Sunday Facepalm.

Courtesy Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax.

Virginia drivers can already get a state-issued license plate to show their support for the National Rifle Association, but a push for a “Stop Gun Violence” specialty plate took a contentious turn this week in the House of Delegates.

[…]

“We’re the snowflakes,” said Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax, the plate’s sponsor. “But these guys see ‘gun violence’ on anything and they go ballistic.”

During floor debate Thursday, Gilbert said Simon was trying to make a political point that goes beyond “a little ol’ license plate bill.”

“It is him trying to build a narrative that gun violence is somehow different from regular violence,” Gilbert said, asking Simon why the license plate couldn’t raise awareness of violence generally.

So…you want a plate which says “stop violence”? Apparently Mr. Gilbert didn’t notice that he himself made a distinction between gun violence and “regular” violence. Perhaps republican assholes could get together and put out a degrees of violence pamphlet, assigning points or something. At least that waste of time would prevent them from doing harm for a while. The fact of the matter is that gun violence is indeed different. You can kill a whole lot of people very quickly with a gun. If nothing else, I’d think being able to kill cops with guns might have given these assholes pause, but no. As an aside, Mr. Simon deserves a smack for his word play.

The legislation filed to create the anti-gun violence plate would’ve imposed a standard $10 plate fee. But Republicans argued it should cost $25, the rate for revenue-generating plates that raise money for a social cause.

Republicans argued that cause should be mental health, prompting Simon to accuse the GOP of hijacking the plate’s message.

“To buy into the myth that this is a mental health problem and that these license plates ought to be used to solve a mental health problem unfairly stigmatizes people living with mental illness,” Simon said. “It unfairly characterizes it.”

Oh yes, it perpetuates stigma, and it’s a very unfair, malicious, and lazy conclusion that so many people run to and take refuge in, whenever there’s another major shooting. Othering is terribly convenient for those who refuse to pay attention to the problem staring them in the face.

Simon said he filed the bill on behalf of a constituent, 65-year-old retired microbiologist Carol Luten, who gathered the 450 prepaid applications required before the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles will consider issuing a specialty plate. That constituent’s concerns go well beyond the mass shootings that draw headlines and focus more on everyday gun violence, such as children dying because an adult left a firearm unattended, Simon said.

“The people putting this plate in ought to have a say about what that plate means and where the funds from it go,” Simon said.

Simon suggested the money from the plate could go toward domestic violence prevention, but Republicans voted to direct the money to mental health on a 50-48 party-line vote.

Of course they did. Nothing like sticking to their narrative that guns are just harmless instruments.

The two House Republicans currently running for Congress — Dels. Ben Cline, R-Rockbridge, and Nick Freitas, R-Culpeper — voted against the plate.

“Obviously none of us support gun violence,” Freitas said. “The issue that I think a lot of us have is this idea of putting the focus on an instrument as opposed to a focus on the crime.”

Right, you want to focus on the crime. The problem there being…the fucking crime. By the time you’re focusing on that, at least one person is dead. Some of us find value in trying to make it a hell of a lot more difficult for someone to commit murder. For every brand of ugly immorality, you can count on republicans. Bet they are all “good” christians, too.

The full story is at Richmond.com.

Today’s Demon: Rick Wiles, Wait…

Andras, Grand Marquis in Hell, Dictionnaire Infernal.

Make that Today’s Demon: Andras, who may have found a happy home in Rick Wiles. A quick look at Andras:

Andras is a Great Marquis of Hell, having under his command thirty legions of demons. He sows discord among people. According to the Goetia, Andras was a Grand Marquis of Hell, appearing with a winged angel’s body and the head of an owl or raven, riding upon a strong black wolf and wielding a sharp and bright sword. He was also responsible for sowing discord, and commanded 30 infernal legions. He is the 63rd of the 72 spirits of Solomon. Andras was considered to be a highly dangerous demon, who could kill the conjuring magician and his assistants if precautions were not taken. The Dutch demonologist Johannes Wier, in his Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, says of Andras:

Andras is a great marquesse, and seemes in an angels shape with a head like a blacke night raven, riding upon a blacke and a verie strong woolfe, flourishing with a sharpe sword in his hand, he can kill the maister, the servant, and all assistants, he is author of discords, and ruleth thirtie legions.

