ICE Thuggery In OUR Streets, What the Hell America

This is all you need to know: ICE thugs have gone back to killing people in the streets.

This happened in Houston last week (via Lekan Oyekanmi, Jack Brook, and Jeffrey Collins with AP News shared through PBS Newshour):

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who lived in the U.S. for decades, as the homebuilder drove his construction crew to a Houston job site.

His death set off protests in Texas' largest city and calls from Democrats and Salgado Araujo 's family for an independent investigation. The shooting on Tuesday in a heavily Hispanic neighborhood is at least the eighth death during the Trump administration's immigration enforcement campaign.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said federal officers were looking for someone else when they attempted to stop Salgado Araujo's vehicle. DHS said Salgado Araujo rammed an ICE vehicle and that an officer opened fire in self-defense.

Subsequent video releases of nearby surveillance cameras established that ICE and DHS agents are lying about the "self defense" part: none of them were in front of the van, they were the ones who pursued and attacked, and none of the agents endured any kind of harm.

This is who they killed: an innocent man going to work to feed his family.

Just a reminder: ICE and DHS under trump and Stephen Miller and every other racist MOFO in their administration are NOT going after "the worst of the worst," they're going after workers, families, innocent people many of whom are going through the legal process of immigrating to the U.S.

GODDAMN trump's THUGS.

And this just happened in Maine yesterday (via Patrick Whittle, Leah Willingham, and Jack Brook at AP News):

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot a motorist in Maine on Monday, the second time in a week that ICE has used deadly force and at least the ninth death since President Donald Trump began his immigration crackdown.

Immigrant rights groups identified the man who was killed in Biddeford as a 26-year-old native of Colombia. The Colombian Embassy said it was in contact with U.S. authorities about the Colombian national’s death and “is providing the necessary consular assistance to his family.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, said in a post on X that agents were surveilling an address for a person with a final order of removal from the country. When ICE tried to stop a vehicle driven by someone coming from that address, the “vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon,” the department said.

Prior to the brief ICE statement on the incident, Maine U.S. Sen. Angus King said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told him the officer opened fire after the man tried to use his vehicle as a weapon against ICE agents in Biddeford, a coastal city roughly 15 miles (24 kilometers) southwest of Portland. The agents involved didn’t have body cameras, he said...

Subsequent video releases of neighborhood witnesses established that ICE and DHS agents are lying about the "self defense" part: There is no evidence the driver was trying to ram anybody, and the ICE thugs kept shooting after the car stopped. It doesn't help that the victim's three year old daughter was in the car, caught in the crossfire and witnessing something no child should ever see.

You should also notice how these federal officers did not wear the mandated body cameras in both situations. All that money in their budgets, all these months of operations, and they're STILL claiming they can't afford them or buy any yet? Christ, you can buy them off Amazon and get them shipped to you two days minimum, shipped in a day if you pay extra for Prime service. They don't want to record the real damage they're inflicting on innocent lives, they don't want anything to contradict their hideous Narrative justifying their violence.

JFC, Homeland Security is lying out of their collective ass here.

NONE OF THIS IS ABOUT PUBLIC SAFETY. None of this is about going after the "worst of the worst." These racist fucksticks are going after workers, families, innocent people many of whom are going through the legal process of immigrating to the U.S.

GODDAMN trump's THUGS.

Abolish ICE. Murder, torture, and criminal conspiracy charges for the whole lot of them. Send them to the deep pit of Hell where the REAL Worst of the Worst deserve to go.

Blood on the Streets of Monterey Park

I woke up this morning to news about an Asian holiday - the Lunar New Year - getting disrupted by a gunman in Monterey Park, California overnight. Another goddamned mass shooting. At least 10 people dead (multiple wounded, so the numbers could get worse). Via NPR: 

A shooting in the city of Monterey Park, just outside of Los Angeles, has left 10 people dead and at least 10 others wounded. The attack came at the end of a day of celebration in the predominantly Asian American community in observance of the Lunar New Year. Authorities said the shooter remains at large.

Here's what we know:

The attack was at least the 33rd mass shooting in the U.S. this year — and the second in California in less than a week.

About 60,000 people — 65% of whom are of Asian descent — call Monterey Park home, according to Census estimates.

President Biden has been briefed on the shooting.

Authorities are investigating another scene in the nearby city of Alhambra.

