Yeah, you don’t read my novels…er…posts, do ya, IR? LOL

The certitude with which you ply your half-truths would be disconcerting if such a trade in misinformation weren’t so commonplace.

You have NO PROOF that Omar Mateen was radicalized in Saudi Arabia. None whatsoever. You are clinging to that desperately because that fulfills your world view.

Brown muslim killed people…cuz…ISLAM. That fits.

That other stuff? Yeah, that’s too complicated…

The problem is that life is complicated and it doesn’t get less complicated when folks just ignore how complicated it is and act like they can make it simpler.

“We’re just gonna go in, overthrow Saddam and be greeted as liberators. Take a week. Two tops.”

Except…Iraq was a complicated mix of Shia and Sunni kept together by a secular dicator. And we saw how that’s turned out…

Over and over again we see this tendency to want to oversimplify as if the Cliff Notes version of Life, The Universe and Everything were more virtuous in any way than the unabridged version.

It isn’t.

If it helps you, NO ONE understands it all. NO ONE. And anyone who pretends to is outright lying.

But this whole, “it’s simple. he did this. he went there. he got radicalized. Done” thing…

yeah. That’s just wrong. Now you can do the AR-15 thing and show me his boarding pass to Saudi Arabia and tell me which seat he sat in on the plane and 1000 other details which have NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with him not being radicalized in Saudi Arabia (cuz he wasn’t) and him not being a jihadi (cuz he wasn’t). You can do that if you want, but I’m just gonna roll my eyes and focus on what mattered.

Omar Mateen was NOT radicalized. I’m not saying he never heard a radical word. Let’s not do THAT thing. I’m saying he wasn’t radicalized.

As details emerge, we’ll get a better picture about him and if he had any partners if they’ll come forward. That first guy if there is one will pretty much slam the door on any radicalization. In case you were wondering.

Do not care about gun porn.

Don’t care about the AR-15. Not that guns can’t look sexy… The Thor XM-408 is pretty snazzy. With the Cheytac .408 ammo, that bad boy’s about the longest, most accurate platform on the playground. I’d say metaphorically speaking, but in today’s age, who knows. Thing is the Thor XM-408 is a sniper rifle, heavy (not nearly as heavy as that beast Barrett .50 cal), but it ain’t light, neither.

Point being it’s not about heading into the weeds about pre-ban, ban or post ban.

The point was RTC doesn’t diminish crime. And we have 10 years of data that proves it.

Then again, we have 40 straight years that Trickle Down/Supply Side economics doesn’t work and we’ve kept doubling down so much on that that the richest 28 Americans own as much as the bottom HALF of all Americans.

So I guess we have at least 30 more years of killing ourselves before we learn because as Bill Maher puts it, “Americans are stupid”. Or maybe we learn sooner.

Nah.

The tone deafness…it burns….

It’s late. Tomorrow maybe…

I call the gun people’s bluff.

Pull the guns and let’s see what happens. Let people go on “stabbing rampages” and we’ll see what the deal is. Not that I want that to happen, but I don’t think we’ll be seeing the kinds of devastation we see regularly with guns.

Let’s do it. Let’s call the bluff.

Cuz I call bullshit. Total and complete bullshit.

This isn’t a debate or an argument. It’s complete and utter preference.

A segment of the population wants something and that something results in the senseless deaths of a lot of people. It’s time for that to end.

But I’m with you, WV.

If we overthrow the corporate-capitalist stuff, it’ll be so much easier to deal with issues like this…

bnw wrote:

Mackeyser,

To your

#2 above. It was a no gun zone. Thats also a reason why he chose it. Licensed conceal carry patrons won’t lie on the bathroom floor waiting to be executed.

#3 above. I think it possible SSRI antidepressants were involved as they frequently are in these shootings.

#4 above. In the end he professed allegiance to the leader of ISIS.

#5. above. The victims are heard through family and friends at least initially. It is unfortunate that over time they are relegated to statistics whereas the murderer still has a name.

more later

He didn’t “choose” it because it was a “no gun zone”. He had been a frequent visitor there. And he had multiple gay dating apps on his phone AND he had used those apps to communicate with gay men. We still are finding out if he actually was gay or was internally coming to terms with his sexuality. But the idea that he chose the Pulse exclusively or even remotely in part because it was a “no gun zone” is just wrong.