Another demonologist, Collin de Plancy, also mentions Andras in his writings:

Grand Marquis of Hell. He appears to have the body of an angel and the head of a wood owl, and to be riding a black wolf and carrying in his hand a pointed saber. He teaches those whom he favors to kill their enemies, masters and servants. He stirs up trouble and dissension. He commands thirty legions.

Sowing discord. In favour of killing. Stirring up trouble and dissension. A perfect fit for Rick Wiles! Mr. Wiles is attempting to bring back the specter of oooOOOOooo Communism, among other things.

“The mass killings of peaceful Christian families in church on Sunday mornings are what America’s political left has given this nation,” Wiles said. “Since 1962, there has been a relentless ongoing war of hatred in the USA against God and Christianity. The religious war has been supported by America’s courts and judges, Hollywood, the entertainment industry, the news media, academia, and the Democratic Party. Fifty-five years later, we have church carpets soaked in blood. Oh, America, how much more of this religious war against God are you going to tolerate? Will you remain silent until your children are bleeding on the church floor too?”

Yet somehow, Mr. Wiles, you don’t mention the bombings of predominantly black churches. There’s no mention of Dylan Roof, or the insane level of racism in this country, which keeps elevating, embraced by more and more white men with severe cases of aggrieved entitlement. Lots of angry men out there, who are allowed to get away with being abusive as fuck for years on end, and you’re surprised by a very bad ending? This doesn’t have jack shit to do with christianity, which is what you mean by ‘religion’. If Mr. Kelley had thought his in-laws were at the local gas station, that would have ended up shot to pieces. You don’t mention the sheer insanity of guns in this country, Mr. Wiles. That’s a problem. A big, yuuuuge problem. Trying to get you fucking infernal christians out of public affairs has been a long fight, but angry white men with guns are not the result of not having mandatory, ostentatious public prayer in school or no commandments in court houses.

I have no love for religion, and I certainly have no love for loud mouthed shit stirrers like you, Mr. Wiles. Your message is never one of love. It’s never about kindness. It’s never about anything even remotely positive. It’s always a fucktonne of lies and moaning over how you lack the power to oppress the hell out of people these days. That’s a good thing.

“A dark, sinister entity controlled by Lucifer is behind these mass shootings,” he warned. “These events are not happening at random by mentally ill people. You may not realize it, but the USA is engulfed in a communist revolution. I’ve been warning about it since 2008, with the election of communist street organizer Barry Soetoro, alias Barack Hussein Obama, and I assure you he is behind all of this Resist Trump movement going on right now.”

:Near-fatal eyeroll: There are many reasons the amount of mass shootings are going up, but it has nothing to do with Lucifer, dark and sinister entities, communists, or President Obama. You’re really going to have to lose the communism angle, Mr. Wiles, it’s just too difficult to push that one when we’re Russia Junior. I’ve been resisting the Tiny Idiot King from day one and before. Haven’t had so much as a memo from President Obama. Gosh, you’d think he was bad at that leadership stuff. Wait, that’s Trump.

Wiles said that Christians must wake up and realize that this communist revolution is in the process of taking over the nation and will soon set out on a campaign to execute “tens of thousands of Christian leaders within months or years.”

Are there that fucking many of you ‘great leaders’ here in uStates? Gad, that’s depressing. Well, y’know, I rather think if no one has gone to the trouble of shutting you all up by decapitation by now, that won’t be happening. I haven’t seen guillotines going up in public squares. Seems absolutely nothing keeps you nasty assholes from endlessly blathering.

“If you think I am melodramatic,” Wiles said, “you don’t know history.”

I’m no historian, but I’ll wager I know history more than you do, Mr. Wiles. I read. A lot. I’m quite familiar with christian history, and that’s a history of hate, fear, war-mongering, blood lust, the endless lust for power, torture, oppression, genocide, theft, and death, death, death. It’s an extremely ugly history, replete with exempla of evils and immorality. If I were christian, I certainly wouldn’t be proud of it. If I thought all those demons were real, Mr. Wiles, I’d say you have an Andras on your back.

Via RWW, there’s video.

There’s Always A Loophole.

BCD means – Bad Conduct Discharge.

Most people are aware of the Sutherland Springs, Texas shooting. The man who did the shooting, Devin Kelley, had been discharged from the USAF for domestic violence against his wife and child. After the court martial and a brief amount of prison time (1 year), Kelley was given a bad conduct discharge, which allowed for him to still own and purchase guns. A dishonorable discharge would have barred him from owning or purchasing guns.

