“Did George Bush ever condemn President Obama after Sandy Hook. President Obama had 32 mass shootings during his reign. Not many people said Obama is out of Control. Mass shootings were happening before the President even thought about running for Pres.” @kilmeade@foxandfriends
The Republican attempt to pin the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton on “mental health” issues was rebuked by the American Psychological Association on Monday.
“Routinely blaming mass shootings on mental illness is unfounded and stigmatizing,” said APA President Rosie Phillips Davis in a statement.
“Research has shown that only a very small percentage of violent acts are committed by people who are diagnosed with, or in treatment for, mental illness. The rates of mental illness are roughly the same around the world, yet other countries are not experiencing these traumatic events as often as we face them.
“One critical factor is access to, and the lethality of, the weapons that are being used in these crimes. Adding racism, intolerance and bigotry to the mix is a recipe for disaster.”
As has often been the case after mass shootings, Republican leaders have echoed the gun rights extremists at the NRA and sought to cast blame on anything but guns.
In his address to the nation after the shooting, Trump said that the cause of the shooting had more to do with video games and mental health issues — “not the gun.”
Other Republican leaders, like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, also repeated the mental health talking point.
Instead of dealing with the weapons instrumental to creating mass death, Republicans continue to invoke one canard after another. But professionals like Davis have made it clear: The guns are the problem.
Presidential adviser Sean Hannity: “I’d like to see the perimeter of every school in America surrounded, secured by retired police … have one armed guard on every floor of every school, all over every mall, the perimeter and inside every hall of every mall.” pic.twitter.com/Renh47IiBY
Gun nuts say they need their weapons in case the deep police state tries to take their weapons. And the best way to fight the bad eggs is to create a police state.
Go figure.
Hannity has his work cut out for him being Trump’s cheerleader. There’s these mass shootings. There’s a crap wall that Trump promised. And this…
The moment Trump is living in, via @playbookplus: * Econ: Dow roughly 7% off highs * China: Not coming U.S.'s way on trade deal * Iran: No talks * North Korea: Testing weapons again * Israel: Still haven't seen peace plan * USMCA: Not passed by August, admin's unofficial deadline
As Trump tries to deflect his role as the unspoken leader of the violent right extremism, his attacks on China and threats of more tariffs are hurting the economy. Today, the stock market is plunging.
Trade bellwethers Caterpillar and Boeing dropped 3.6% and 3%, respectively. Semiconductor stocks like Micron Technology, Skyworks Solutions and Advanced Micro Devices fell at least 4.7%.
Apple shares slid 5.4%. Nike dropped 3.1%. Retail stocks like Etsy, Abercrombie & Fitch and Stitch Fix all fell at least 6.9%. Office Depot slid 7.8%. Party City fell 5.6%. Macy’s and Best Buy pulled back 5% and 4.8%, respectively. The SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT) traded 3.2% lower. FedEx dropped 5.2%.
Stocks tumbled Monday, with Wall Street joining a global equity selloff seen after China allowed its currency to fall to a more-than-10-year low versus the dollar after President Donald Trump rattled markets by announcing additional tariffs on Chinese goods late last week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -3.23% was down 823 points, 3.1%, at 25,658, while the S&P 500 SPX, -3.27% declined 92 points, also 3.1%, to 2,839. The Nasdaq Composite COMP, -3.81% shed more than 300 points, hitting 7,699, a decline of nearly 4%, as China-sensitive tech stocks came under pressure. The steep sell-off came just one trading day after the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had their biggest weekly declines of 2019.
Okay, but Trump has made these tariff threats before. Whgat is different?
Until last week, market participants had been able to “compartmentalize” the U.S.-China trade war, said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National, in a phone interview. Investors were aware of the continued trade tensions, but were reassured that negotiations were continuing and that neither side was prepared to escalate, he said.
That changed Thursday when Trump announced 10% tariffs on $300 billion of imports from China to take effect on Sept. 1 and was compounded when China allowed the yuan to drop.
“The escalation of the U.S.-China trade war puts us in a place where it’s almost impossible to calculate the collateral damage,” Hogan said. That’s likely to continue to cast a cloud over the market unless there are signs of a de-escalation.
The S&P 500 dropped 3.1% last week. The Dow had its second-biggest weekly drop of 2019 last week, sliding 2.6%.
So the ONE thing that Trump had going for him in the 2020 elections — is going south.
UPDATE: At market close, Dow is down 767 points.
BREAKING: Stocks have worst day of 2019 with Dow plunging more than 760 points, Nasdaq sliding nearly 3.5% and S&P falling nearly 3%. – CNBC
This weekend saw two mass shootings with a total casualty count (so far) of 29 people.