Take a moment to look at that first stat: This is the 33rd mass shooting in the United States this year. WE ARE ONLY 22 DAYS INTO THE WESTERN CALENDAR. We are up to almost TWO MASS SHOOTINGS A DAY. We have become so jaded and worn down from gun-related deaths that we're utterly numb as a nation to this shit.

The attack focused on a large Asian community, signaling that this was racially motivated by Far Right factions hating on foreigners as part of their overall anti-immigrant mindset.

And given the high body count in just one setting, I'm willing to bet the weapon used was a military-grade assault rifle like the AR-15 (the chosen rifle for mass shooters across the USA). It is not a firearm meant for hunting wildlife, it is not a firearm meant for personal home defense. It is a firearm meant for war zones. Which is what the American landscape has turned into thanks to the Angry Guys With Guns community.

And again, nothing will get done.

There will be more mass shootings, because we're up to one per day, getting closer to doubling up, because this is how the goddamned National Rifle Body Count Association makes their money. 

And in the future, nothing will get done.

There will be more mass shootings, because we're up to one per day, getting closer to doubling up, because this is how the goddamned National Rifle Body Count Association makes their money. 

And another mass shooting, and another and another, and nothing will get done.

There will be more mass shootings, because we're up to one per day, getting closer to doubling up, because this is how the goddamned National Rifle Body Count Association makes their money.

And another... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

...

When are we going to have political leadership in the United States willing to step up and abolish the goddamned Second Amendment? We don't need militias anymore, and we've proven the PAST 40 YEARS THAT WE ARE NOT REGULATING FIREARMS IN ANY WAY. The Second Amendment has devolved from being "Empowerment for states to form and well-regulate their own militias" to "A goddamned license to kill anybody the Angry Guys want to kill."

There is blood on every American street, rising up on a tide of unrelenting hate and violence, and it is going to drown us all until we tell the goddamned gun nuts NO MORE.

As Chaos Reigns, More Blood In The Streets

There is chaos across the globe. Not just with the Pandemic, not just with nations wrapped in a decade's worth of civil wars, not just with the caging and pain of minority groups in both China and the United States...

There's a Category 4 Hurricane about to hit the coast of Louisiana, we're about to get another replay of 2005's Katrina, and it's not even in the top five stories tonight.

This weekend saw yet another Cop-on-Black shooting, this time in Kenosha Wisconsin, prompting a fresh round of protests because the cops are still abusing their power and still piling up a body count of unarmed victims.

Only this time, the cops in Kenosha allowed a number of Far Right white supremacists with their own firearms to show up and confront the Black Lives Matter protesters, and things got bloody. Via Adam Mahoney, Julia Wong, and Victoria Bekiempis in the Guardian:

Hours before a 17-year-old white man allegedly killed two people and injured a third at protests over a police shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a local militia group posted a call on Facebook: “Any patriots willing to take up arms and defend our city tonight from evil thugs?”

It’s not yet clear if Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teenager arrested on suspicion of murder after last night’s shootings in Kenosha, was among the people who responded to the call the militia group had posted, which was later featured on the conspiracy theory site InfoWars.

A Facebook account listed under Rittenhouse’s name included images of the young white man posting with a military-style rifle, as well as multiple posts expressing support for law enforcement.

It's been confirmed for years - Adam L. Silverman over at Balloon Juice has been writing about the Right-Wing terrorism that's been building in this nation since 2016 - that the Far Right militias have been spoiling for a fight, convinced they're at war with the librul commies and dark-skinned Others (encompassing Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, even Hindus and Greeks). The recent rash of law enforcement killings of unarmed Blacks has been their clarion call, and they've been rushing out to each protest eager to show off their AR-15 murdersticks.

Well, in Kenosha not only did the gun-toting wingnuts find protesters to threaten, they found a police force willing to look the other way regarding their efforts to destabilize peaceful protests... and worse. Back to the Guardian article:

Before the shooting, the presence of armed white men at the Black Lives Matter protests in Kenosha on Tuesday night prompted criticism from protesters – and some support from law enforcement.

In a widely circulating video from Tuesday night, Kenosha police can be heard thanking and tossing bottled water from an armored vehicle to what appear to be armed civilians walking the streets.

“We appreciate you being here,” an officer is heard saying over a loudspeaker.

