NoDAPL: It’s Not Over.

Photo by Tod Seelie for Jezebel.

Photo by Tod Seelie for Jezebel.

Yes, there was a celebration over having some breathing room at last. But if anyone knows not to trust government, it’s Indians. There’s even less reason to trust oil companies who are already bursting with billions of dollars. All that money means power, and they do not like being thwarted. They have engaged in an ongoing smear campaign, spreading lies and propaganda, openly purchasing the Morton County Sheriff’s department, with the approval of long ago purchased Governor Jack Dalrymple. The Army Corps of Engineers has asked ETP to stop digging before, and what happened? They went out on a holiday weekend and kept working, destroying sacred sites. ETP does not care what anyone says, they do not think they are obligated to listen or obey in any sense. Their sense of 1% entitlement is even bigger than their pockets. Their hatred of the Indians attempting to protect the land and water, for all peoples, has infuriated them from the start, and that start was in 2012.

It didn’t take long for them to lash out in absolute fury and defiance, in a lie and propaganda filled piece of bile, and their insistence they will indeed complete DAPL as planned. The people at the Oceti Sakowin camp aren’t going anywhere yet.

The White House’s directive today to the Corps for further delay is just the latest in a series of overt and transparent political actions by an administration which has abandoned the rule of law in favor of currying favor with a narrow and extreme political constituency.

As stated all along, ETP and SXL are fully committed to ensuring that this vital project is brought to completion and fully expect to complete construction of the pipeline without any additional rerouting in and around Lake Oahe. Nothing this Administration has done today changes that in any way.

So, keep those donations coming, people, and help in any way you can, because this is far from over. Those of us here in nDakota have already seen what ETP is willing to do, and it’s not pretty. All the veterans pouring into camp helped beyond measure, because even Kirchmeier can figure out that assaulting veterans is likely to result in much media coverage, and negative coverage at that, so they’ve stood down for now, but that won’t last. No one at the camps can afford to leave until ETP leaves, completely.

“We don’t trust anything they say,” Castaneda explained pleasantly. He first arrived at Standing Rock in October, and stayed through most of November before returning home for a spell. He returned this week. Cunningham and a friend, social worker Kyla Ferguson, had been here since mid-November. All three noticed a sudden absence of law enforcement drones hovering over the camp on Sunday. The peace and quiet, they pointed out, coincided with an influx of media and celebrity supporters, not to mention thousands of veterans who arrived to support and defend the water protectors. All three worried that ETP and law enforcement were merely behaving themselves for now.

“Once the media and the vets leave, they’ll start acting out,” Cunningham said. That’s what happened in late October, when seven different police agencies converged on the 1851 Treaty Camp, which stood in the pipeline’s path. The three friends watched as tipis and tents were destroyed. People were sprayed with rubber bullets or dragged from where they were praying in a sweat lodge and arrested. Some 140 people were taken into custody in all. It was a scene he found hard to forget.

“Native Americans have been sold a bill of goods a million times,” he added. “There’s a lot of mistrust.”

Via Jezebel. * #NoDAPL. * The Verge has covered the ETP response. * Then there’s this.

To every single person who has supported us and helped, whether spreading the word, getting the signal boosted, donations of any kind, lila wopila – very many thanks. Thank you all so much. Thank you for standing up for what is right, for standing up for a healthy planet, healthy water, for the wealth that truly matters, family, friends, and a sustainable, healthy ecosystem. The fight for these things is going to get much harder, all over the planet. Let’s keep that love going, and keep standing up.

Kirchmeier: I wanna be a star! Gimme money!

1-cf5-4kyrkfgnilxeul0r3a

Goodness. It’s rather clear just why Kirchmeier insisted on millions more on top of the 10 mil already provided, which bought him all kinds of white cowboy military tough guy Rambo goodies, most of which have been brought to bear on unarmed protectors. Hundreds of people have been badly injured by Kirchmeier’s tough dude fantasies, given reality by the unreal amount of money handed over by KKKJack Dalrymple, and we know who is backing him. (When you have invested all your money in oil, made sure there is no oversight and no accountability, why, so surprising oil would have his greedy backside, right?)

Now that millions more have been handed to him, Kirchmeier, after jerking around with the Morton County Sheriff’s fb, posting lies, getting caught, taking them down, lather rinse repeat a zillion times, yanking the whole account down, and now rebooting it, with Kyle the star of his dreams in “truth videos”. Sigh. This man is a flagrant criminal, and he’s never met a lie he doesn’t like. But he knows the truth, you betcha, and of course, he’s a bloody saint, and all those evil Indians and allies, well, we’re savages. And criminals. And liars. I’ve been out to the Oceti Sakowin camp, many times. Kirchmeier is a liar. He lies at every opportunity. I’ve witnessed his actions, I’ve heard his lies, and I’ve documented plenty, along with many others. Anyone with a conscience would be permanently bright red with embarrassment and shame right about now, but it looks like those are two things which do not exist in Kirchmeier.