On Sunday, Americans woke up to news of a shooting rampage in an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, where a man wearing body armor shot and killed nine people, including his own sister. Hours earlier, a 21-year-old with a rifle entered a Walmart in El Paso and killed 20 people.
The Dayton shooter was killed on site. Police reacted before he could enter a busy bar called Ned Peppers, downing the shooter in 30 seconds from the first shot. The shooter opened fire with a .223-caliber high-capacity rifle with 100-round drum magazines. He ordered it online.
As the video shows, he was literally two from entering the bar before he was shot down by police (he’s the last person in the video, who falls at the end):
Not much is known about the motives of the Dayton shooter, who was 24, except that he was a troubled individual. He was suspended from high school for having a “kill list” of the boys he wanted to kill, and a “rape list” for the girls.
The El Paso shooting at a Walmart was quite different. The male shooter, age 21, was captured, and he posted a manifesto on 8chan just nineteen minutes before the shooting.
The unsigned manifesto, titled “The Inconvenient Truth,” draws direct inspiration from the mass murder of Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand in March that left 51 people dead. In that attack, the suspect published a manifesto online promoting a white supremacist theory called “the great replacement.” The theory has been promoted by a French writer named Renaud Camus, and argues that elites in Europe have been working to replace white Europeans with immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.Christchurch has become a rallying cry for extremists the world over. The manifesto linked to the El Paso killings begins, “In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto. This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
The suspect wrote that his views “predate Trump,” as if anticipating the political debate that would follow the blood bath. But if Mr. Trump did not originally inspire the gunman, he has brought into the mainstream polarizing ideas and people once consigned to the fringes of American society.
8chan, the online message board where the manifesto was posted minutes before the El Paso shooting, vanished from the internet on Monday and remained offline several hours later, after a San Francisco company decided to stop providing vital network services to the site. The forum went dark at about midnight in California. After the move was announced late Sunday by the company, Cloudflare, 8chan confirmed the change on Twitter and warned that an interruption in the site’s connectivity would probably follow.
This couple died after shielding their baby from bullets during the El Paso shooting pic.twitter.com/6SxJml6hI7
Trump at first chose to golf this weekend, but as criticism mounted (not only of his lack of attention, but his rhetorical complicity) he stepped up to the plate and called for background checks, but he also … wait for it… blamed the media.
….this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform. We must have something good, if not GREAT, come out of these two tragic events!
The Media has a big responsibility to life and safety in our Country. Fake News has contributed greatly to the anger and rage that has built up over many years. News coverage has got to start being fair, balanced and unbiased, or these terrible problems will only get worse!
Other Republicans and right wing pundits blamed video games.
But most people on the left, center, and even the right are calling the El Paso shooting what is it – domestic terrorism and white nationalism.
The New York Times editorial board says it all:
If one of the perpetrators of this weekend’s two mass shootings had adhered to the ideology of radical Islam, the resources of the American government and its international allies would mobilize without delay.
The awesome power of the state would work tirelessly to deny future terrorists access to weaponry, money and forums to spread their ideology. The movement would be infiltrated by spies and informants. Its financiers would face sanctions. Places of congregation would be surveilled. Those who gave aid or comfort to terrorists would be prosecuted. Programs would be established to de-radicalize former adherents.
No American would settle for “thoughts and prayers” as a counterterrorism strategy No American would accept laying the blame for such an attack on video games, like the Texas lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, did in an interview on Sunday when discussing the mass shooting in El Paso that took 20 lives and left 27 people wounded.
In predictable corners, moderate Muslims would be excoriated for not speaking out more forcefully against the extremists in their midst. Foreign nations would be hit with sanctions for not doing enough to help the cause. Politicians might go so far as to call for a total ban on Muslims entering the United States “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
Even a casual observer today can figure out what is going on. The world, and the West in particular, has a serious white nationalist terrorist problem that has been ignored or excused for far too long. As President George W. Bush declared in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, we must be a country “awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution.”
There are serious questions about how the United States has approached Islamic extremism, but if even a degree of that vigilance and unity of effort was put toward white nationalism, we’d be safer.
White nationalist terror attacks are local, but the ideology is global. On Saturday, a terrorist who, according to a federal law enforcement official, wrote that he feared a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” was replacing white Americans opened fire in a Walmart in El Paso. In a manifesto, the gunman wrote that he drew some inspiration from the white nationalist terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, that left 51 people dead. The F.B.I. is investigating the El Paso mass shooting as a possible act of domestic terrorism.