Domestic violence and guns are deeply intertwined in America. The reason that at least one sensible restriction against gun ownership cannot be enacted, domestic violence conviction – no guns, is because it would strip too many cops of the right to carry a gun. The gun madness in this country is deep, and I don’t know how in the hell we can stop it, let alone change it. Especially when we have the Idiot King saying that more guns are needed, yes, more, more! The fucking idiot also went on to tar all people with mental illness, saying the shooter was deeply mentally ill. He wasn’t, he was angry.  The Tiny Tyrant is tweeting this utter crap from Japan, a country with very strict gun control, and guess what? Hardly any gun deaths at all:

In 2014 there were just six gun deaths in Japan, while there were 33,599 in the United States.

I’ll just let that sit there.

Via Raw Story, one, two.

In the meantime, a Fox Idiot said church is the ideal place to be shot dead:

Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt asserted on Monday that the dozens of people killed at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas had gone to the right place to be shot because they were close to Jesus at the time of their death.

Vidya Games! Hollywood!

The ever frothing Rick Santorum decided, like every other conservatwit, to weigh in on the Las Vegas shooting. Naturally, gun control is completely wrong, because it’s the fault of video games. And Hollywood, of course.

The failed GOP presidential candidate, who appeared Sunday as a panelist on CNN’s “State of the Union,” then suggested violent entertainment may have influenced the 64-year-old gunman.

“Violence in television and the video games — there is a mountain of evidence out there, psychological evidence, about what we’re doing to our young people with these video games, violent video games, and you never hear the left trying to go after Hollywood or the gaming market,” Santorum said. “It is never involved in this discussion. Where is the solution? Here we are. Where is the solution?”

He complained that Democrats had inaccurately blamed firearms for gun violence instead of movies.

Oy. Less talking heads, more thinking brains, please. The murderous shooter was 64 years old, Mr. Santorum. Let that sink in a moment. I’ll soon be 60 myself, so I can say that video games weren’t a thing when us old dinosaurs were young. Christ, colour televisions were still fresh way back when. As for Hollywood, nothing has changed, the effects have gotten better. And there’s more swearing. I’m a fan of old movies, in particular, old noir. There’s a whole lot of nastiness in movies, going way back, many of them now considered to be classics. Movies you couldn’t possibly consider to be in any way a moral one to watch, unless you were looking for awful morals, and that certainly includes those old bible movies. You could just paste a ‘a god behaving abominably’ on those. When I was young, and before that even, war movies were incredibly popular. Nothing but violence. Westerns, very popular – people shooting and people dropping dead every 5 seconds. People hanging out in the saloon. Where else? Always had women of negotiable love hanging about, too.  Movies have always provided people with a relief valve, a drop into fantasy for a while, where they can escape the cares of everyday life. Same goes for video games. That’s not a bad thing, even though there is always plenty of room for improvement.

I think you can easily place the blame for gun violence on those who love them, cuddle them, and fondle them all the way to their dramatic suicide. You can blame gun violence on the gun culture nourished by the government. You can blame gun violence on the NRA, which actively promotes it. You can blame gun violence on the sheer ubiquity of guns allowed in uStates. Let’s not be looking to video games and movies, because the problem doesn’t lie there, but I expect you’re well aware of that, Mr. Santorum.

Via Raw Story.

Guns Aren’t Weapons! No!

Image credit: STILLFX.

NRA TV host Grant Stinchfield is once again attacking the mainstream media — and this time it’s over articles that describe guns and firearms as “weapons.”

Via Media Matters, Stinchfield went on a lengthy rant against an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that talked about fears that campus open carry laws would lead to college students getting drunk and firing their weapons. Stinchfield singled out the use of the word “weapon” as a textbook example of “media bias” intended to make the general public afraid of guns.

“It’s their use of the word weapon that has me bewildered,” he said of the article. “The reporter uses ‘weapons’ in place of firearms or guns so many times, it just becomes bizarre. Here, ‘Fears of gun owners getting drunk and firing their weapons.’ I firmly believe she uses the phrase weapons over firearms in an effort to scare the uninformed.”

Shall we? To the Dictionary!

GUN

noun

  1. a weapon consisting of a metal tube, with mechanical attachments, from which projectiles are shot by the force of an explosive; a piece of ordnance.

  2. any portable firearm, as a rifle, shotgun, or revolver.

  3. a long-barreled cannon having a relatively flat trajectory.

