about Ponder’s summer reading list last year.

The school system pulled that assignment in June, after students complained the reading materials promoted one viewpoint without offering a challenging contrast.

“The taxpayers of Baldwin County are not paying for their children to be indoctrinated,” said Coccaro, who chairs the Alabama High School Democrats. “They are paying to be educated, and we are not being educated in that classroom.”

Parents, local residents and former teachers spoke out against Ponder, who declined to comment.

“The lesson plans I examined appear to be totally extracurricular,” said Cynthia McMeans, a retired teacher. “No teaching materials based on a legitimate course of study in the social sciences would rely on and include information from websites, blogs, articles and interviews found on conspiracy theories and logical fallacies. None of the lesson plans come from reputable sources.”

Another former teacher was more succinct.

“We are teaching hate in our school systems,” said retired teacher Sandra Page.

Superintendent Eddie Tyler said the board would consider some of the suggestions offered, such as having an academic supervisor examine the lessons, but he said some speakers “engaged in character assassination” against the teacher.

One local man defended Ponder, saying he had attended one of the government teacher’s classes.

“I was looking for something to tell me that this teacher was bias (sic) and I didn’t hear it or see it,” Eugene Maye of Fairhope. “We want to believe our kids. But my take from that class is that I didn’t see anything wrong.”

 

The Chumph Continues Ethnic Cleansing

First he came for the Haitians…

 

With Salvador decision, Trump’s immigration policy veers into white nationalism

Trump moves toward deporting 200,000 longtime immigrants from El Salvador — and, no, they’re not “illegal”

Since Donald Trump kicked off his presidential campaign in 2015 by declaring that Mexican immigrants to the United States are “rapists” and are “bringing crime,” he and his supporters have tried to deny that his opinions on immigration are shaped by racism. Instead, they’ve tried to argue that it’s only illegal immigration that Trump opposes. Trump has even claimed that his proposed wall on the Mexican border would have a “big, very beautiful door because we want the legals to come back into the country.”

Once Trump was in office, however, it became clear that his immigration policy would primarily be shaped around ejecting as many nonwhite, non-English-speaking people as possible. The White House has systematically targeted certain groups of  immigrants who have legal status for deportation, through the travel ban placed on Muslim countries (which initially applied to green card holders), rescinding protections for DACA recipients and more recently the targeted attacks on immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), who are allowed to live in the United States under a law signed by George H.W. Bush in 1991.

On Monday, the Trump administration revoked TPS from 200,000 Salvadorans, a group of people that has lived and worked here for 17 years, and in many cases have children who know no other home but the United States. This is the biggest move yet to give lie to the notion that Trump is fine with legal immigration. Instead, it’s becoming apparent that a lightly veiled version white nationalism is the guiding ideology behind Trump immigration policies. Earlier, Trump has revoked TPS from 2,500 Nicaraguans and 60,000 Haitians.

“Over the 17 years that they’ve had TPS, they have been routinely and regularly vetted by the government,” explained Royce Murray of the American Immigration Council, during a Monday press call. “They’ve been vetted 11 times, submitted to background checks and security checks to ensure that they do not present any public safety concerns.”

“I kind of see it as low-hanging fruit,” said Mark Drury, an executive at Shapiro & Duncan, a construction company that employs a number of TPS workers. He noted that undocumented workers “are a lot harder to find” than people who have legal status, after all, and that kicking out people who have “done all the right things” is a much easier task for the Trump administration.

“All my plans for the future just ended,” said Christian Chavez Guevara, who has lived in the U.S. with TPS status for 17 years. Holding back tears, he added, “I don’t want to take my daughter, none of my kids, to a violent environment.”

Salvadoran immigrants were given protected status after an earthquake in 2001, but as Chavez Guevara’s statements make clear, the more pressing concerns in 2018 are economic instability and crime. Right now, the State Department has a travel warning in place for El Salvador, noting the country “has one of the highest homicide levels in the world and crimes such as extortion, assault and robbery are common.” But the Trump administration declined to take those facts into consideration, simply declaring that enough time had passed since the earthquake that it was safe for these immigrants to return home.

Frank Mora of the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center strongly disagreed, arguing that returning all these people to El Salvador “stokes the conditions that actually trigger the instability, the violence and the migration from El Salvador to the United States,” which runs directly counter to the Trump administration’s stated goals.

Remittances — money sent by immigrants back to family and friends in El Salvador — make up 17 percent of that nation’s GDP. Sending all those people back to El Salvador and cutting off that source of income, Mora warned, would exacerbate economic insecurity and likely lead to an escalation of crime. In turn, that will cause more people to leave the country and enter the United States without documentation.

Unsurprisingly, Neil Munro at Breitbart applauded Trump’s decision by characterizing immigrants, en masse, as parasites.

“Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market,” Munro writes. “But the federal government inflates the supply of new labor by annually accepting more than 1 million new legal immigrants, by providing work-permits to roughly 3 million resident foreigners, and by doing little to block the employment of roughly 8 million illegal immigrants.”

Drury begged to differ, saying, “Construction’s at full employment. There are not people sitting at home waiting to take the jobs that these folks are doing. We work hard every day trying to get more people into our industry.”

He added that these potential deportations mean that “El Salvador will get a better prepared work force arriving at their doors,” since most of these people have been building up work experience in the U.S. for years. These workers may well displace less experienced workers in El Salvador, he said, who may well come to the U.S. looking for work, likely as undocumented immigrants.

Attempts to make this debate about economics are best understood as a cover story for a racist agenda. As Matt Yglesias explained at Vox in April, “there is a fairly firm consensus that immigration raises incomes on average for native-born workers” and that inviting immigrants is an effective “strategy for national growth and national greatness.”