Story at Medium, via #RuthHopkins.

In the meantime, this fucking thug of an asshole couldn’t even manage a proper thank you to those who fulfilled his Morton County and Burleigh County Cops’ wishlist:

On Friday December 2nd at approximately 2pm CST Water Protectors from Oceti Sakowin camp will fulfill a donation list that the Morton County Sheriff’s Department released on November 22, 2016.

The Oceti Sakowin headsman will join veterans, youth, and women leaders and stand with Leonard Crow Dog who will offer a prayer as Protectors deliver the supplies to the Sheriff’s Department in Mandan, ND.

Water Protectors offer these donations to the Morton County officers in generosity and compassion, despite the aggression and hostility they have shown innocent unarmed Protectors of this camp.

The following is a join statement from the Indigenous Environmental Network and the Indigenous Peoples Power Project :

“North Dakota taxpayers have already bankrolled the Morton County Sheriff Department with approximately 10 million dollars for the suppression of peaceful water protectors. Despite this excessive financial support, Morton County officers are asking taxpayers to donate supplies.

The Oceti Sakowin camp is a prayer camp, and a resilient, self-sufficient community. The camp is full of abundance– in spirit, in humanity, and in resources. Oceti Sakowin has enough to share. Generosity is an original teaching for the Lakota.”

Via Common Dreams.

internationalindigenousyouthcouncilgivespeaceofferingtolawenforcement

Several weeks ago, law enforcement dealing with DAPL protests sent out a list of goods they could use if the community would like to donate them.

The International Indigenous Youth Council saw that list and decided to use it as an opportunity for de-escalation. Lead by the council, demonstrators dropped off Gatorade, water, batteries, breakfast bars and more.

The teens said they wanted the police to know they have compassion for all people and all walks of life.

“As American citizens, as the good American citizens that we are, we went ahead and we supplied them with that. We gave them water because water is life,” says Thomas Lopez Jr., IIYC member.

We reached out to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department who declined to comment on camera. Instead, they directed us to a Facebook post that read:

“Thank you to the members of the International Indigenous Youth Council who stopped by with gifts of supplies and snacks for our employees. Your kindness and support is very much appreciated!”

Via KFYR. Wow, aren’t you just blown away by the thanks? How about how much it has been completely underplayed? You’d almost think Kirchmeier didn’t want anyone to know about this, and given the fact that it isn’t being shouted by the cops, or covered by anyone else, well, I guess that means he keeps getting to paint us as nasty, evil, savages. Look in a fucking mirror, Kirchmeier, and you’ll see the evil.

Trump’s Carrier Con.

President-elect Donald Trump at Carrier’s Indianapolis plant on Thursday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

President-elect Donald Trump at Carrier’s Indianapolis plant on Thursday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

If you think that Trump somehow “came through” on that jobs business, you need to think again. All Trump did was play a game, showering a billion dollar business with tax cuts and money, money, money, that is going to end up being pulled out of the taxpayers of Indiana’s pockets, some way or another. Close to 1,500 jobs are still moving to Mexico. So, great save, Donnie. Rather than swallow the bullshit whole, spend a few minutes of your day reading, not only about the details of this supposed great move, but how the media is complicit in selling the con, assuming most people will simply take it all as truth, and too many will do that. Don’t be one of them.

Carrier also confirmed in a press release on Wednesday night that it is getting economic incentives from the state, which “were an important consideration.” Various outlets reported that those incentives will amount to $7 million over a decade, or $700,000 a year.

At the event, Trump claimed that 1,100 jobs will remain in the state, which he said could go up and “is a minimum number.” Yet at least half of the company’s Indiana jobs will still go to Mexico. United Technologies, the parent company for Carrier, is still going to move 700 at the Huntington plant, while not all of the 1,400 jobs at the Indianapolis job are being retained.

Meanwhile, Indiana residents will shoulder the cost of the $7 million incentive package. But if past evidence is any guide, they won’t get much actual benefit for it.

The full story is here, go read, be informed. In the meantime, mainstream media has been spinning all this as “harsh consequences” threatened by Trump have worked in the case of Carrier. Couldn’t be farther from the truth. Yes, Trump did make noise about punishing corporations who wanted to move jobs out of the country, but the reality is that he’ll give them whatever they want, if they agree to keep “some” jobs in uStates. I can’t imagine who actually thought Trump would in any way be harsh when it came to corporations, he’s all for corporations, and he’ll make sure they get ultra sweet deals, while they continue to screw over workers, who will barely make a living wage, with zero safety net under them. There’s a full article about the media spin here, go read.