Oh no, look there, right in the very first, primary definition – weapon! Well, maybe there’s a reasonable explanation for this fuckin’ nonsense. Let’s see:

“I don’t like that name at all,” he explained. “To me, the military carries weapons, guns carried for offensive purposes. I carry a firearm, a tool used for self-defense. To me, it is actually a very important distinction. By Georgia, a state rich in firearms history, using the term weapons in an official capacity, it hurts the perception of law-abiding gun ownership.”

Nope. Not a lick of sense to be found there. Gun fondlers always prove they are not in the least fit to be running about with weapons, or to have them stockpiled in their dwellings. Now, firearm is defined thusly:

small arms weapon, as a rifle or pistol, from which a projectile is fired by gunpowder.

Okay, let them have their rifle, bag of powder, and they can keep it dry. At least people would have a chance to run the fuck away, and maybe with their lives. All the weapons which happen to be guns? Gotta go. No more playing superhero or junior g-man or what the fuckever you think you might be. Just gotta shoot? Fine, keep your weapons under lock and key at the local shooting club.

Via Raw Story.

Terrorism Tourism.

A group of tourists take part in a two hour “boot camp” experience, at “Caliber 3 Israeli Counter Terror and Security Academy ” in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank. It is part of a counter-terrorism “boot camp” organised by Caliber 3, a company set up by a colonel in the Israeli army reserves.
REUTERS/Nir Elias.

A tourist takes part in a two hour “boot camp” experience, at “Caliber 3 Israeli Counter Terror and Security Academy” in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc. Entrance to the gated compound in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc – built on land the Palestinians want for their own state – costs $115 for adults and $85 for children.
REUTERS/Nir Elias.

A tourist carries a poster as he takes part in a two hour “boot camp”. The aim of the mock scenario is to teach foreign visitors how to deal with an attack on a market.
REUTERS/Nir Elias.

An Israeli instructor speaks to children from overseas holding wooden cut-out rifles. Yasser Sobih, mayor of the nearby Palestinian town of al-Khader, condemned the Israeli venture. “The participation of tourists in training in these camps built on occupied Palestinian land means that they support the occupation and we ask them to stop it,” he told Reuters.
REUTERS/Nir Elias.

Here’s one stupid fucking idea. Unsurprisingly, the majority of tourists having themselves all kinds of fun at terrorist boot camp are Americans. Reuters has an extensive slideshow, and article about this particular bit of idiocy, catering to morons with superhero fantasies run amok in their heads.

Story.

If You’re Black, Being A Cop Won’t Stop Cops Shooting You.

Image from the scene where an off-duty officer was shot by a fellow cop in St. Louis (image via Twitter).

Y’know, if this doesn’t drive home the endemic bigotry in this fuckin’ country, and the problem of bigoted cops shooting and murdering people on the basis of skin, I just don’t know what will drive it home. All I have here is sputter and head shaking. This truly should be unbelievable, because something like this should never, ever happen.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and local news outlet Fox2Now, a white St. Louis police officer shot a black off-duty officer from his own force after a car chase ended in a crash outside the off-duty officer’s home.

The African American officer, who has not yet been identified, came outside of his home while off-duty after hearing the commotion from a car chase that ended nearby. Despite identifying himself as a cop, the man was ordered to the ground by two officers. He complied, and soon after, they recognized him and told him to get up.

That was when a third officer entered the scene, and because he did not recognize the black off-duty cop and claimed to “fear for his safety,” shot the off-duty cop in the arm.

The Post-Dispatch reported that police are calling the incident an example of “friendly fire” due to the suspects from the car chase firing at police. The paper also reported that police initially claimed that the 38-year-old African American officer, who has been on the force for 11 years, was “caught in the crossfire.”

Obviously, this ‘incident’ is going to come with many different stories, as cops try to spin it this way and that, in an attempt to make it look like anything except what it is. When in the fuckety fuck are people going to wake the fuck up, and stop accepting this bullshit? Cops are out of control, and free to run around murdering people at will, as long as the victims have the right skin colour, then they were just askin’ for killin’, you betcha. Fucking disgusting, and even more disgusting are all the people on juries, freeing murderers. That has to stop.

This is a real problem,” Rufus J. Tate Jr., the attorney for the injured off-duty officer, told the local Fox affiliate.

“In the police report, you have so far, there is no description of threat he received. So we have a real problem with that. But this has been a national discussion for the past two years. There is this perception that a black man is automatically feared,” the attorney concluded.