Trump and his supporters are clearly motivated by an urge toward ethnic cleansing, whether or not they clearly see it that way, and their economic arguments should be understood as a form of rationalization. The comment section at Breitbart News, full of racial slurs about “anchor babies” and “criminal invaders,” and claims that liberals want the United States to be a “Third World spillway,” make that clear enough. This is why it’s foolish for any liberal to hope the MAGA-hat crowd will turn on Trump after realizing he has broken his promises on taxes, jobs and health care. Mostly they voted for him so he would stick it to people of color, and that is one promise Trump has kept.

 

Chumph – Ethnic Cleansing the Government

What is going on at State Department is playing out all over the government as the Chumph assembles his Gestapo.

This is also interesting because of the announcement of Mr Tillerson’s exit from State…

 

Diplomats Sound the Alarm as They Are Pushed Out in Droves

 Of all the State Department employees who might have been vulnerable in the staff reductions that Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has initiated as he reshapes the department, the one person who seemed least likely to be a target was the chief of security, Bill A. Miller.

Republicans pilloried Hillary Clinton for what they claimed was her inadequate attention to security as secretary of state in the months before the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Congress even passed legislation mandating that the department’s top security official have unrestricted access to the secretary of state.

But in his first nine months in office, Mr. Tillerson turned down repeated and sometimes urgent requests from the department’s security staff to brief him, according to several former top officials in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Finally, Mr. Miller, the acting assistant secretary for diplomatic security, was forced to cite the law’s requirement that he be allowed to speak to Mr. Tillerson.

Mr. Miller got just five minutes with the secretary of state, the former officials said. Afterward, Mr. Miller, a career Foreign Service officer, was pushed out, joining a parade of dismissals and early retirements that has decimated the State Department’s senior ranks. Mr. Miller declined to comment.

The departures mark a new stage in the broken and increasingly contentious relationship between Mr. Tillerson and much of his department’s work force. By last spring, interviews at the time suggested, the guarded optimism that greeted his arrival had given way to concern among diplomats about his aloofness and lack of communication. By the summer, the secretary’s focus on efficiency and reorganization over policy provoked off-the-record anger.

Now the estrangement is in the open, as diplomats going out the door make their feelings known and members of Congress raise questions about the impact of their leaving.

In a letter to Mr. Tillerson last week, Democratic members of the House Foreign Relations Committee, citing what they said was “the exodus of more than 100 senior Foreign Service officers from the State Department since January,” expressed concern about “what appears to be the intentional hollowing-out of our senior diplomatic ranks.”

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, sent a similar letter, telling Mr. Tillerson that “America’s diplomatic power is being weakened internally as complex global crises are growing externally.”

Mr. Tillerson, a former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, has made no secret of his belief that the State Department is a bloated bureaucracy and that he regards much of the day-to-day diplomacy that lower-level officials conduct as unproductive. Even before Mr. Tillerson was confirmed, his staff fired six of the State Department’s top career diplomats, including Patrick Kennedy, who had been appointed to his position by President George W. Bush. Kristie Kenney, the department’s counselor and one of just five career ambassadors, was summarily fired a few weeks later.

None were given any reason for their dismissals, although Mr. Kennedy and Ms. Kenney had been reprimanded by Trump transition officials for answering basic logistical questions from Nikki R. Haley, President Trump’s pick as United Nations ambassador. Mr. Tillerson is widely believed to dislike Ms. Haley, who has been seen as a possible successor if Mr. Tillerson steps down.

In the following months, Mr. Tillerson launched a reorganization that he has said will be the most important thing he will do, and he has hired two consulting companies to lead the effort. Since he decided before even arriving at the State Department to slash its budget by 31 percent, many in the department have always seen the reorganization as a smoke screen for drastic cuts.

Mr. Tillerson has frozen most hiring and recently offered a $25,000 buyout in hopes of pushing nearly 2,000 career diplomats and civil servants to leave by October 2018.

His small cadre of aides have fired some diplomats and gotten others to resign by refusing them the assignments they wanted or taking away their duties altogether. Among those fired or sidelined were most of the top African-American and Latino diplomats, as well as many women, difficult losses in a department that has long struggled with diversity.

One of them was Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a career Foreign Service officer who served as ambassador to Liberia under Mr. Bush and as director general of the Foreign Service and assistant secretary for African affairs during the Obama administration. Ms. Thomas-Greenfield was among those asked to leave by Mr. Tillerson’s staff, but she appealed and remained until her retirement in September.

“I don’t feel targeted as an African-American,” she said. “I feel targeted as a professional.”

For those who have not been dismissed, retirement has become a preferred alternative when, like Mr. Miller, they find no demand for their expertise. A retirement class that concludes this month has 26 senior employees, including two acting assistant secretaries in their early 50s who would normally wait years before leaving.

The number of those with the department’s top two ranks of career ambassador and career minister — equivalent to four- and three-star generals — will have been cut in half by Dec. 1, from 39 to 19. And of the 431 minister-counselors, who have two-star-equivalent ranks, 369 remain and another 14 have indicated that they will leave soon — an 18 percent drop — according to an accounting provided by the American Foreign Service Association.

The political appointees who normally join the department after a change in administration have not made up for those departures. So far, just 10 of the top 44 political positions in the department have been filled, and for most of the vacancies, Mr. Tillerson has not nominated anyone.

 

The Chumph’s Rape Victims

A list of the 13 women the Chumph molested and tried to rape…And counting.

Trump and accusations of sexual misconduct: The complete list

Sexual misconduct by powerful men has all but taken over the news, with Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and senatorial hopeful Roy Moore (R-Ala.) among the politicians on this growing list.

Trump vociferously has taken aim at accused Democrats, while apparently giving a pass to Republicans. Moreover, it was only a year ago that similar accusations against Trump dominated the headlines, with more than a dozen women accusing Trump of improper conduct or sexual assault. Many of the accusations surfaced after the release of a 2005 tape of Trump speaking graphically about kissing and groping women uninvited.

During the second presidential debate, Anderson Cooper asked then-candidate Trump point blank whether he had “actually kiss[ed] women without consent or grope[d] women without consent?” Trump asserted that “nobody has more respect for women” and Cooper pushed him, asking, “Have you ever done those things?” Trump denied that he had, responding: “No, I have not.”