I can’t say anything about any anti-depressants. You’ve mentioned them multiple times and it sounds like you have an agenda that you’d like to share and will at some point. I don’t think they had any bearing on this tragedy although they might.

As I said, he pledged allegiance to the head of several groups that are fighting one another. You can’t just cherry pick ISIS and leave out Hizbollah which is fighting ISIS or the Al-Nusra Front which is also in conflict with ISIS. If he didn’t say something, people would have easily pieced together why he did what he did. Turns out it’s not that hard and the truth is pretty evident. It had nothing whatsoever to do with terror or any terror groups.

I’ll leave my point on #5 stand. I pretty much agree with you, but the coverage hasn’t really even let family or friends speak on their behalf and they certainly haven’t let victims speak when they are capable. So glad Nick Jonas got the mic, tho…

bnw wrote:

Mackeyser wrote:

And I have no idea what the crack meant about “with the way that culture is heading.” As in, I literally have no idea what that means.

It means Sharia Law being practiced with the consent of the government and beheading in the streets.

Did you just say Sharia Law? In the USA?

That’s literally the dumbest thing I’ve heard all week and my teens haven’t been terribly creative trying to get out of work around the house.

Sharia law is unconstitutional. Period. End of discussion. It’s IMPOSSIBLE. Any law based on the Quran or the Hadith would be unconstitutional. Done.

Moreover, we have had very heavily Muslim districts, be they Somali or other in various parts of the country for many, many decades and literally NONE of this has even been mentioned.

Well, I live in Florida, so I know… that Dr has to be crazy.

Just sayin’…

What do we know?

1) The people calling for actual changes in gun laws aren’t Democrats because Democrats don’t have the balls (Connecticut Dems aside. I’ll give them credit. But they learned the hard way when they got abandoned by the rest of the Dems). Fuckin-A. If the slaughter of kids isn’t enough to go to the mattresses with the NRA, then nothing is, so screw every LAST Democrat and their milquetoast stance on guns.

2) The belief that a “good guy with a gun will defeat a bad guy with a gun” was put to the test and soundly defeated. There was an armed off duty cop inside the club at the time of the attack who DID engage the attacker. And STILL, 49 people dead and 53 people injured. Next argument will be “it was just one gunfight” or “the officer was outgunned”… uh huh…

3) The attacker was someone who was either a closeted gay man who was sexually active or exploring that possibility while openly in a very conservative Muslim family. Whether it was self-loathing, mental illness, a mental breakdown from not being able to reconcile his outer and inner self or some unknowable combination, a tragedy ensued.

4) This was NOT Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. The attacker knew less about terror groups than news producers do here in the US, which is to say barely any at all. He pledged allegiance to the head of ISIS and to Hizbollah which is fighting ISIS and the head of Al-Nusra which is also in conflict with ISIS. Him pledging his allegiances must have sounded like Eddie Murphy telling his VietNam story in the beginning of Trading Places, it was so absurd to anyone who knew even the slightest thing that it’s cringeworthy.

5) Victims mean nothing, anymore. We’ve heard about the killer, his father, his ex-wife and even what celebrities had to say on twitter and Instragram. But the media is going to keep the victims as “the victims” with no voice. It’s important that people speak for and about them, but under no circumstances will they be allowed to speak for themselves.

6) The next tragedy is only a few days away. It is a blessing that the death of my daughter forever broke my heart such that as much as I’ve tried over the years to harden my heart to the animals that call themselves people or worse, have the arrogance and hubris to believe for a moment that they have the grace to be human… I just can’t. I have cried or been on the verge of tears feeling the pain of loss. Is it worse because it’s so pointless? I read blogs and posts with poems from the community and hear the words and listen to the outcry…truly just try to listen. Now it is not for me to speak. Not yet. Even to my child…I just listen…and we embrace, and I pray that we’ll be safe today because that’s all we have. And even with all of that, I know the heartless clock is counting down and the next tragedy, the next “thing we can’t imagine”, the next “unexplainable” thing that we have so ingrained that the MSM have packages for explaining it…WILL happen…soon…within DAYS. And I will mourn again. My heart will not harden…because it can’t. I’ve been blessed.