The motive behind another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, is under investigation. In April, another terrorist who opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, Calif., echoed the words of the Christchurch suspect, too, and appeared to draw inspiration from a massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last fall. The alleged Christchurch terrorist, for his part, wrote that he drew inspiration from white supremacist attacks in Norway, the United States, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
An investigation by The Times earlier this year found that “at least a third of white extremist killers since 2011 were inspired by others who perpetrated similar attacks, professed a reverence for them or showed an interest in their tactics.”
White supremacy, in other words, is a violent, interconnected transnational ideology. Its adherents are gathering in anonymous, online forums to spread their ideas, plotting attacks and cheering on acts of terrorism.
The result is an evolving brand of social media-fueled bloodshed. Online communities like 4chan and 8chan have become hotbeds of white nationalist activity. Anonymous users flood the site’s “politics” board with racist, sexist and homophobic content designed to spread across the web. Users share old fascist fiction, Nazi propaganda and pseudoscientific texts about race and I.Q. and replacement theory, geared to radicalize their peers.
These communities aren’t new. Stormfront, an early white supremacist bulletin board and website, was begun by Don Black in 1996. Communities like the neo-Nazi site, the Daily Stormer, have spread white nationalist ideas for years. Some of these communities’ most unstable users have moved their hate into the real world — Dylann Roof, who killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston in 2015 had a Stormfront account under the name, “Lil Aryan.”
Yet, in recent months, conversations in one anonymous 8chan forum in particular have evolved. They increasingly focus on carrying out acts of white nationalist terror. In the wake of the Christchurch shooting, copycat killers have taken to the board to seek approval for acts of violence. They post hastily written manifestoes in the hopes that these rantings will be shared online and by the media — and inspire more shootings.
Posts actively incentivize the darkest impulses of the most dangerous users. In May, an anonymous user posted a screed on “Target Selection,” providing a blueprint on how to increase the body count during mass shootings. The community celebrates and compares the number of casualties from shooting to shooting — a gamification of mass murder.
Law enforcement currently offers few answers as to how to contain these communities. The anonymous nature of the forum makes it difficult to track down the validity of threats, and trolls frequently muddy the waters by attempting to dupe authorities with false threats and disinformation.
But the real world violence associated with the site has caused some agencies to pay closer attention to conspiratorial and hateful communities online — just recently an F.B.I. field office for the first time identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat.
Technology companies, too, appear unwilling to treat white nationalist terror online the way they have dealt with the online spread of radical Islamic terror groups, such as the Islamic State. Companies like Facebook and Twitter took bold action to remove tens of millions of pieces of ISIS and Al Qaeda propaganda and accounts between 2014 and 2018. Similar standards have not been applied to white nationalists, perhaps because, as a 2018 reportfrom researcher J.M. Berger, who specializes in online extremism, notes, “The task of crafting a response to the alt-right is considerably more complex and fraught with land mines, largely as a result of the movement’s inherently political nature and its proximity to political power.”
While its modern roots predate the Trump administration by many decades, white nationalism has attained a new mainstream legitimacy during Mr. Trump’s time in office. Discussions of Americans being “replaced” by immigrants, for instance, are a recurring feature on some programs on Fox News. Fox hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, for example, return to these themes frequently. Democrats, Ms. Ingraham told viewers last year, “want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever-increasing number of chain migrants.”
“You will not replace us,” white nationalists proudly chanted at Charlottesville in 2017. (Mr. Trump himself proclaimed that there were “fine people” on both sides of that deadly event.)
In May, bemoaning an “invasion” of immigrants, Mr. Trump askedhow immigrants could be stopped during a rally in Florida. “Shoot them,” someone in the crowd yelled. Mr. Trump gave a smirk and said, “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that stuff,” as the crowd exploded in ghoulish laughter.
Far more Americans have died at the hands of domestic terrorists than at the hands of Islamic extremists since 2001, according to the F.B.I. The agency’s resources, however, are still overwhelmingly weighted toward thwarting international terrorism.
The nation owed a debt to the victims of the 9/11 attacks, to take action against the vile infrastructure that allowed the terrorists to achieve their goals that horrible Tuesday. We owe no less of a debt to the victims in El Paso and to the hundreds of other victims of white nationalist terrorism around the nation.
Moderate members of the political right must do more to condemnwhite nationalists, even if the president condemns them from one side of his mouth and extols ethnonationalism from the other.
Advertisers have a duty not to sponsor television programs that flirt with white nationalism or advocate it outright.
Banks have a duty not to help finance white nationalist organizations.
Religious leaders should feel called to denounce white nationalism from the pulpit.