The president has held this line, telling the New York Times, when asked the same question: “I don’t do it. I don’t do it.”

But it’s not as simple as that. Many of the women have produced witnesses who say they heard about these incidents when they happened — long before Trump’s political aspirations were known. Three have produced at least two witnesses.

Such contemporaneous accounts are essential to establishing the credibility of the allegation because they reduce the chance that a person is making up a story for political purposes. In the case of sexual allegations, such accounts can help bolster the credibility of the “she said” side of the equation. Often, a sexual assault will occur behind closed doors. The contemporary corroborators can explain what they heard at the time and whether the story being told now is consistent with how the story was told years earlier. This does not necessarily mean an allegation is true, but it does give journalistic organizations more confidence to report on the allegation.

The Fact Checker first detailed some of the accusations against Trump during the 2016 campaign. That fact check also detailed the witnesses who backed up claims of sexual accusations against former president Bill Clinton — who, like Trump, insisted the women accusing him were not telling the truth.

Here’s a list of 13 women who have publicly come forward with claims that Trump had physically touched them inappropriately in some way, and the witnesses they provided. We did not include claims that were made only through Facebook posts or other social media, or in lawsuits that subsequently were withdrawn.

We also did not include the accounts of former beauty contestants who say Trump walked in on them when they were half nude because there were no allegations of touching. Trump had bragged on the Howard Stern show of his “inspections” during the pageants: “You know they’re standing there with no clothes. Is everybody OK? And you see these incredible looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that.”

Two or more contemporary corroborators

Natasha Stoynoff
Allegation: While she was interviewing Trump in 2005 for an article for People magazine about the first anniversary of his third marriage, Trump lured her into a room at Mar-a-Lago, forced her against a wall and abruptly kissed her, forcing his tongue into her mouth. He then said they were going to have an affair.

Corroborators: 
Marina Grasic, who has known Stoynoff for more than 25 years. She said she got a call from her friend the day after the alleged attack, detailing exactly how Trump pushed Stoynoff against a wall.
Liz McNeil, at the time a reporter for People (she is now an editor). She said that she heard about the incident the day after Stoynoff returned from her assignment. “She was very upset and told me how he shoved her against a wall,” she said.
Mary Green, another People reporter (now editor) who had just returned to New York. “In an early conversation we had in her office, she told me about what happened with Donald Trump,” Green said. “She was shaky, sitting at her desk, relaying that, ‘He took me to this other room, and when we stepped inside, he pushed me against a wall and stuck his tongue down my throat. Melania was upstairs and could have walked in at any time.’ ”
Liza Hamm, part of a “tight-knit’ group of friends. “Natasha has always been a vivacious person who wants to believe in the best of people, and this experience definitely messed with that outlook,” she said.
Paul McLaughlin, Stoynoff’s former journalism professor. He said Stoynoff called him at the time of the alleged incident seeking advice on how to handle it: “She didn’t know what to do, she was very conflicted, she was angry, she was really confused about how to deal with this.” After a discussion, he said, Stoynoff decided it would be best if she kept the incident to herself.

Response: Anthony Senecal, Trump’s former butler, denied the incident: “No, that never happened. Come on, that’s just bull crap.” Trump said: “Why didn’t she do this 12 years ago? She’s a liar. … It never happened. It’s a lie.”

 

Rachel Crooks
Allegation: Trump in 2005 kissed her directly on the lips after she introduced herself and said she was a receptionist who worked for a company that did business with Trump.

Corroborators: 
Brianne Webb, her sister. She said Crooks called her about the incident as soon as she returned to her desk. “Being from a town of 1,600 people, being naive, I was like, ‘Are you sure he didn’t just miss trying to kiss you on the cheek?’ She said, ‘No, he kissed me on the mouth.’ I was like, ‘That is not normal.’ ”
Clint Hackenburg, her boyfriend at the time. After he asked her that evening how her day had gone, “she paused for a second, and then started hysterically crying.”

Response: Shouting at the New York Times reporter who called for comment, Trump said, “None of this ever took place.” He then told the reporter, “You are a disgusting human being.”

 

Cathy Heller
Allegation: While having Mother’s Day brunch at Mar-a-Lago in 1997 or 1998, her mother-in-law introduced her to Trump. She extended her hand to greet him and he grabbed her and kissed her on the mouth. She did turn her head slightly and so he wasn’t able to “get my whole mouth.”

Corroborators:
Lloyd Heller, her husband. He said that she immediately told him. He said he told her that “you should have punched him” and he remembers being “puzzled” by why Trump would do something like that in a public space.
A relative who was there, but wanted to stay unnamed. This person said Heller was immediately shocked and asked whether he or she had seen what happened. The two then talked about the incident asking, “Who does he think he is?”

Response: Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller told People Magazine: “There is no way that something like this would have happened in a public place on Mother’s Day at Mr. Trump’s resort.” …More…

And then there is the list of children he had sexual relations with and paid millions to silence…

 

Red State – Blue State, And the Failure of Conservative Morals

Numbers shouldn’t be any surprise The sanctimonious red state Republicans lead the country in most moral failures.

I mean,a small sample this year so far –

Oklahoma Republican pleads guilty to child sex trafficking after getting caught with 17-year-old boy

‘More women are sexual predators than men’: South Carolina pastor blames ‘war on men’ to defend Roy Moore

Emails reveal Tony Perkins knew GOP lawmaker sexually assaulted teen — but kept it quiet

Trump-loving pastor stuns Joy Reid by blurting ‘morality’ is not a necessary qualification for leadership

Wife of top GOP lawyer is arrested after alleged parking-lot tryst with Fauquier inmate

G. Gordon Liddy’s son — Republican deputy AG — arrested for possession of child pornography

GOP state senator resigns after being charged with sexual assault of Uber driver

Rich Trump backer convicted of inaugural weekend sex abuse of hotel maids got wrist slap, tiny fine

Former GOP chief in Georgia indicted on 13 counts of child molestation for 55 years of abuse

Kansas City Republican  Rep. Huelskamp staffer arrested on charges with 17 counts of child sex crimes, including sexual exploitation of a child. 