I do believe that belongs in the understatement of the century category.

Via Raw Story.

Sunday Facepalm.

“Obama, he’s a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun. Hey Hillary [Clinton], you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch.”

“I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America,” Nugent said.

Ted Nugent, doucheweasel extraordinaire, has recently found a way to foist himself into the public eye again, by now claiming he’s oh so over all the hateful rhetoric, like that quoted above. Nothing about actually shaking up the ol’ brain cells and experiencing even fractional enlightenment, no. This is just a tone thing – “we must be civil!” Yeah. Anyone experienced in discussions, on or off line, knows that you can use all the ‘nice’ words, and be a hundred times more poisonous than someone who peppers their discussions with ‘fuck’ or ‘Jesus Christ!’. Claiming that Black people are intellectually inferior, you have [shoddy] evidence, and really, all you want is for someone to listen to you, and no, of course you aren’t a bigot, that’s no different from Nugent’s “subhuman mongrel”.  Just a difference in icing on a shit cake.

A day or two ago, Nugent noisily claimed to have seen the light, after republicans were shot at (boy, those gun fondlers, they love their guns, but are ever so shocked when they are used against people they happen to like), and that he would stop with hateful rhetoric, because … well, because he doesn’t want anymore republicans shot. When I first saw the headline, a skeptical eyebrow rose, nothing more. Of course, the washed up asshole simply can’t keep his mouth shut, now that he’s found a way to get peoples’ attention once again, no matter how briefly. Ted decided to show up on Fox and Friends, his pal Trump’s favourite show.

“Let me make it perfectly clear, I have never projected hate,” Nugent insisted. “When I said that about sucking on my machine gun, that was a direct response to the liberal Democrats — Obama and Clinton, et al — [trying] to ban certain types of firearms, violating their oath to the Constitution and the Second Amendment.”

“That was a metaphor and nobody is too stupid not to know that,” he continued. “The left is so dishonest that they misrepresented that, and make it perfectly clear with my Fox & Friends, I have never threatened anybody. I have never hinted at violence.”

Right. Never, ever even so much as hinted at violence. Calls to decapitate people in November (If Obama was re-elected), mentions of nooses, lynchings, guns, and more. Not at all hinting at violence. Well, on some planet anyway, not this one. It’s much too late to play saint, Ted.

“I am reaching out across the aisle, and I am saying we must unite to bring no violence, no harm to any of our fellow Americans,” he opined. “I have always been civil. Again, during the outrage of a rock and roll performance, machine gun references have been made but nobody could possibly think I want anybody’s lips near my machine gun.”

Nugent complained that there had been no signs of civility from “the left.”

Interesting notion of civility Ted has, it certainly wouldn’t meet my definition. Anyroad, surface civility is to no point when your head is still full bigoted, poisonous hate. As for his whole “hey, outrage!” defense, I’m rather reminded of the Twinkie defense. “Hey, I was all lost in the music man, I mistook the machine gun for my guitar!” Christ, cheap and contemptible, as always.

“They’re still going to burn down buildings if they disagree with your speech, and turn over cars and attack people if they don’t agree with you,” he remarked.

“I think that’s all something we needed to hear right now,” Fox News host Abby Huntsman concluded.

It is? Pretty sure I didn’t need to hear that, because it’s yet another clod of stupid, lobbed aimlessly into a crowd. I don’t know about anyone else, but I have not been getting so gosh darn worked up I’m out and about committing arson, tipping cars, or attacking people.

If you want it, there’s video at Raw Story.

Says It All.

Philando Castile (What’s Trending).

Rep. Barbara Lee: #Philando Castile was shot in cold blood. The world watched it LIVE. What will it take for the justice system to value Black lives?

Do not go looking at the comments, unless you feel like spilling your stomach.

Be A King: This is why there’s the cry & movement, #BlackLivesMatter. It’s not anti-all lives mattering. It’s anti-#PhilandoCastile’s not mattering.

Shaun King: I must remind you that #PhilandoCastile never even broke a law. He wasn’t speeding. He was racially profiled and pulled over for being Black.

Ox: I live in a country where cops can kill me & go home for dinner. But if we don’t stand for the nat’l anthem it’s a problem.

Via Raw Story.

Kicking Kirchmeier.

Oceti Sakowin Camp. © C. Ford, all rights reserved.