But David Best, the county sheriff, told media outlets after the shooting that people patrolling the streets in Kenosha were a “like a vigilante group”, and said that the shooting was evidence of why suggestions to deputize citizens to help law enforcement contain the unrest in the city had been a bad idea.

YA THINK?!

It's like the local law enforcement still hasn't grasped the idea that the best way to keep protests peaceful is to reduce the presence of weapons and means of vandalism, rather than encouraging trigger-happy extremists who WANT to start a fight and earn their blood-stripes.

This incident is more evidence that our police forces across the United States are in bed with - or at least comfortable hanging out with - a Far Right group composed of racists and neo-Nazis who want to increase violence (even against the cops who are all so chummy with them).

The wingnuts are presenting every sign of wanting to go to literal civil war with everyone they hate in America. Even the guys in Homeland Security on trump's payroll tried to warn him and the Republican leadership. Here's how Betsy Swan at Politico reported it:

For Neumann, her nightmare scenario of globalized white supremacist terrorism was coming to life. Meanwhile, the U.S. government was doing far too little about its own homegrown extremists — often "lone wolves" radicalized online by white supremacist websites and fueled by hostility toward immigrants and minorities. But White House officials didn’t want to talk about the rising domestic extremist threat or even use the phrase “domestic terrorism.” The administration’s relentless, single-minded focus on immigration enforcement — coupled with nonstop turnover on the National Security Council — constantly pulled senior DHS leadership away from everything else. And her ultimate boss, President Donald Trump, was part of the problem...

Trump often expressed irritation when he saw the DHS secretary anywhere other than the border. Miles Taylor, who was Nielsen’s chief of staff, told POLITICO Trump used to lambaste her if she didn’t physically spend enough of her time there...

Early in Nielsen’s tenure as secretary, she and Taylor discussed the domestic terror threat at length. In the months before her confirmation, a far-right extremist named Jeremy Christian had murdered two men on a train after harassing two Black teenage girls. One of the girls wore a hijab, according to news reports, and Christian yelled “fuck Muslims” at them. Just days after Nielsen was confirmed, a man with a swastika marking on his leg murdered two students at a high school in New Mexico before killing himself.

“I said, ‘Look this is a pretty big deal right now, it’s getting serious, a lot of it’s racially motivated,’” Taylor recalled telling Nielsen. “‘I don’t think we are well positioned against it. We’ve got to do more, but it’s really got to start with the president.’”

At the time, then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster was overseeing the drafting of a new national counterterrorism strategy. The document would lay out priorities for using resources from across the U.S. government to combat terrorism.

Taylor wrote a “dream draft” emphasizing everything DHS would want from the strategy document — including a focus on domestic terrorist threats, along with threats from radical Islamist terrorism and other foreign actors. Four months after Nielsen started as DHS secretary, Trump replaced McMaster with John Bolton. The process of drafting the counterterrorism strategy continued under Bolton’s leadership.

“What ended up getting significantly dropped was all the stuff we talked about on domestic terrorism,” Taylor said. “We got a draft back from John Bolton that barely referenced domestic terrorism...”

Part of this is the Republicans' obsession against immigration - which is racially-tinged to begin with - blinding them to the problems of domestic violence, and a lot of this is the Republicans' refusal to clean their own house of Far Right extremism they rely on to keep their voting base happy. There is no other way to explain this inaction.

And it's this inaction that keeps ending up with more American blood spilling into our American streets. The wingnut in Kenosha left behind two dead and one severely wounded, and more than just that community torn apart by the escalation of hostilities.

This is not going to end well, not even if Biden wins this November.

And yet, we dare not let the gun-toting militia extremists win. Damn them. We have better things to live for than their goddamned rage and fear.

Blood on the Streets of Santa Fe Texas (w/Update)

So this Friday, at a time in the year of late May when high schools are wrapping up exams and kids are getting ready to graduate, go to summer work, plan for family vacations, all the things you do when you're growing up... some angry guy with a gun showed up in Santa Fe Texas (between Houston and Galveston) and ruined life for the entire community.

Goddammit, gun nuts.

Wanna know how bad the school shooting problem has gotten in the United States?

Watch this:

A video interview with one student, Paige Curry, spread across social media, an artifact of a moment when children have come to expect violence in their schools.

“Was there a part of you that was like, ‘This isn’t real, this is — this would not happen in my school?’” the reporter asked.