 

Blue states practice the ‘family values’ that red states preach: new survey

The New York Times‘ Nicholas Kristof reported Saturday on the results of the annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which found that people living in so-called blue states have lower rates of teen pregnancy, divorce and prostitution than their counterparts in conservative states.

In a survey of 32 states, the states with the highest percentage of teens who are sexually active were Mississippi, Delaware, West Virginia, Alabama and Arkansas.

As Kristof noted, “All but Delaware voted Republican in the last presidential election.”

“Meanwhile,” he wrote, “the five states with the lowest proportion of high school students who have had sex were New York, California, Maryland, Nebraska and Connecticut. All but Nebraska voted Democratic.”

When teens from evangelical backgrounds have sex, they are less likely to use birth control or protection against STDs. Of the 10 states with the highest teen birth rates, nine voted Republican in 2016. Of the 10 states with the lowest teen birth rates, nine voted Democratic.

“The conservative hostility to premarital sex also sometimes leads to early weddings, even to child marriages,” said Kristof. “I wrote in May about the hundreds of thousands of child marriages in America, and of the dozen states with the highest rates of child marriage, all voted Republican in 2016.”

“Child marriage is happening at an alarming rate across the U.S., but available marriage-license data show more parents, judges and clerks in red states than in blue states seem comfortable with this human-rights abuse,” said Fraidy Reiss, an anti-child marriage activist who founded the nonprofit Unchained at Last.

Red state marriages are more likely to end in divorce, the survey found. Furthermore, rates of marital infidelity and prostitution are higher in conservative states.

“One large international survey found that the largest group of customers on Ashley Madison, the dating website for married people, were evangelical Christians,” said Kristof. “And a major 2013 study found that men in the Houston and Kansas City metro areas were the most likely to call sex ads, while men in San Francisco and Baltimore were the least likely to.”

Kristof said it’s important not to confuse causality and correlation, however. Conservative values don’t lead to higher rates of adultery and divorce. Christians and conservatives are more likely to marry young, end their educations after high school and are disproportionately poor, according to statistical analysis.

He concluded on a conciliatory note.

“So let’s drop the wars over family values,” he said. “Liberals and conservatives alike don’t want kids pregnant at 16, and we almost all seek committed marriages that last. It’s worth noting that Bible-thumping blowhards like Roy Moore don’t help achieve those values, while investments in education and family planning do.”

 

Rick Perry – “Fossil Fuels Prevent Rape”

The Chumph’s Energy Secretary is as dumb as a rcok…

 

Even worse – this new found desire to prevent sexual assaults is rather questionable…

 

Why Right Wingers Don’t Belong In Positions of Responsibility

It is a simple fact that you can’t punish your way out of a social,  or criminal situation.

If you could, there would be no crime in the world at all.

We have a situation in America where right wing types have reinstituted Debtors Prisons, and as the FBI Report on Ferguson, Missouri lays out, where the Judicial System is corrupted as a tool to drive racial punishment against the poor.

There are clowns like this Judge appointed every single day by the Chumph to our Federal Courts. This racist assh*le is probably on the Chumph’s short list.

“As a Mississippian with deep roots in this state that I love, I am deeply troubled by the many ways in which poor Mississippians, especially African Americans, are victimized by Mississippi’s legal system,” Johnson said. “We have litigated matters involving excessive bail, illegal jailing of misdemeanor offenders for unpaid fines and the refusal to provide poor criminal defendants with counsel, and now we see that not even the right to raise one’s children is beyond the reach of the injustice that befalls poor Mississippians.”

Mississippi judge resigns after barring mother from seeing her baby for 14 months over unpaid court fees

A Mississippi judge who barred a mother from seeing her newborn baby for 14 months because she hadn’t paid court-imposed fees has stepped down.

The Clarion-Ledger reports that Pearl Youth Court Judge John Shirley has resigned under pressure from local activists who decried his decision to impose a no-contact order on a resident of Jackson, Miss., who is identified in court documents only as “Mother A.”

The judge first issued the order after the woman and a friend, who were driving through the city of Pearl looking for work, were pulled over by a police officer who discovered both women had outstanding warrants for routine misdemeanor offenses. The police officer who made the arrest told the Mississippi Department of Human Services that the child who was in the car with the two women was “abandoned,” despite the fact that it was the officer’s own arrest that forced the child to be separated from the mother.

Judge Shirley awarded custody to the baby’s grandmother, while also blocking the mother from coming into contact with the child until she paid off court-imposed fees.

The Clarion-Ledger’s report does not say how much money the mother owed in court fees, however local legal justice advocates say that unpaid fees do not justify separating a mother from a four-month-old child for 14 months.

“As a civil rights lawyer in Mississippi, I am no stranger to injustice, but for a judge to prohibit an impoverished mother from having any contact with her baby until monetary payments are made is shocking and repugnant,” said Cliff Johnson, the director of the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law. “Such orders are tantamount to judicial kidnapping.”

 

The Chumph’s Private Thugs

Organized Chumph Thugs

Racist, Violent, Unpunished: A White Hate Group’s Campaign of Menace

They train to fight. They post their beatings online. And so far, they have little reason to fear the authorities.

It was about 10 a.m. on Aug. 12 when the melee erupted just north of Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia.

About two dozen white supremacists—many equipped with helmets and wooden shields—were battling with a handful of counter-protesters, most of them African American. One white man dove into the violence with particular zeal. Using his fists and feet, the man attacked one person after another.

The street fighter was in Virginia on that August morning for the “Unite the Right” rally, the largest public gathering of white supremacists in a generation, a chaotic and bloody event that would culminate, a few hours later, in the killing of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was there to protest the racist rally.