7) We’re all insane. Whether it’s Climate Catastrophe or this cycle of mass killings or institutional dysfunction (corporate or governmental) that allow for water poisoning in Flint, MI or Hoosick Falls, NY or umpteen other examples of entities where people in charge felt it was okay to put other people at risk for their own gain, be it monetary, power or something else. We’re all insane because we really COULD solve all of these problems, but as a citizenry, we’ve decided in absentia that solving our problems just isn’t that important. We can always point to systems and people at the top and some “other” and KNOW they are the cause of our collective demise. It may even be true. It doesn’t change that for the most part, we as a citizenry acquiesce to most of this garbage which the masters are all too happy with.

8) If we want the world to change, we have to BE the change. That’s not just a slogan. If we want grace, we have to be graceful. If we want peace, we have to be peaceful.

In light of all of this and likely other things I’ve missed, it would be all too easy to give in to sarcasm and pessimism. I won’t do that. We all deserve to be happy, to feel loved and to feel like we belong. That’s worth fighting for.

I’m also in a swing state and I can’t do it, PA.

I’ve voted for the “lesser of two evils” all my life in one way or another, except for Obama the first time when I THOUGHT I was getting a Progressive. I know… you guys warned me, but I really wanted to believe…

I’m just not doing it again.

The NUMBER ONE issue is CLIMATE CATASTROPHE. If the NOAA paper is right, and I think it is, they estimate NINE FEET of global sea level rise in just 34 years.

Nine feet without any massive contingency plans gives us 12 Fukushima level disasters on the East coast of the US alone. Maybe more if a big storm pushes storm surge or flooding to the 8 more that are relatively close to the coast.

Hillary Clinton is all in on fracking and Natural Gas as the “bridge to tomorrow” which means building a bunch of new Natural Gas power plants and thousands of miles of NG pipelines. That requires a commitment of decades, during which, the investment simply won’t be there, nor will the impetus be there to develop the next gen of green tech while cheap NG is powering what people want.

No. Hillary Clinton is our guaranteed doom. Guaranteed doom. She won’t be a racist xenophobe. She’ll make the occasional rational decision like fixing the disparity for stay at home moms/dads and Social Security benefits.

And, honestly, that may have to be the ONLY reason to choose her, because, frankly, the scale upon which to weigh each candidate was crushed under the massive weight of each candidate’s negatives. And we know Trump won’t exactly embrace anything greener than coal…

But Hillary is doom. Period. Her embrace of fracking means the end. That’s the math. Fracking as a bridge means the end. NINE FEET in 34 years.

How much more carbon will be in the atmosphere in 2050? How much bigger will the storms be as the water is warmer and the seas rise?

Now, I had a bad number in my head and got ahead of myself and thought we’d already gotten to 450ppm CO2, but we HAVE crossed 400ppm and are on track to cross 450 in LESS THAN 20 YEARS.

From: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/13/carbon-dioxide-levels-in-atmosphere-forecast-to-shatter-milestone

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that CO2 concentrations must be stabilised at 450ppm to have a fair chance of avoiding global warming above 2C, which could carry catastrophic consequences.

“We could be passing above 450ppm in roughly 20 years,” Betts said. “If we start to reduce our global emissions now, we could delay that moment but it is still looking like a challenge to stay below 450ppm. If we carry on as we are going, we could pass 450ppm even sooner than 20 years, according to the IPCC scenarios.”

It’s clear. We hit 450ppm, it’s gonna be game over.

If we go forward with fracking and build out our fracking “bridge to tomorrow”, it’s game over.

Hillary Clinton’s Climate Catastrophe denial is… GAME OVER.

So, no, I really don’t give a shit about SCOTUS picks which I increasingly don’t care about because I think McConnell will decide after the election if Hillary is elected to simply NOT allow any appointments of any import to go forward, anyway. It won’t be any different from now and the SCOTUS will simply function with 8 justices until another retires and then they’ll have 7 and they still won’t appoint any justices.