The young girl shook her head: “No, there wasn’t.”

“Why so?” the reporter asked.

“It’s been happening everywhere,” she said. “I felt — I’ve always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here, too.”

So immediately the gun nuts rose up to defend their pagan god of death - I am not joking, some nearby gun nut showed up with a big American flag and a piece strapped to his belt just to fucking pose for the cameras - to blame everything BUT the easy availability and access to military-grade rifles.

People blaming violent video games - the same games they play in Japan and Korea and Europe and everywhere else that doesn't have mass shooter incidents every other week.

People blaming social media - despite the fact that millions use Facebook and Instagram and AREN'T violent gun-toting assholes. And you wanna complain about your Second Amendment right to shoot anybody you want? Regulating social media will go against everyone's First Amendment right to share cat videos and podcast about lame episodes of Grey's Anatomy.

People blaming architecture - I SHIT YOU NOT - with the Lt. Governor of Texas openly claiming that schools shouldn't have so many entrances and exits, as though fire safety for buildings is an outdated concept... Not to mention the fact that if we did create just one way in or out of a school just makes it easier for shooters to bottleneck his victims at one location, great way to think that problem through, Mister Lt. Governor sir.

People blaming everything BUT THE ONE THING THAT TIES ALL MASS SHOOTINGS TOGETHER: THE GODDAMN GUNS.

Well, people should be blaming the one thing that is allowing all this gun violence to continue in our workplaces and gathering places and our homes.

Political cowardice.

Our elected leaders - cough Repubicans cough - are doing NOTHING except stand there offering "thoughts and prayers" because the goddamned NRA and other pro-gun lobbyists - all wonderfully financed by gun manufacturers profiting off each mass shooting like those incidents are free advertising - buy them off with campaign funds. Given a choice between doing the right thing and passing sensible gun safety laws that 80 PERCENT OF AMERICAN - gun owners included - are asking for, or kissing the ring of their lobbyist overlords... our Congress and our White House just sit back and pretend nothing is wrong until the next mass shooting.

It's been three months since Parkland, when the current mood of the nation towards guns has turned sour and angered, and despite all the promises by the likes of trump and Ryan and McConnell NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE in our halls of government to reduce the risk of gun violence the way a majority of us wish to be.

So here's the solution to gun violence in America, everybody. It's a very simple process.

1) Find out which elected officials and which candidates for office at the Federal and State and even County/City levels are getting campaign funds from the NRA. Since this is a 2018 Midterms for Congress and a lot of state offices, this should be easy to do.

2) MAKE GODDAMNED SURE YOU DO NOT VOTE FOR ANY CANDIDATE WHO RECEIVES NRA BLOOD MONEY. You might agree with that candidate on perhaps every other issue, BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD ANYONE IN THE NRA'S POCKET DESERVES TO GET KICKED OUT OF OFFICE NOW AND FOREVER. (considering the massive number of candidates in the NRA's pocket are Republicans, now might be a good time to remember my constant call to NEVER VOTE REPUBLICAN)

3) Make damned sure the officials you DO elect into office know the key reason they're there: YOU want effective and sensible gun safety laws - starting with Universal Gun Background Checks - passed as soon as possible (Day One would be nice).

This is on us, America. If anyone is going to save our schools, save our malls, save our concerts, save our movie theaters, save our public places, save ourselves it's going to be the voters. All of us need to stand up with this single purpose to stop gun violence. All else that is essential - our prosperity, our education, our economy, our happiness - flows from this single issue.

Get the vote out, America. Vote AGAINST the NRA. They made their choice, long ago. The NRA chose to worship their guns.

WE need to choose now to protect our families and our friends and our communities from their false idols.

Update: As always, Jim Wright at Stonekettle Station brings the big hammer to the argument, going after the cowards who refuse honest responsibility for gun control. Read every word, and add Stonekettle to your blogs worth following.

Bad News From Florida: Blood On the Streets Of Parkland

I started writing my good news article today this morning.

I just got the word this afternoon about Parkland.

Jesus Christ no.

I lived there, back when I worked in Broward County Libraries. Not exactly in Parkland, but in Tamarac for a few years, then Coconut Creek. I know the neighborhoods, I know those communities.

Jesus Christ.

17 dead.

All because of one angry guy with a military-grade assault rifle.