The violence in Charlottesville became national news. President Donald Trump’s response to it—he asserted there were “some very fine people on both sides” of the events that day—set off a wave of condemnations, from his allies as well as his critics.

But for many Americans, conservatives as well as liberals, there was shock and confusion at the sight of bands of white men bearing torches, chanting racist slogans and embracing the heroes of the Confederacy: Who were they? What are their numbers and aims?

There is, of course, no single answer. Some who were there that weekend in Charlottesville are hardened racists involved with long-running organizations like the League of the South. Many are fresh converts to white supremacist organizing, young people attracted to nativist and anti-Muslim ideas circulated on social media by leaders of the so-called alt-right, the newest branch of the white power movement. Some are paranoid characters thrilled to traffic in the symbols and coded language of vast global conspiracy theories. Others are sophisticated provocateurs who see the current political moment as a chance to push a “white agenda,” with angry positions on immigration, diversity and economic isolationism.

ProPublica spent weeks examining one distinctive group at the center of the violence in Charlottesville: an organization called the Rise Above Movement, one of whose members was the white man dispensing beatings near Emancipation Park Aug. 12.

The group, based in Southern California, claims more than 50 members and a singular purpose: physically attacking its ideological foes. RAM’s members spend weekends training in boxing and other martial arts, and they have boasted publicly of their violence during protests in Huntington Beach, San Bernardino and Berkeley. Many of the altercations have been captured on video, and its members are not hard to spot.

Indeed, ProPublica has identified the group’s core members and interviewed one of its leaders at length. The man in the Charlottesville attacks—filmed by a documentary crew working with ProPublica—is 24-year-old Ben Daley, who runs a Southern California tree-trimming business.

Many of the organization’s core members, including Daley, have serious criminal histories, according to interviews and a review of court records. Before joining RAM, several members spent time in jail or state prison on serious felony charges including assault, robbery, and gun and knife offenses. Daley did seven days in jail for carrying a concealed snub-nosed revolver. Another RAM member served a prison term for stabbing a Latino man five times in a 2009 gang assault.

“Fundamentally, RAM operates like an alt-right street-fighting club,” said Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

Despite their prior records, and open boasting of current violence, RAM has seemingly drawn little notice from law enforcement. Four episodes of violence documented by ProPublica resulted in only a single arrest—and in that case prosecutors declined to go forward. Law enforcement officials in the four cities—Charlottesville, Huntington Beach, San Bernardino and Berkeley—either would not comment about RAM or said they had too little evidence or too few resources to seriously investigate the group’s members.

In Virginia, two months after the deadly events in Charlottesville, Corinne Geller, a spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police, would not say if the police had identified RAM as a dangerous group.

“We’re not going to be releasing the names of the groups that we believe were present that day in Charlottesville,” she said. Investigators, she added, are still “reviewing footage” from the event.

Law enforcement has a mixed record when it comes to anticipating and confronting the challenge of white supremacist violence.

Often working undercover at great personal risk, federal investigators have successfully disrupted dozens of racist terror attacks. In the last year, agents have captured three Kansas men planning to bomb a mosque and an apartment complex inhabited largely by Somali immigrants, arrested a white supremacist in South Carolina as he plotted a “big scale” attack, and investigated a neo-Nazi cell that allegedly intended to blow up a nuclear power plant.

But there have also been failures. During the past five years, white supremacists, some of them members of gangs or organized political groups, have murdered at least 22 people, according to the Global Terrorism Database and news reports. And some government insiders say the intelligence services and federal law enforcement agencies have largely shifted their attention away from far-right threats in the years since 9/11, choosing instead to focus heavily on Islamic radicals, who are seen by some to pose a more immediate danger.

State and local police have struggled to respond effectively to the recent resurgence in racist political organizing. Police in Sacramento were caught unprepared in June 2016 when neo-Nazis and anti-fascist counter-protesters, or “antifa,” armed with knives and improvised weapons, clashed outside the California State Capitol during a rally. Ten people were sent to the hospital with stab wounds….more…

 

Every Element of the “Justice” System is Racially Biased

Most minor crimes in the US are “Plea Bargained” instead of prosecuted. Typically defendants admit to crimes, even if they are not guilty, because they can’t afford to defend themselves is cout due to the expense of lawyers.

This means that at any time, possibly as much as half the people accused of crimes…Didn’t do a damn thing and are “convicted” solely on their ability to pay for a defense.

That situation can be exacerbated by the severity of the crime Prosecutors decide tot charge them with. What the defendant is charged with lies largely on the whim of the Prosecutor.

Meaning different people get charged vastly different things for the exact same crime.

When Race Tips the Scales in Plea Bargaining

 New research finds that prosecutors give white defendants better deals than black defendants.

Two officers escorted a young black man into the courtroom, bringing him in handcuffs from a holding cell in the back called “the pen.” They placed him beside his public defender and stepped away. So far, things were routine.

The prosecutor had offered the man a plea deal of probation, and he indicated that he would accept. In a scene that plays out dozens of times a day in the Bronx Criminal Court, the judge ran through a constitutionally required script.

She explained what it means to accept a prosecutor’s plea offer: that he was giving up his right to a trial; he was admitting guilt; he could not change his mind. The judge asked, as she must: “Is anyone forcing you to accept this plea today?” At this point, most people quietly say “no.” But the man responded “yes,” he was being forced to accept the plea.

Refusing to accept meant facing the strong arm of prosecution and potentially going to prison for years. He protested that he had no real choice. Three court officers surrounded him. The judge repeated the question: “Is anyone forcing you to accept this plea today?”

This time, flanked by officers, he said no. A few minutes later, he walked out a free man, but he now had a criminal conviction and the oversight and constraints that come with probation.

Countless people like this young man face tremendous pressure to accept a prosecutor’s plea offer. And most criminal punishment results—not from a trial by a jury of your peers—but in convictions imposed through plea deals. Against this backdrop, a new study showing racial bias in the plea bargaining process demands attention and action.