Existential threats are by far the most important and the fate of the planet is paramount.

That means I have to fight like hell to get everyone to understand EXACTLY how close we are to potential extinction.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by Mackeyser.

bnw wrote:

Yet he is a registered DEMOCRAT. Oops.

I really appreciate everyone who posts here and all the contributions.

That said, don’t fucking do that. Just fucking don’t. Don’t play puerile politics days after the mass murder of 50 people.

There is no political party affiliation that makes any difference here.

The man had serious mental illness. The man may or may not have engaged in terrorism in addition to the hate crime it clearly was.

You know what doesn’t matter? What corporate fucking club he belonged to.

So can we please NOT?

If for no other reason than out of respect for the dead.

wv wrote:

I dunno that i agree with Mack, that this would benefit Trump.

I suspect Trump has already won-over the “anti-Islam crowd.” I doubt
there’s anymore folks to be won over from that piece of the voting-pie.

The election now, is down to a small slice of the pie,
and i dont know exactly who those uncommitted folks are.
But i doubt they are the anti-islam, anti-immigration folks.
They are already wearing Trump buttons.

What do i know, though. I’m just a meteor guy.

I dont have anything intelligent to say about the actual crime, cept,
there will be more. Every year there will be more. No matter which Replicant
or Duplicat is President.

w
v

Politics is porn for polite society and now isn’t an appropriate time for porn.

Unfortunately, I’m gonna slip in a Carl’s Jr commercial bit and just say this…

When Trump and Clinton go at in the polls, the highest they get is along the lines of 45/43. Basically, there’s 10-12% or more of the electorate who STILL hasn’t decided, yet.

There are still progressives who are waiting on possible indictments for Hillary and Conservatives who are waiting on a possible surprise at the convention. AND…there are still those who are deciding if they want to vote at all…

So, yeah, if ISIS continues to ramp up attacks, this will benefit Trump because it will harden the hearts of some and open up Clinton to attacks about how she helped grow ISIS in Libya and Syria and Iraq via her vote.

It won’t matter that the one flinging the poo is a literal orangutan.

Rationality won’t matter in this election.

The choice will be between stupid+bad and occasionally clever+evil.

Even though I really don’t like this site software and my phone outright hates it, I’m sooooo glad I’m back.

I just really missed talking about substantive stuff like this.

She’s got a video about how she got into politics online somewhere.

As a Harvard trained Dr, she got asked to speak about health related issues to governmental agencies and it turns out she found tremendous systemic problems and she was good at addressing the problems in a way that the mouth breathers in govt can understand.

As for nuclear power, let’s be crystal clear. It’s 2016. We’ve OUTPERFORMED every single worst case scenario modeled by climate scientists thus far.

The latest by NOAA is that BY 2050, due to disintegration of Greenlands glacier from the polar ice cap and the subsequent massive and rapid calving, is that global sea rise is expected to rise NINE FEET. That’s NINE FEET IN JUST THIRTY SIX YEARS.

It takes almost thirty years to fully decommission a nuclear reactor and I don’t think we could do them all at once. That means we need to start on some of them NOW.

Understand that as these seas are rising, there are 12 nuclear plants along the eastern seaboard of the Fukushima design. If they are flooded by a storm before we can cool the rods and get them in storage, then we are looking at an inevitable STRING OF NUCLEAR DISASTERS.

It’s dominoes of stupidity. They’ll all fall leading to a massively terrible outcome unless we remove some of the stupid dominoes.

But the Establishment, which claims to at least acknowledge Climate Change doesn’t realize Hillary has embraced fracking infrastructure at home and around the world and doing so requires a 30-50 year commitment to build the additional natural gas power plants and the thousands of miles of pipelines.

Wait a minute… In 36 years won’t the oceans be 9 feet higher?

Well, yeah…

And if the establishment has the out of cheap domestic natural gas, won’t it stifle innovation in the green space?

Well, yeah, but…

Well…yeah.