All because the National Body Count Association owns most of the elected Republicans between here to Alaska. All because the National "Our Guns Matter More Than Your Kids" Association will throw another hissy fit if any sensible gun safety laws even gets mentioned on the floor of Congress.

All because the only thing our elected officials will do is "send thoughts and prayers" as though the last 180,000 times hadn't worked.

We have a national gun death rate comparable to a war zone. We're racking up more kills than the Syrian Civil War this year. I might not even be exaggerating.

We will keep seeing our schools and churches and malls and movie theaters and concert events used for target practice until we do one of two things: Get rid of angry guys or get rid of military-grade assault rifles that make it too goddamn easy to kill.

The First Amendment Is Dead Along With All the Dead in Our Churches and Schools

Here's the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Anybody notice where the National Rifle Body Count Association creates a conflict here?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

We can no longer practice our faith in this nation because our churches are getting shot up. Congress - thanks to their gun lobby overlords - refuses to do anything to regulate gun ownership to ensure our churches don't turn into target practice. By inaction, Congress is interfering with our First Amendment rights to go to church.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

We can no longer as a People assemble peaceably. We can no longer go to movies, or shopping malls, or church services, or schools, or even more church services, or nightclubs, or Sikh religious services, or workplaces, or country music concerts, or baseball games, or public rallies, or anywhere at all because we live under the threat of an Angry Guy with guns just showing and opening fire with military-grade rifles with high-capacity ammo clips that can wipe out 200 to 500 people in a matter of minutes.

For God's sake. EVEN THE AMISH GET SHOT AT.

All because the National Everybody Else Gets Shot Association has the gun as their Golden Calf, and their profit margins as their Holy Scripture.

We can never be safe in public. We can never go to school or church or work without the nagging dread that we will get killed because an Angry Guy with enough firepower to kill hundreds in a single minute gets to express his rage and his bloodlust.

The First Amendment is dead. Shot to death on the streets of America by a Second Amendment that no longer has any merit or value to us.

You wanna know how to stop the next mass shooting, America? If we can't set up gun laws to perform universal background checks as 80 PERCENT OF US WANT DONE, if we can't set up gun laws to limit the size of ammo clips to reduce the number a single gunman can fire within seconds, if we can't pass legislation to limit ownership of military-level assault rifles that serve no other purpose than to clear out entire buildings within a minute?

Here's how we stop the next mass shooting:

Stay home.

Stop going to school. Stop going to church. Stop going out in public to shop, or attend concerts, or view movies. Close down the stock markets. Stop going to work.

Stay home.

Don't give Angry Guys with Guns any targets to shoot at.

Sure. We're killing off the entire economy if we do this.

But if it means ending the gun manufacturers' profits and bankrupting the NRA, so be it.

There is nothing else we can do. The First Amendment is Dead, why should we try to adhere to its principles of peaceful gatherings in public?

Blood On the Streets of Las Vegas

Here's a simple thing for the mainstream media to do:

Every mass shooting committed by angry white guys should be labeled terrorism.

Because that's what it is. Evoking fear in the victims and survivors.

And the media should pointedly do it for every angry White guy, to underscore that it's not Muslims, not Blacks, not Asians, not Latinos that's the threat here.

It's Angry Guys. Nearly every mass shooter is male, coping with emotional issues of some kind that expresses as rage towards women or towards a society that's supposed to applaud their masculinity but ignores them.

How many domestic violence episodes ends with the angry ex-boyfriend or ex-husband with a family massacre? Too many to count. How many office shootings with a disgruntled male employee pissed off that cute secretary won't return his calls?

How many schools shot up by guys who can't socialize well? How many nightclubs by guys who can't handle gender roles or identity?

The NRA keeps saying "oh no, we have a RIGHT to bear firearms" but at the expense of allowing so many Angry Guys easy access to them?

It'd be nice to think we could do something about the Angry Guys. But let's be honest, 5000 plus years of religion and morality haven't cut it. Anger is a primal emotion, hard to control.

We have to do something about the easy access to firearms. Do we really need that kind of firepower the gunman in Las Vegas just unleashed to uphold an antiquated Second Amendment? That terrorist fired for 4 minutes, killed 50 (so far) and wounded 200 people who were no threat to anybody. That's not self-defense. That's not performing the duty of a well-regulated militia. That's murder and terror.