A new study from Carlos Berdejó of Loyola Law School demonstrates for the first time that there are significant racial disparities in the plea deals white and black people receive on misdemeanor charges—with black people facing more severe punishments.

Berdejó analyzed 30,807 misdemeanor cases in Wisconsin over a seven-year period and found that white people facing misdemeanor charges were more than 74 percent more likely than black people to have all charges carrying potential prison time dropped, dismissed, or reduced. And white people with no criminal history were substantially more likely to have charges reduced than black people who had no criminal history.

This suggests, as Berdejó concludes in his report, that prosecutors use race to judge whether a person is likely to recidivate when deciding what plea to offer.

Prior studies have found racial disparities in the plea bargaining process. The Berdejó study differs, however, in that it analyzes a detailed statewide data set of the entire life of criminal cases, from charging to sentencing, making it more reliable and expansive.

The majority of arrests nationally are for misdemeanor charges. At The Bronx Defenders, where we provide public defense services to low-income people in the Bronx, New York, we had more than 18,000 new misdemeanor cases in 2016 alone. That was more than three-quarters of our cases, and about half of all cases that we closed last year resulted in plea deals.

If there are racial disparities in pleas in misdemeanor cases that lead to worse punishment of black people, it means a significant proportion of our criminal justice system is meting out punishment in a racially biased manner.

Prosecutors wield enormous power and total discretion in deciding whether and how to charge people, whether to request pre-trial detention or money bail, and what plea to offer. One factor guiding this decision is whether the attorney believes the person will be held on bail. Frequently, people charged with misdemeanors accept pleas just to go home.

A young black man from the South Bronx, one of the poorest congressional districts in the country, may have almost no chance of paying bail, so the only option is a criminal record and probation. Contrast that to a wealthier white man who knows that if the judge sets bail he can pay his way out. This man has no pressure to accept a plea, and his lawyer can investigate his case and negotiate a better plea.

Immediate interventions could stem racial disparities in pleas. New York must eliminate money bail for misdemeanors to end the threat of pretrial incarceration that disparately extracts guilty pleas. Prosecutors should state the reasons for plea offers on the record to create transparency and be required to collect and share data about their offers to expose any disparities. It is only through established facts and data that we can educate prosecutors and judges, as well as work to combat implicit and overt bias….

 

The American-American Arms Race

Up until the Chumph, walking around with guns at protest marches was almost exclusively the purview of white wingers. Unable to win an argument based either or the truth of their claims, or their ability to converse intelligently,, the right-white fell back into the KKK history and decided to tout guns at rallies to threaten “evil liberals” who always seemed to win an “argument”.

Portions of the white-right have always been synonymous with violence. Whether the KKK, white nationalist, neo-Nazi, or even some Militia groups – they have left a bloody path wherever they go across America.

Now that they have the full support of the Chumph and his racist lackey Jefferson Davis Sessions, they are emboldened, and the number of hate crimes, and level of domestic terrorism has risen exponentially. By trying to drive a wedge between legitimate Law Enforcement and brutal goons who murder and assault at will, the Chump has created a situation where the citizenry is les sure that the Police will actually be on the side of Law and Order. I think in all but a few areas of the country, that fear is a bit overblown.

However, the white right is spoiling for a fight -as seen with both the murder in Charlottesville, and the attempted murders in Gainesville a few days ago,

This does not bode well.

Left Wing Militia set to defend their communities…Because the Chumph and KKK Sessions won’t

Left-wing groups taking up guns in ‘arms race’ against Trump-backing right-wingers

Left-wing activists are taking up arms in response to increasingly bold actions by white supremacists and other right-wing extremists.

Membership in left-leaning gun groups has jumped under President Donald Trump, just as militia membership dramatically rose during his predecessor’s presidency, reported the New York Daily News.

The National African-American Gun Association added 500 new members within two days after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville left a counter-protester dead, and the group went from four chapters to 45 in the past year.

The national Liberal Gun Club has roughly doubled its paid membership since the election, to about 5,500, and the LGBTQ-oriented Pink Pistols groups also added members.

“It’s a way to assert our strength,” said Jake Allen, 27, who helped form the Pink Pistols. “Often, queer people are thought of as being weak, as being defenseless, and I think in many ways this pushes back against that, and I want white supremacists and neo-Nazis to know that queer people are taking steps necessary to protect themselves.”

Mark Bray, author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” and a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College, said leftists had gained a new perspective since Occupy Wall Street, and he said Trump’s election had emboldened right-wing hate groups.

“Back (during Occupy demonstrations) we were sitting in parks, twinkling our fingers and talking about economic inequality,” Bray said. “Now we’re talking about firearms and self-defense.”

Anti-fascist radicals, including the armed Redneck Revolt group, have clashed with right-wing extremists at public demonstrations around the country, but the trend away from nonviolent protest has worried some veteran activists.

“Is an arms race what we really want?” asked Scott Fearing, executive director of Rochester’s Out Alliance. “What we know in any arms race is that it’s never good for anybody, and death and destruction and harm and hurt can come when so many people have arms and weapons.”

 

“Trumpstank” May Turn Florida Blue

Anyone who is Hispanic and Republican is in deep shit right now. Republicans in Florida, a state they have managed to hold through voter suppression and razor thin margins…

Are about to become an extinct lower life form species.

That is what happens when a half million new Puerto Rican voters move to Florida because they have no electricity, food, housing, or water due to the Chumph”s racism.

This Trump as president crap show is about ready to finally come to a head as Republican electoral domination in the 2016 races are now looking at major risk.

In my state of Virginia, the Republican Gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie decide to court the Chump’s support…He is now 11 points down in a state where Republicans have been very competitive at the state level. If the chickenshit Democrats don’t do their usual f*&k up trying to be more conservative…Then they have an opportunity to take the Senate, and quite possibly the House.