Technology companies have a responsibility to de-platform white nationalist propaganda and communities as they did ISIS propaganda. And if the technology companies refuse to step up, law enforcement has a duty to vigilantly monitor and end the anonymity, via search warrants, of those who openly plot attacks in murky forums.
Those people who encourage terrorism anonymously online should be named.
Those who sympathize with the white nationalist ideology but who deplore the violence should work closely with law enforcement to see that fellow travelers who may be prone to violence do not have access to firearms like semiautomatic assault-style weapons that are massively destructive.
Most importantly, American law enforcement needs to target white nationalists with the same zeal that they have targeted radical Islamic terrorists. Ensuring the security of the homeland demands it.
There can be no middle ground when it comes to white nationalism and the terrorism it inspires. You’re either for it or against it.
Yyyyeah. The third from last paragraph…. um…. what?
Trump is speaking this morning from the White House on the issue. I imagine he’ll make some long overdue proposals, but he clearly is the wrong messenger for this. If the press falls over themselves saying that he acted “presidential”, I might vomit.
We have a gun problem. We have a white supremacy problem. They are increasingly intertwined. We need to respond to each of them legislatively and culturally, without fear or intimidation.
Didn’t we all say that it was only a matter of time before Trump’s rhetoric got someone killed?
UPDATE: Trump is speaking. Reading from a teleprompter and not speaking from the heart, he (finally) condemns white supremacy. Vague list of things to do, like “we need to develop tools to detect these people online early”. Now going after video games. Now wants to reform mental health laws (somehow). Calling for death penalty for hate crime murders.
Trump said, “may God bless the memory of those who perished in Toledo,” but the shooting happened in Dayton, Ohio.
It is strange watching this speech being analyzed as a serious text when the president got the name of the city wrong at the end. Presumably someone on his staff wrote Toledo instead of Dayton, and no one caught it, not even the president.
Trump: *stumbles over every word and can’t even be bothered to learn the name of the city he’s supposed to be offering comfort to, so he just picks a random place in that state instead because who gives a fuck*
Yeah. Other countries have mental illness and hatred too, but no mass shootings. You know why? They don’t have easy access to weapons designed to kill many people.
Apparently we’re also the only country with mental illness and social media.
“We have a president right now who traffics in this hatred, who incites this violence, who calls Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, calls asylum seekers animals and an infestation,” the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate said, quoting earlier Trump remarks.
“You may call a cockroach an infestation, you may use that word in the Third Reich to describe those who are undesirable, who must be put down because they are subhuman. You do not expect to hear that in the United States of America in this age, in our generation, in this beautiful country that decided 243 years ago that we would not define ourselves by race or ethnicity or our differences — but by the fact that we were all created equal.”
Yes, indeed, Trump’s rhetoric is that of Nazi Germany’s. Good for Beto for saying it, and saying it now, when it’s harder for Trump and his deplorable enablers in Congress to escape the consequences.
How many more people have to die before we reinstate the assault weapons ban & the limit on high-capacity magazines & pass universal background checks? After they passed in 1994, there was a big drop in mass shooting deaths. When the ban expired, they rose again. We must act now.
Until all of us stand up and insist on holding public officials accountable for changing our gun laws, these tragedies will keep happening: https://t.co/reTnmcg3xo
“We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments; leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us,… “. Nice Obama.
President Trump weighs in on the shootings in Texas and Ohio, tweeting 'God bless the people of El Paso Texas. God bless the people of Dayton, Ohio' https://t.co/eceEYZhLBqpic.twitter.com/CrAlQhHsWY
This week started with Trump’s attacks on Black leader House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings, whose panel has several ongoing investigations targeting Trump and his family. Trump used dehumanizing language like “rats” and “infest” to disparage Cummings’ home district of Baltimore, then broadened his attack during the week to other prominent Black men including Al Sharpton, who he called a “con man” and CNN host Don Lemon who he called “dumb.” Trump refused to back off, escalating his racist attacks — gaslighting the country that he is not the racist, but Cummings is — as news of hate-based shootings and instances of overt racism spread in an anxious and increasingly divided country.
A new label for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — Moscow Mitch — struck a nerve with the leader, and as the media and Democrats questioned his unwillingness to secure the country’s election, his other ties to Russia came under scrutiny. Headwinds for impeachment continued post Mueller’s testimony as over half the House Democrats formally called for the start of an impeachment inquiry, while Trump continued to deny Russia interference happened or is happening now. Trump pushed out the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, one of the few remaining voices who stood up to Trump on foreign policy, and perhaps the last non-partisan stop-gap to future Russia interference.