And it's not going to stop until the NRA stops being paranoid fearmongers trying to convince more people to buy more guns and ammo. It's a hell of a racket, considering the kickbacks they get thanks to owning most of not all of the gun manufacturers.

How many more Angry Guys with Guns will it take before Reason reclaims control of governance?

Waking Up To Troubling News In Orlando

There's been another shooting.

A gunman attacked an Orlando nightclub - about a 90-minute drive away - between 2 to 5 am this Saturday night. Called the Pulse, it was a place that was hosting around 230 people, a busy night...

So far, 20 people dead at least. The gunman was killed when the police determined the situation was going to get worse. There are tens more people at the local hospitals with serious injuries.

The gunman had at least one assault rifle, one handgun, and reportedly an explosive device - a bomb vest? - which is making the authorities think it's a terror attack. There's still a lot they don't know, so this is all conjecture until they can find more evidence.

This is horrifying. Hundreds of people gathered for a night of celebrating, sharing with friends, getting out and feeling alive... and some of them aren't alive anymore. Many of them coming back are stunned, scarred...

All because of an angry guy with guns. Regardless his motivation, his politics, his religion... it takes rage to make a person do this, to strike out with an act of violence on this scale.

We just had another tragic shooting in Orlando the day before. A singer, a minor celebrity - a popular contestant from the TV show "The Voice", Christina Grimmie - was shot by a stalker who hunted her across the state (edited for earlier factual errors, I originally listed him as an ex, my bad) while she was giving autographs.

The two shootings are unrelated. It's not like Grimmie's shooter knew the guy who shot up the Pulse. But they're practically the same because they echo each other: Angry Guy + Easy Access to Guns = Shootings.

Doesn't matter if each shooting left one dead or tenscore dead, the result is the same. People who were alive a minute ago are dead now. All because of anger. All because someone had access to firearms and wanted to play Death God to satisfy their rage.

Update: I'm finding out the nightclub is a well-known LGBT hangout, and there's something on Twitter about it being "Latin night", which sounds like a mixture of some of the more inflammatory culture war issues bouncing around our election cycle right now. Dammit.

Update 2:40 PM: The latest is that the number of dead went up - the injured not surviving their wounds - to 50 as of now, which officially makes this the worst mass shooting in American history.

Worse than Columbine. Worse than Virginia Tech. Worse than Sandy Hook. Worse than 100,000 other mass shootings we have in this nation because a small minority of gun owners prefer worshiping death over the safety of millions.

Dear God.

Update 3:05 PM: President Obama's remarks.

I am not about to add a link to anything Donald Trump has to say about it. His Twitter feed has him crowing about this.

Yet Another Shooting Because an Insane Gun-Worship Faction Are Killing Us One Mass Murder At a Time

Yet another shooting.

The facts are these:

Three assholes armed to the teeth and reportedly wearing masks and body armor strolled into a community center in San Bernardino California, opened fire with their guns, killing up to 14 people at the moment with more wounded, and drove off with intent to get away with it. The local police were able to locate where they tried to hide and they were caught in a shootout, with about two of the gunmen dead and one fleeing on foot. This situation is not over.

The location targeted is the Inland Regional Center, a community agency that teaches and cares for people and children with disabilities. This is akin to a school, a college campus, a church, a place of selfless activity filled with people WHO DID NOT DESERVE TO GET SHOT AT.

This is essentially the 355th mass shooting (where four or more people are shot at one time) we've had in the United States. We had another mass shooting in Savannah Georgia and the nation hasn't even paid attention to THAT because the body count's too low.

Our body count from mass shootings rivals that of nations caught in civil wars.

Mass number of guns DO NOT MAKE US SAFER. We've got the highest gun-to-resident ratio on the planet, and having all these guns have not made us safe. All these guns have made us easier targets.

The common links between all these shootings are simple to identify.

We make it too goddamned easy for assholes to buy/procure guns.

Nearly every mass shooting involved at least one man - more often than not white - with anger management issues.

To quote Rude Pundit:

The Rude Pundit has said before and he'll say again: It's never just the assailants. It's always the guns. Already, we're seeing the appalling piglets of the right tell anyone who dares to insist that it's the guns to sit down and shut up and not "politicize" this latest float in our unending parade of horrors. As if silence isn't a political act. As if the very people who called for banning Syrian refugees before the bodies were cold in Paris have any goddamned right to tell anyone to not talk politics. As if the NRA, which makes money on the corpses of the victims of mass shootings, deserves anything more than being spit on. They fear politicizing because policy may come from it...

