zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — IMO, these paired mass casualty shootings call for mass humility on both sides of the divide — let’s build a corpus callosum for the nation ]
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Let’s just do this with headlines, the El Paso shooter above, the Dayton shooter below:

The moral would appear to be: no matter what “side” you’re on, there may be some folk who take it to an extremist extreme. They may kill for ideas on “your side” — at least in contemporary American politics. I tend to the left, so Crusius is no surprise, but Connor Betts, WTF?

ANd you’ll tell me it’s the opposite way around for some of you — WTF are Crusius and others like him doing?

And BTW, DoubleQuote!

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Okay — Connor Betts:

The Dayton shooting was the 250th mass shooting “event” in the US this year, but its exact motivation is unclear at the time of this writing — the shooter, Connor Betts, who was wearing a bullet-proof vest, killed his sister among others, and had written a “hit list” of girls while at High School at one point — so school issues and family feud are among the possible explanations for his violence, which killed 9 in 26 seconds before he was taken down by police. He was far from a Breivik follower, however. His Twitter page revealed, as reported by Heavy:

Or quoting Heavy again —

[H]e described himself as “he/him / anime fan / metalhead / leftist / i’m going to hell and i’m not coming back.” He wrote on Twitter that he would happily vote for Democrat Elizabeth Warren, praised Satan, was upset about the 2016 presidential election results, and added, “I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding.”

That’s pretty aggressively [is that the word?] left and male, eh?

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Sources:

Heavy, Patrick Crusius: Suspect’s Twitter Page Shows Trump Support

Heavy, Connor Betts: Twitter Posts on Being a Leftist, Guns

Readings:

Politico, What Both Sides Don’t Get About American Gun Culture

The Hill, Graham to offer bipartisan ‘red flag’ bill with Trump’s support [added]

[ by Charles Cameron — my laptop keyboard is malfunctioning — my fault — but thanks to MS on-screen keyboard, I’m able to post here ]
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How’s this for a DoubleQuote?

I thought I was getting a wee bit tired of screen-grabs from items in my FB, Twitter and newsfeeds, but this one caught me by surprise — too good to miss!

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And then there were others:

Alex Jones admitting to psychosis as the explanation for his — extremely profitable, until Twitter banned him this week — conspiracy theories, when his earlier excuse was that he was an entertainer, just kidding.. that too was striking and worth capture.

Firing squad was one of those five-star ***** instances that I’d want to include in any definitive collection of best war metaphors..

And a few more:

That last screen-grab, as you’d have learned from the sound-track, features three inset images for three black churches burned..

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This one’s important:

Designating a state actor a terrorist organization goes against most definitions of terrorism, which apply the term to non-state actions only, thereby making the compilation of stats for all sorts of comparative purposes, an already difficult task, even more troublesome — for an excellent overview by the leading authority on terrorism definition, see Alex Schmid, The Revised Academic Consensus Definition of Terrorism

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L’affaire Nielsen:

Neal Katyal, who wrote the Special Counsel rules:

Then there’s

President Trump:

Get rid of judges ..
Say.. say, Judge, I an’t do it ..

Then:

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Hardball:

Chris Matthews:

He comes off as a football owner who keeps changing managers .. or coaches

Eating their own..

You start shooting at your allies because one of them is straying..

And:

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All In:

You’re Fired!

Chris Hayes:

One big part of the reason that Donald Trump is our President is because a good number of people believe that the TV character Donald Trump was a real thing, thanks to the years he spent on national TV on our parent network of course, building up a reputation as a successful, self-made tough tycoon, not afraid to make the tough calls when the tough calls needed calling..

Most of us now know that the reality show Trump is not quite the reality we got. And as we saw yet again today, when it came time to deploy that famous tag-line, there seems to be some stage-fright ..

There has been so much turnover in just over two years of the Trump administration that the Washington Post was compelled to produce this graphic, which looks like a game of chutes, ladders, and people who will never get their reputations back:

It’s been 01 day since a high-profile departure from the Trump administration

And so forth..

m 55 Michelle Goldberg:The conventional language of American politics are just not up to describing ..

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Rachel Maddow:

Quite a DoubleQuote, Rachel!

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And from Velshi, 4/9/2019:

— a sequence on what Trump has offered at the altar of Netanyahu, to help with his election:

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BTW, FB:

I think that does it.net

[ by Charles Cameron — it seems particularly sad to “left-leaning” me ]
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I don’t really fit left or right, but as a near-“non” where it comes to violence, I’m particularly saddened by this:

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Given my quasi-Mennonite sympathies, and even thought it may be irrational in the final analysis, I’d be less saddened if the “sides” were reversed…

Source:

WaPo, Black-clad antifa members attack peaceful right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley

[ by Charles Cameron — just listen to Sister Rosetta ]
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I don’t care whoe is beating up whom, or who for that matter. Just stop.

INTELWIRE DAILY BRIEF is out! https://t.co/9BRrWoTGfm and https://t.co/sikQP4BTcZ Stories via @Levitt_Matt

— J.M. Berger (@intelwire) July 4, 2017

Kahane-inspired Lehava group in Israel carries out multiple attacks on Palestinians, Police criticizedhttps://t.co/EpzNELx4W2

— C. Anzalone (@IbnSiqilli) July 2, 2017

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Sister Rosetta Tharpe:

[ by Charles Cameron — first of two posts ]
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Our friend Scott just observed:

This blog has been getting a little partisan since November…can we go back to being a little more objective?

Here’s the first of two posts in an initial attempt at balance, one from myself and one from Zen, both about today’s Comey testimony.

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Was this the day a boil burst?
‘

Was this the day a boil burst on the neck of universe?
Universe is too large,
even solar system exaggerates,
Jove Pater may be keeping a paternal eye on us,
there may even be villages in New Guinea
where John Frum is the news topic of the day,
but as Dan Rather just said of Comey’s testimony,
This scene is going to be written about fifty, a hundred,
two hundred years from now; there’s something
Shakespearean about it, in more current terms,
House of Cards..

My mind drifted from the Comey hearings,
and came back, I wondered where it had gone, given
the intensity of the moment,
volcanic maybe, though all moments
have seemingly a sort of priority in their own times
like a balcony in Escher bulging because,
well, because he’s seeing it, making it his focus..
My mind must have wandered,
that’s the metaphor, down to the banks of Lethe,
dipped in, gotten ah somehow baptized,
deep baptized,
so that Lethe, the banks of Lethe,
the steps leading down to the banks of Lethe
all vanished, all submerged,
gone down into oblivion, known
only because once there was mind on Comey
and I woke to mind gone.

Pure Buddhism, pure any meditative practice..
Mind here, gone,
and meanwhile the volcano,
Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, boil,
has burst,
spewed forth evidence Mueller
like a small planetary Jove Pater can work with
in his own moments volcanic —
just an American,
or not quite only an American Jove Pater —
manwhile, Trump ever Mercurial,
Comey stellar..

Speaking of stars, whoah!
Catastrophe,
meaning literally: a downward-turning of the stars.