Yet the day after his speech, prominent media outlets ran with headlines saying that Trump is threatening to crack down on companies that move production offshore. They focused on his threat of “consequences,” despite the deal he actually struck with Carrier that includes no such consequences and despite other parts of his speech where he promised benefits to companies that threaten to leave.

Standing Rock: The Veterans Are Coming In.

Veteran Matthew Crane says soldiers like him have skills and training that could be useful in the Oceti Sakowin Camp. (Angela Johnston/CBC).

Veteran Matthew Crane says soldiers like him have skills and training that could be useful in the Oceti Sakowin Camp. (Angela Johnston/CBC).

American veteran Matthew Crane has been to Iraq and Kuwait, and has led disaster relief teams in the U.S. Now he says he’s found a new mission at the Oceti Sakowin Camp in North Dakota, supporting those opposing the Dakota Access pipeline.

The 32-year-old navy veteran is one of a growing number of ex-military members heading to the centre of the pipeline fight as part of a group called Veterans Stand for Standing Rock.

Naturally, Kirchmeier has been moaning about the veterans, saying they will bring violence. Right, because you damn piggish thugs haven’t been indulging in criminal violence at all, right? And shame on all the nDakota veterans* who are standing around tsking, and attempting to pour shame on these veterans who are standing up and doing the right thing. You can all go shut up and hide, and pretend you have morals somewhere in your back pocket. Doing whatever authority tells you, swallowing a gallon of oil and propaganda about us horrible savages, that’s easy. Standing up, thinking for yourself, recognizing evil, and having the courage to stand against it, that’s what the veterans at Standing Rock are doing, and everyone should be proud of them.

My thanks to those cops who have finally seen the light, and have refused to send people here. There aren’t enough of you, but it’s good there are some.

*Also, that cowardly lump of paste has the fucking nerve to say that the protectors have cost ND $10 million dollars. NO, THEY HAVE NOT. That criminal bigot, KKKJack Dalrymple cost the people of nDakota 10 million dollars, and has dumped another 7 million on that, for what? Oh, more piggish thugs! More shiny military equipment with which to brutalize the unarmed protectors. Fuck every single nDakotan who is such a fucking idiot that they buy this garbage. *spits*

Full article is here.

As for KKJack Dalrymple’s supposed “concern”:

The Standing Rock Sioux, in a statement on Wednesday, said that because “the Governor of North Dakota and Sheriff of Morton County are relative newcomers” to the land, “it is understandable they would be concerned about severe winter weather.”

They said the camp has adequate shelter to handle the cold weather, adding that the Great Sioux Nation has survived “in this region for millennia without the concerns of state or county governments.”

And KKKJack says he’s worried about all us Indians in winter. Yeah. Let’s see you walk 250 miles, Jack.

And for all those fucking idiots who keep claiming this is what we deserve, because hey, Standing Rock didn’t show to meetings, once again, yes we did. In 2012 and 2014, along with 2016. Stop spreading that damn lie.

Canada: Trudeau Okays Two Pipeline Projects.

4

On Tuesday, Canada’s Liberal government approved two major oil pipelines that, if constructed, would send one million more barrels of oil a day from Alberta’s tar sands — known in Canada as oil sands — to markets overseas. The move brought a chorus of criticism from environmentalists and indigenous communities, which have fought hard against the pipeline projects.

The move could be a major setback for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who came into power on a progressive platform that included strong climate action. He has spoken out in favor of the Paris climate agreement, and, under his leadership, Canada has announced plans to enact a nationwide carbon tax. But approving two pipeline projects — even while rejecting the Northern Gateway pipeline — will certainly damage his credibility with environmentalists who had hoped Trudeau’s leadership would signal a clean break from the policies of his predecessor, climate-denier Stephen Harper.

During the announcement, Trudeau acknowledged that the decision was bound to upset many across Canada, but argued that the projects were in the best interest of the country and the economy.

[…]

“Today’s announcement may as well have said that Canada is pulling out of the Paris climate agreement,” Aurore Fauret, Tar Sands Campaign Coordinator with 350.org, said in a statement. “By approving the Kinder Morgan and Line 3 pipelines, there is no way Canada can meet those commitments. Justin Trudeau has broken his promises for real climate leadership, and broken his promise to respect the rights of Indigenous peoples.”

[…]

Vancouver residents — as well as residents of Washington state, which shares waters with the Port of Vancouver — worry that increased oil traffic will raise the risk of a major spill off the Vancouver coast. The product from Alberta’s tar sands is a particularly heavy type of oil known as bitumen, which sinks when released in water, instead of rising to the surface like other oils. That makes cleaning up bitumen spills incredibly difficult and costly — instead of skimming oil off the top of the water, cleaning up bitumen usually requires dredging, which can have serious detrimental effects on ecosystems. Indigenous communities along the Vancouver coast are worried that such a spill could devastate important species like salmon and orcas.