There’s a petition, and yes, I know people get petition tired, but please click on over and sign this one, to remove the murder-minded and incompetent Kirchmeier from his position as Sheriff of Morton County. Kirchmeier took a brutal stance from the beginning, and as some of you will recall from the Standing Rock posts, he spread misinformation and outright lies from the beginning, and never stopped telling lies, either. He used all the climate justice warriors as an excuse to spend outrageous amounts of money on military equipment, so he could play a latter day Custer, obviously hoping for better results. In the end, his unholy alliance with the oil companies worked out just fine for him, giving him equipment to oppress and harm, all while lining his pockets. Please help out by adding your name to the petition.
 
Remove Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, of the Morton County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff David Clarke Gets His Trump Appointment.

Sheriff David Clarke Jr. CREDIT: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin.

I’m sure that Dave Clarke is just giddy over being appointed to homeland security. For the rest of us, it’s a walking, talking, nightmare. No one could possibly be less qualified than Clarke, whose hatred knows no bounds. Many times over, this man should have been tried for his crimes, and if there was any justice, he’d be sitting in a prison cell for the rest of his life.  He’s in the midst of a prison deaths scandal right now, but apparently, that doesn’t matter, anymore than his previous crimes. This is just the tip of the Clarke iceberg:

Clarke has called the Black Lives Matter movement “black slime” that “needs to be eradicated from the American society and the American culture,” “garbage” and a “subversive movement” that seeks to overthrow the government, and said that the movement is driven by “an ideology of victimhood with a list of grievances that do not exist.” He has dismissed concerns about police brutality by saying that “black criminal abuse, black criminal brutality” is “the real brutality going on in the United States.” The real problem in “the American ghetto,” he has said, is “modern liberalism.”

Clarke said that Michael Brown, the black teenager shot by police in Ferguson, Missouri, was a “co-conspirator in his own demise” because he “chose thug life.” After Sandra Bland, a black woman who had been thrown to the ground during a traffic stop, died in police custody, Clarke went on Fox News to chastise her. He said that he would have used even more force against a group of black teenagers who were thrown to the ground by police outside a public swimming pool in Ohio, telling people who saw a racial component in the action to “shut up already.”

Clarke has been colorful in his condemnation of President Obama and Hillary Clinton for sympathizing with the Black Lives Matter movement, calling them “straight-up cop haters.” He called Obama a “heartless, soulless bastard” for speaking up about “goons” killed by police and said that the Obama administration’s attempts to address racial disparities in policing were a plot to “emasculate the police” in order to impose dictatorial control.” He accused the president of worsening racial divides in the country by pitting “whites against blacks” and “Hispanics against Americans.”

The sheriff is also happy to throw red meat to his conservative audience on a number of other topics. After the Supreme Court struck down state marriage equality bans, Clarke called for a “revolution” to “get this country back,” complete with “pitchforks and torches,” urging his audience to launch a standoff against the federal government the next time a bakery or the like is fined for refusing business to a same-sex couple.

When Trump caused a national uproar when he attacked a judge because of his Mexican-American heritage, Clarke took to his radio show to defend the candidate.

Clarke first became a conservative hero when, in 2013, he aired radio ads in his county urging citizens not to rely on calling 911 but instead to learn to protect themselves against crime. Speaking at the National Rifle Association’s convention last year, he proposed adding a semi-automatic rifle to the Great Seal of the United States. Appearing on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ radio program, Clarke warned that a renewal of the federal assault weapons ban would lead to gun confiscations that would spark “the second coming of the American Revolution, the likes of which would make the first revolution pale by comparison.”

While Clarke has no patience for African Americans who have deadly run-ins with the police, he has repeatedly associated himself with anti-government militia groups who have staged armed standoffs with federal government agents or who threaten to defy federal law. Earlier this year, when a group of armed activists took over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, Clarke backed their cause, saying that the country had reached a “pitchforks and torches moment” that couldn’t be solved by an election.

In 2013, after he aired his ads discouraging citizens from relying on 911, Clarke accepted the “ Constitutional Sheriff of the Year” award from the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, an anti-government group that promotes the idea that county sheriffs are the highest law enforcement officers in the country and thus have the power to defy federal laws that they believe are unconstitutional. In his acceptance speech , Clarke declared that “government” was the “common enemy” of the “patriots” in the room. In a radio interview that year, he said that “on an everyday basis, to me, federal government is a bigger threat” than terrorism.