...This country has allowed ludicrous and evil and demonstrably wrong people and ideas to be passed off as legitimate. We give people a forum to say unbelievable bullshit, like that expanded background checks will lead to tyranny and gun confiscation. At some point, we are allowed to assert that some things are not worthy of discussion and that some people and organizations deserve only contempt, derision, and isolation. We can turn people into pariahs. We are allowed to do that. The CNN anchor, reacting to the shooting a few minutes ago, kept saying, over and over, that it was sad and "ridiculous." She's right. Now, how about the next time some Republican politician talks about how we need to do more about the "mentally-ill" (which is something they won't do) and not limit gun purchases, she shuts them down and throws them off the show? What if she says that it's an unacceptable position to not do anything about guns?

We do not have to tolerate the intolerable. We have chosen to tolerate it. We have chosen to pretend as if the extremists who demand no regulation of guns have a valid point of view. We should be politicizing every shooting even more. We should be asking our politicians how they can dare not do something to help a nation afflicted with bullets.

If there will ever be a tipping point on guns, it will only happen when we say that disgusting acts are aided and abetted by disgusting people with disgusting beliefs. It will only happen when we treat the disgusting people with the disgust they deserve.

He's right.

The NRA should not be treated as a legitimate organization. They are not speaking to the facts NOR the truth. They have a financial incentive - many NRA leaders OWN companies that manufacture firearms - to promote fear-mongering and frenzied ammo stockpiling. The NRA and other gun-worship enablers have a political incentive to "win" the issue on guns otherwise they look weak to their followers.

The NRA are no longer about rifles. They haven't been responsible about firearms for 40 years. They are the National Murder Association now, and have been. Their organization is now about murder, and how THEY can profit from it. They are about the worship of metal pieces of weaponry that stand as their golden calf, which gives them millions of dollars while thousands of US die for their un-Christian sacrifice.

To hell with the NRA and their fear-mongering allies. THEY ARE AT WAR WITH THE REST OF THE UNITED STATES and we need to recognize that fact.

Yet Another Act of Terror In the USA: Home Grown, Targeted Against Women, And Not At All Surprising

I'm personally busy this weekend coping with getting the 50,000 word count to NaNoWriMo, so all apologies I can't really write more than this, but here goes.

Today, there was YET ANOTHER SHOOTING.

This time at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.

This time, there were police present and the gunman still went up and shot them, wounding four (or five) of them. Current reports is that one police officer has died. There are two dead out of eleven wounded.

The gunman was taken alive. Photo evidence is that the gunman is a white middle-aged man.

I file this under "Why I Am Not Surprised" category.

I am not surprised the terrorist is a white man over a certain age who is likely failing at anger management.

I am not surprised the target was a Planned Parenthood clinic. There is a literal war on women being waged by the Religious Right in our United States, and the fight over Planned Parenthood is part of it (you might be surprised to learn there's been arson attacks and other threats to clinics the last three months. The major news outlets don't report them as much nor make the direct connections.)

I am not surprised that the arguments and excuses of the NRA about "oh we need more people with guns to keep us safe" are meaningless. There were armed police there and this gun-wielding terrorist showed up and still opened fire and people still got wounded and killed. How many more "good guys with guns" could have stopped this?

I will not be surprised when the Far Right - the media outlets, the political leaders, their Presidential candidates, all who spent all these months and years attacking Planned Parenthood and pretty much calling on acts of violence like this - turns this around and blames Obama for being evil, or blames women for being baby killers, or blames the cops for defending the clinic instead of arresting those baby killers, or blames libruls for "politicizing" all this. At no time will the Far Right actually stop and go "oh crap, we're promoting violence and killing people in violation of our supposed Christian teachings."

I am not surprised anymore. Because this sh-t will keep happening. Because one side of the political aisle - Republicans and their Far Right members - profits from this violence and madness.

Don't be at all surprised we'll have another mass shooting soon, over something that angers some white guy or group of white guys with guns.

After all, we just had a group of angry white guys attempt a mass shooting over something political that pissed them off just three days ago. THREE DAYS AGO.

So set the clocks. In three days, another mass shooting. Another angry white guy with a gun. Another political argument the haters are resolving through bloodshed and death.