The future of the Republican Party came into question this week, as Rep. Will Hurd, the only Black American member of the House for the GOP, became the ninth Republican to say he will not seek re-election in 2020. Among the nine are also two of the 13 GOP women, including Rep. Susan Brooks, who was meant to recruit more women to run.
WSJ reported on the rise of “disrupters” being elected globally, including Trump, Boris Johnson in the U.K., Narendra Modi in India, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Matteo Salvini in Italy.
Ratcliffe falsely claimed he tried suspects accused of funneling money to the Hamas, touted his role as U.S. attorney though he was only an interim appointee, and falsely claimed he oversaw terrorism investigations.
Shortly after, Trump tweeted again, calling Cummings a “racist,” adding he should “focus more of his energy on helping the good people of his district,” adding, “His radical “oversight” is a joke!”
On Tuesday, a Quinnipiac poll found that 51% say Trump is racist, 45% say his is not. White voters say 46% he is and 50% he is not, while Black voters say 80–11% say he is racist, and Hispanics 55–44%.
Trump also tweeted just before midnight, “the Mueller Report itself, was a disaster for this illegal Democrat inspired Witch Hunt,” adding, “They can’t help themselves, they are totally lost, they are Clowns!”
On Tuesday, Trump came to McConnell’s defense, telling reporters “Mitch McConnell is a man that knows less about Russia and Russian influence than even Donald Trump…And I know nothing.”
On Friday, Politico reported Braidy Industries hired RunSwitch PR, a public relations firm co-founded in 2012 by Scott Jennings, a former McConnell aide, to boost PR ahead of Democrats’ call for an investigation.
Lawyers said children were taken from parents for having a dirty diaper, for malicious destruction of property of $5, and for a speech impediment that made it hard to answer Custom and Border Patrol agents’ questions.
Trump added, “The Fed moved, in my opinion, far too early and for too severely. It puts me at a — somewhat of a disadvantage,” but “Fortunately I’ve made the economy so strong that nothing’s going to stop us.”
Trump’s claim is false. Trump has also made false statements about how Muslims reacted to the attack. On the day of the attack, he falsely claimed in an interview that one of his buildings was now “the tallest” downtown.
When asked if he ever regretted a tweet, Trump said, “Not much. I sent the one about wiretapping, in quotes, and that turned out to be true.” Trump sent that tweet for several weeks, and it is a lie.
When asked about his typical day, Trump responded, “Well, I stay up late, I like to read a lot, which people don’t understand that…I watch a lot of Fox. I tend to not watch too much of CNN.”
The judge found Trump officials were shielded under the First Amendment, and Russia could not be in the courts for election interference and should face actions like sanctions instead.
On Thursday, Rep. Ted Deutch became the 17th of 24 Judiciary Committee and 118th House member to back impeachment in a Sun Sentinel op-ed, titled “No more debate. Impeachment inquiry is underway.”
The DOJ has until September 13 for its first brief, and the House until September 30 for its response, meaning a ruling from Chief U.S. District Court of D.C. Judge Beryl Howell in October at the earliest.
Her group was tasked with countering the rise of China. Officials claimed she was fired over her “abusive” management style. She is the first departure from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s small inner circle.
The readout said Trump “expressed concern over the vast wildfires afflicting Siberia” and the leaders “discussed trade between the two countries.” No other details of the call were released.
On Thursday, Trump held a campaign rally in Cincinnati, Ohio which 17,500 attended. Trump mocked “left-wing extremists,” and Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren who he continued to call “Pocahontas.”
Donald Jr. warmed up the crowd, saying, “It’s sad that using ‘racism’ has become the easy button of left-wing politics.” Trump supporters held up t-shirts saying “TRUMP & Republicans Are Not RACIST.”
Trump blamed the mayor, “Do you have a Democrat mayor? Well, that’s what happens,” then brought up homicide rates in Baltimore and Chicago, saying they support illegal immigrants rather than their own communities.
Trump mocked environmentalists and clean-energy advocates, saying “We’ve ended the war on American energy.” He also attacked windmills again saying they are “noisy” and “kill birds.”
On Friday, Trump again defended Kim Jong Un, tweeting his “friend” Kim “does not want to disappoint me with a violation of trust,” adding, “the potential as a Country, under Kim Jong Un’s leadership, is unlimited.”
Ratcliffe is the 62nd nominee withdrawn by Trump, an unprecedented number. Politico reported White House officials have blamed Trump’s lack of judgement and impulsiveness.
On Friday, after weeks of mass protests, Puerto Rico governor Ricardo Rossello stepped down. His successor Pedro Pierluisi was sworn in temporarily until Wednesday when the Senate will hear his nomination.