Just this year, Clarke spoke at a fundraising event for the New York chapter of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government group aligned with the Constitutional Sheriffs that urges law enforcement officers and military personnel to defy laws they believe are unconstitutional and encourages its members to form militias ready to defy an out-of-control federal government. At that event, Clarke called Black Lives Matter a “hate group” and vowed to do “everything I can” to get Trump elected president.

Via RWW, click on over for the full story.

Also see: Why Sheriff Clarke will be a disaster in his new job, according to his predecessor: ‘Just plain awful’.

15 Million Dollars.

Chemical warfare, Turtle Island, Oceti Sakowin Camp, November, 2016. © C. Ford, all rights reserved.

New York Daily News writer Shaun King obtained audio where Energy Transfer Partners freely admitted that they worked closely with the Sheriff’s Association, and wow, did they ever. They became one and the same.

Water protectors who lived at camp can attest to ETP and law enforcement’s collusion and fraternization, but the record speaks for itself.

The Sheriffs’ Association has a $3.46 million dollar budget, according to tax forms. Some of this funding comes from corporate sources, like TigerSwan. TigerSwan maintains offices in Iraq and Afghanistan. TigerSwan’s CEO is a former adviser to the multinational private security firm, Blackwater. Blackwater was founded by Erik Prince, a Trump campaign donor and the brother of Betsy DeVos, the U.S. Secretary of Education. Besides funding the Sheriff’s Association, TigerSwan is in charge of Dakota Access intelligence and supervising overall security for the company. Tigerswan works for Dakota Access, while funding and partnering with the Sheriffs’ Association.

The Sheriff’s Association purchased military gear from the U.S. Department’s Defense Logistics Agency thanks to the Defense Department’s 1033 program. Think corporate welfare for the defense industry.

Wait, there’s more. Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren offered to reimburse North Dakota and Morton County for costs due to defending the Dakota Access Pipeline.

So why are U.S. taxpayers forking over $15 million dollars to North Dakota?

Despite the fossil fuel industry’s wishes, America is not an oil company with an army. We should not be bankrolling our own oppression.

Incidentally, the Dakota Access Pipeline is not even operational yet, and it’s already sprung a leak in South Dakota, just southwest of the Lake Traverse Reservation. End this foolishness.

Ruth Hopkins at Indian Country Today has the full story.

The Only Way To Stop Killers: More Guns!

A boy looks at guns during the NRA’s annual meeting in Atlanta. CREDIT: Kira Lerner.

How many words are there to express disgust, loathing, and contempt? Consider every single one of them applied to the absolute fucking drivel to follow. According to a self-described Professor of Killology, all the parents are raising horrible, sick, demented monsters, not children. And the only way to deal with this generation of sick, horrible, demented monsters? Why, more guns of course! Everyone should rush out and buy, buy, buy, buy more guns, because that will make everything better.

Dave Grossman, a self-described professor of “killology” who published a book in November called Assassination Generation, claimed that violent video games and movies are turning children into monsters capable of committing worse mass shootings than those we have seen in recent decades.

“Can anyone deny that we’ve raised the most vicious generation of killers the world has ever seen?” he asked the NRA audience. “They’ve given us crimes that children have never dreamed of. They’ll give us crimes as adults in our darkest nightmares we never imagined.”

Like other speakers throughout the NRA’s three-day convention, Grossman refused to recognize the link between the high number of guns and gun deaths in the United States. Instead, he tried to use outside forces to explain the violence, to drive fear and paranoia, and to convince people to purchase more firearms.

“The one factor the killers have in common: every one of them dropped out of life and immersed themselves in the sickest movies and the sickest video games,” he said. “The guns have always been there. The sick movies and the sick video games are creating sick, sick kids.”

[…]

He also focused on mass school shootings, occurrences that are rare and make up a tiny percentage of all gun deaths. An average of 12,000 people are killed each year by guns, but more than half are suicides and most of the others occur during domestic disputes. In an average month, 50 women are shot to death by an intimate partner.

Grossman made no mention of the dangers of having a gun in the home. Instead, he focused on children and deranged “lone jackals” being the problem.

Oh yes, the refuge of every obsessed gun fondler: the lone wolf. Of course guns having nothing to do with gun deaths, no, no, it was, it was, gimme a minute, I’ll pull something out of my ass. The one thing this fucked up mess of a country does not need is more guns.

Think Progress has the full story.