C’mon Charlotte, we’re better than this.
Burning things down won’t undo the shooting, won’t bring Keith Scott back to his family, and won’t make things any better for any of the rest of us. We desperately need calmer heads to prevail, and an actual dialogue to start AND BE MAINTAINED.
Yes, it’s hard. No, it’s not fair. But it must happen or nothing will be solved.
The necrotic dumpster fire that was the Republican National Convention is finally over, and it was every bit as bad as I had imagined it would be. There’s plenty I could say in response to both the party and the gibbering buffoon representing them, but for now I’ll outsource this to Jon Stewart:
The GOP doesn’t just need to be defeated in November; that would be letting them off too lightly. They need to be DESTROYED.
Another day, another mass shooting.
Rather than play another round of White Terrorist Bingo, I’ll just say that President Obama speaks for me on the subject:
The events of the last few days in Charleston and the media reactions to them are so depressing, so infuriating, so absolutely WTF mind-boggling, that I am beginning to wonder if our so-called “cold” Civil War II* is a misnomer. It is no surprise, of course, that a certain entertainment channel (in the sense that screaming OOGA BOOGA BOOGA at white people all day long counts as entertainment) could gleefully find a way to simultaneously condemn the shooter for being “evil” AND pirouette away like a Mirror Universe Fred Astaire from the true motivation of that evil. That’s par for the course for them. No, what has made a definitive mark this time is the degree to which ALL of the “mainstream” press has contorted themselves to avoid the truth, something so obvious no one with more than a few functioning brain cells could miss it.
THIS WAS A RACIALLY-MOTIVATED ACT OF DOMESTIC TERRORISM. PERIOD.
So do me and the rest of Sentient America a favor.
Stop running and face the problem.
No more White Shooter Bingo:
No more tear-soaked statements of bewilderment over not knowing what causes this when the shooter CLEARLY EXPLAINED EXACTLY WHY HE DID WHAT HE DID. (Also, doing so with the traitorous, treasonous flag flying over your capitol grounds – seriously, enough already.)
No more blaming mental illness for the shooter’s actions – the mentally ill have enough to deal with in this country without getting dragged into domestic terrorism attacks. Unless you consider ISIS/ISIL/whoever mentally ill too, just STFU about this.
No more pivoting from the victims (if you even acknowledge them at all) to musing about whether the “black community” will “act out” over acts like this. Ever hear of lynchings of black people in response to real (or more often, imagined) crimes? Here’s a hint: THAT was acting out.
NO. MORE.
No more “but but but what about BLACK ON BLACK CRIME? What about Baltimore?” (Let me tell you about Baltimore – any cop that espouses the view that there is only one choice – either to let them do whatever the hell they want without accountability or reproach, without being subject to the laws that they are enforcing/departmental policies OR standing back and not doing their jobs, then they need to be doing something else – ANYTHING ELSE – for a living.)
No more victim blaming. That’s right, victim blaming. If you’re stupid enough to say that a victim should have been in favor of allowing members to carry handguns IN A CHURCH in response to a massacre inside A CHURCH, you should really stop talking.
There are some serious problems here, and if they are not addressed, in the end, NOBODY WINS.
Ridiculously late in getting to this, but I’ve been laughing too hard to type:
Republican State Representative Vito Barbieri from the state of Idaho thinks that a woman’s vagina has some sort of direct passageway to her stomach because, I mean, how else does the pee come out?
This rather impressive display of anatomical ignorance (h/t Salon) came during a Idaho House State Affairs Committee hearing where the members heard testimony on a bill that “would ban doctors from prescribing abortion-inducing medication through telemedicine.”
Barbieri asked whether it would be possible for a woman to swallow a small camera, so that doctors might perform a remote gynecological examination (presumably, à la capsule endoscopy).
Dr Julie Madsen was testifying in opposition to the bill when Barbieri asked the question. Madsen replied that would be impossible because swallowed pills do not end up in the vagina.
“Fascinating. That makes sense,” Barbieri said, amid the crowd’s laughter.
FASCINATING???!? Negative.
This dunce probably thinks “Fantastic Voyage” was a documentary, too.
(h/t io9 and Jezebel)
My Ready Room 