Tossing Peanuts to the Brown Monkeys

GOP strategist warns: ‘Trumpstank’ could doom Republicans in Florida for years over Puerto Rico insults

Republican strategist Rick Wilson warned that President Donald Trump’s desultory response to the Puerto Rico hurricane was risking the party’s future in Florida for years to come.

As many as 100,000 Puerto Ricans have fled the crisis in the U.S. territory for the nearest state, and hundreds of thousands more American citizens from the island could join them there — possibly for good.

That could transform Florida in many ways, but it could very well end its position as a crucial swing state — especially if Trump follows through on his threat to pull FEMA, military and first responders from Puerto Rico.

“Set aside the WH/FEMA happy talk, and look at the numbers of new Puerto Rican voters in FL in six months,” Wilson tweeted. “They were already inclined to vote Dem. They were already coming here due to economic pressures.”

He warned Republicans to distance themselves from the president’s insulting treatment of Puerto Ricans or risk electoral disaster.

“The situation in P.R. is desperate and he’s adding insult to many injuries,” Wilson tweeted. “Good luck being a GOP candidate who has Trumpstank all over you running in the places they move to in FL. (And they’re mostly moving to FL)”

 Follow

Rick Wilson 

✔@TheRickWilson

Replying to @TheRickWilson

6/ Pretty simple rule: you don’t blame and insult the people who are victims of a natural disaster. Reap that whirlwind.

8:56 AM – Oct 12, 2017

The GOP strategist suggested Trump’s inadequate response might appeal to his racist base, but he said it could doom candidates trying to win a general election.

“And because he basically believes Puerto Ricans are Sea Mexicans and not American citizens,” Wilson tweeted, “he knows his base will think tossing paper towels is an adequate response to American citizens suffering desperate conditions.”

 

COINTELPRO Again…Session’s FBI Invents Black Radical Group

No black groups like BLM blowing up buildings, murdering white people randomly on the street, or murdering Cops? Armed white terrorist and racist groups filling the news with attacks?

Well…The FBI just went out and invented some.

Ex-counterterrorism officials express shock at FBI report labeling ‘black identity extremists’ as terrorist threats

The FBI recently issued a report claiming that so-called “black identity extremists” were a terrorist threat on par with the American white supremacist movement — and some former counterterrorism officials are claiming that the bureau is simply conjuring a threat from thin air.

Foreign Policy, which obtained the FBI’s report, writes that the FBI is blaming “alleged” acts of police brutality for inspiring a new wave of anti-police violence among many black activists, whom it identifies as “black identity extremists.”

“The FBI assesses it is very likely incidents of alleged police abuse against African Americans since then have continued to feed the resurgence in ideologically motivated, violent criminal activity within the BIE movement,” reads a portion of the report.

However, one former counterterrorism official tells Foreign Policy that the BIE “movement” is something that the FBI seems to have been made up whole cloth.

“This is a new umbrella designation that has no basis,” the official said. “There are civil rights and privacy issues all over this.”

Michael German, a former FBI agent and now a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s liberty and national security program, similarly said there was no concerted “BIE” movement, and that the FBI was simply creating a new term to link individual incidents of violence against police officers.

“Basically, it’s black people who scare them,” German said.

And former Department of Homeland Security analyst Daryl Johnson said, while he thinks there is some reason to be concerned about certain black separatist movements, it’s ridiculous to invent a completely new term for a movement that doesn’t exist, especially when it pales in comparison to the American white nationalist movement.

“When talking about white supremacists versus black supremacists, there are way more white supremacists,” he said.

Read the entire report at this link.

 

White Male Murderers…And the News

The MSM is busily spinning what a wonderful guy the Las Vegas mass murderer, Stephen Paddock was.

Having led a saintly life before somehow, inexplicably brilliantly planning and executing mass murder on a scale unseen in the US.

As if it isn’t bad enough to have a white, racist, low-IQ, narcissist POS as President, our new national hero is a white mass murderer.

Less than 12 hours after Paddock shot and killed dozens of people, a headline from The Washington Post focused on the fact that he “liked to gamble, listened to country music, lived quiet retired life.”

Isn’t it amazing how, even when an innocent, unarmed black man is shot dead by overactive cops…the story focuses on how the black man somehow deserved it because of some real or imagined negative aspects of their lives? Oh yeah! His history shows a disrespect for the law because he got 4 Parking Tickets over the last 20 years.

By contrast, some media coverage of Sandra Bland, a black woman who died in police custody in 2015, focused on her “prior run-ins with the law.”

And after Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen, was shot by police in 2014, the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown spread on social media as people of color wondered how the media would depict them if they were killed.

What’s more, after Sunday’s mass shooting in Las Vegas, at least one headline stated that Paddock “doesn’t fit [the] mass shooter profile,” noting his lack of a known criminal record.

Actually, Paddock precisely fits that profile. Most mass shooters and domestic terrorists in this country have been white, multiplestudies show.

The real terrorists in America are typically white middle aged males, who may or may not be associated with right wing hate groups,, but are always associated with white gun culture.

America’s white man problem: After Las Vegas, a familiar script unfolds

Now that we know the Vegas shooter was white, a reassuring narrative: He was a “lone wolf,” not a “terrorist”

As I watched the news unfold about the horrible mass shooting in Las Vegas during the late-night hours of Sunday and Monday, I said to myself, “Please God, don’t let these killers be black.” I doubt I was alone in such sentiments. In a country stuck in the grip of a white backlash and resurgent white supremacy, black and brown folks don’t need any further troubles.

As the initial news reports twisted and turned, I remembered how many initial reports about mass shootings are rife with inaccuracies, born of panic and chaos and the human desire to make sense of mayhem and murder. I then said to myself, “Please God, don’t let this killer be a Muslim.” I doubt I was alone in those sentiments. Muslim Americans are overwhelmingly a peaceful and law-abiding people. The challenges they face in America are already too great.

I had another fear as well. If the mass shooting in Las Vegas had been committed by a Muslim or a person of color, it might have presented an irresistible opportunity for Donald Trump — who is a racial authoritarian and (as I believe) a fascist — to expand his power. As historian Timothy Snyder has warned, Trump is waiting for his own “Reichstag Fire moment.” A terrorist attack on a major city could well provide that opportunity.

I breathed a sigh of relief when it was revealed by Las Vegas police that it was a white man who rained down death and pain into a crowd of concertgoers. I doubt I was alone in such a sentiment. His barbaric actions killed at least 58 people and wounded hundreds more.

Stephen Paddock is being humanized as a man who “liked to gamble,” “listened to country music” and “lived a quiet, retired life.” When white folks commit horrible crimes their actions are often placed in a context where they are described as “good people” and “all American.” This is all so “surprising” and “unimaginable,” we are told, because this person was so “ordinary.” By comparison, when black or brown folks or Muslims commit horrible crimes they are usually depicted as one-dimensional monsters.

There will be no “national conversation” about the connection between toxic (white) masculinity and American gun culture. In the mainstream news media and broader public discourse there certainly will be no discussion of the fact that white men are 31 percent of the population but commit 63 percent of mass shootings. Such a fact is forbidden or explosive, because it connects race, gender, guns and death.

The mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday night is the 273rd such event in America so far this year. It will not be the last. When the next mass shooting occurs I might just as well take this article and update it. The facts will likely not be much different. America is addicted to guns. The sickness will not be cured until, like an alcoholic or an opioid addict, the country admits it has hit rock bottom.

Whenever a white man commits an act of mass gun violence in America — politically motivated or otherwise — there is a cultural script that is closely followed by the mainstream news media, politicians and too many members of the public. This narrative is obvious and predictable. Alas, it provides some small measure of comfort to many, even if that familiarity is rooted in gross hypocrisy and flagrant contradictions.

Unlike the impulsiveness he has shown when Muslims are accused of committing a terrorist act, either in the United States or abroad, Donald Trump will be reserved and careful in his statements. The American news media will respond by observing that Trump has now magically become “presidential,” as if his sins could be washed away by a chattering class desperate to make the abnormal into something palatable and routine.

The National Rifle Association and the Republican politicians whom they own will default to irrational talking points: “Now is not the time to politicize a tragedy” or “It’s too early to talk about gun laws.” Gun manufacturers will see their stocks rise in value. America’s addiction to guns will continue unabated even as it kills tens of thousands of people a year. Somehow the gun fetishists like Bill O’Reilly will mouth such absurdities as “guns are the price of freedom” without soiling themselves from uncontrollable laughter.

The alleged shooter is a man named Stephen Paddock. He has been described as a “lone wolf.” The Las Vegas police have now offered up two new entries for America’s mass shooting lexicon: Paddock is a “sole perpetrator” and a “local individual.” He is not a “terrorist,” since that term is almost exclusively reserved for nebulous brown people.

 

White Right Manufacture Far Left “Killer” in Vegas

Fake News again from the white supremacist crowd, trying desperately to tie the despicable actions of the killer in Vegas to the left.

As of this time, there dosen’t appear to be any public information as to motive.

Didn’t prevent the Chumph’s lickspilltes from manufacturing a killer…And blame.

I am sure the Chumph, who doesn’t appear able to read – will be twitting this tonight.

Except it will probably be a “Muslim terrorist”… Because everybody knows Muslims hate Country Music…

Trump-loving Gateway Pundit blames innocent “far left” man for Las Vegas massacre

The far-right blog spreads fake news yet again

Stephen Paddock is the man local police have accused of shooting up a country music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday. In its haste to place the blame for the massacre, however, the far-right blog Gateway Pundit informed its readers otherwise.

Relying on unverified information posted on the internet, Gateway Pundit writer Joe Hoft wrote a post on Monday claiming that the shooter was “reportedly” Geary Danley, an Arkansas man who is not known to have been in the Las Vegas area.

In his article, Hoft — who describes himself as having “gained attention for his ability to accurately identify and predict outcomes before they take place — characterized Danley as “a far left loon,” citing his Facebook page which indicated he is a fan of various Democratic-oriented groups and television programs. After police officially named Paddock as the suspect, Hoft appears to have deleted his posting.

The “Politically Incorrect” web forums on 4chan and 8chan appear to have been the originators of the Danley rumors. Even after police officially announced that Paddock had been found dead in a hotel room overlooking the Route 91 Music Festival, the far-right discussion boards are still trying to falsely push Danley as the killer.

Hoft’s twin brother, Jim, is the owner of the Gateway Pundit. During the GOP presidential primaries, it became one of the few Republican-oriented websites that heavily promoted the candidacy of Donald Trump.

Since the former reality television star’s victory, it has remained staunchly loyal to Trump, repeatedly accusing mainstream media sources of being “fake news.” The administration has rewarded the Gateway Pundit for its sycophancy by giving it inside access to high-level White House staffers.

This is especially ironic since the Gateway Pundit has become infamous for spreading false stories, long before Trump decided to enter politics. Jim Hoft has become so ignominious for falling for hoaxes that left-leaning media commentators have longdubbed him the “dumbest man on the internet.”

While Joe Hoft deliberately spread unconfirmed rumors about the Route 91 massacre, it was not alone in spreading misinformation about Danley. The information processing algorithms that power Facebook were also promoting the false accusations against Danley.

According to Fast Company, Facebook’s “Safety Check” page which allows readers to discuss the event promoted a website called Alt-Right News which was smearing Danley. Far-right trolls have also been spreading a post from a parody anti-fascist page claiming that Paddock was a member of the left-wing “antifa” movement. Wayne Allyn Root, a local radio host known for his Trump love, immediately characterized the shooting as a “clearly coordinated Muslim terror attack.” He has been hyping ISIS claims of responsibility for the attack, not telling his Twitter followers that the terrorist group is known for lying in this regard.