“This issue is as black and white as the killer whales they endanger,” Charlene Aleck, a spokeswoman for the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, said in a statement. “This is about our survival and the protection of our home, this inlet and the planet. They are making a big mistake, we will not allow this pipeline to be built.”

[…]

Local environmental activist groups, however, voiced their disapproval of Trudeau’s decision.

“As thousands of water protectors continue to make camp in winter conditions at Standing Rock, more crude oil pipelines are the last thing the Midwest needs,” Andy Pearson, Midwest tar sands coordinator with MN350, said in a statement. “The Canadian approval of Line 3 is a slap in the face to the landowners and indigenous community members of North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, who will work harder than ever to make sure this dirty tar sands pipeline does not cross into the United States.”

[…]

On Tuesday, hours before Trudeau’s decision to approve the two pipeline expansion projects, news broke that Kellyanne Conway, President-elect Trump’s campaign manager and senior transition adviser, would be traveling to Canada before the inauguration to tour Alberta’s tar sands.

The move has lead to speculation that the incoming Trump administration might renew the Keystone XL project, something that Trump promised during his campaign. Following Trump’s Electoral College win on November 8, TransCanada — the company behind Keystone — released a statement saying it was eager to work with a Trump administration.

“TransCanada remains fully committed to building Keystone XL,” company spokesman Mark Cooper said.

We can all thank Prime Minister Trudeau for jumping on the oil wagon, and guaranteeing that Indigenous peoples in Canada and uStates will be endangered and royally screwed over. Thanks ever.

Full story here.

Every Day of December is a #NoDAPL Day of Action.

Help Amplify, This Is Very Important, Thunderclap!

static1-squarespace-com

Take Action! * Banks Target Map.

There’s more at the Sacred Stone Camp Blog. http://sacredstonecamp.org/blog/december-action.

Reuters has the latest on the Thug’s action plan. Oh yes, they are just so darned concerned about people in the cold, that’s why they are trying to cut off supplies and threatening people bringing supplies with a $1,000 fine. So compassionate!

1480516044871

Missouri Pipeline Explodes.

Standing Rock Protester Shot in Face With Tear Gas Canister May Go Blind.

All the Disciples and Crocodile Tears.

croc

Crocodile Tears.

The evangelist Rick Joyner has quite a lot to say about Trump. Silly, unbelievable bullshit, but I’m sure those who listen to him will happily buy it.

On his most recent “Prophetic Perspectives on Current Events” program, televangelist Rick Joyner declared that President-elect Donald Trump is a “tough as nails” leader who is also deeply compassionate and religious …. not unlike the disciples whom Jesus chose.

Yeah, yeah, Jesus was a real tough guy, and those disciples were thugs. Does it matter? No one actually knows if a Jesus actually existed, and if he did, well, let’s just say the story got super-exaggerated. The point is that the soft clay figures of Jesus and crew can be made over into whatever image any one person wants, the premier feature of all gods, because after all, they are made in our images, not the other way around.

Joyner said that he met with Trump once before the election and discussed Trump’s plans to address illegal immigration. During the discussion, Joyner claimed, he “saw the tears well up” in Trump’s eyes at the thought that his plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants could split up families.

“He was about to bust out crying,” Joyner claimed. “He said, ‘We can’t do that, we can’t hurt the families, we’ve got to fix that.’”

That’s one way to get me gagging early in the morning. He seriously expects people to believe this bullshit, after months of intense hatred hurled at anyone who wasn’t pasty white? Lazy, liars, rapists, but hey, I don’t want to break up families, we must make sure they are *all* deported! FFS, what a load of crap. Building that bloody stupid wall was a central part of Trump’s platform, one which got mass amounts of people on board with his idiocy and hate.

Joyner insisted that Trump is also “one of the most honest people I’ve met” and that he possesses a “remarkable fear of the Lord,” so much so that he fired his campaign manager after learning that “this guy was cutting off these Christian leaders from being able to contact him.”

“When he heard that, the guy was gone right away,” Joyner said.

Honest? I’ve lost count of how many times Trump has been indicted for fraud. He’s certainly paid out millions upon millions in such cases to prevent being convicted. He can’t open his mouth without lying. Fact-checking website Politifact, who fact-checked at least 337 of Trump’s statements on the campaign trail and since his election victory, noted that 19 percent of his claims were “mostly false,” 34 percent were “false,” and 18 percent were “pants on fire.” And the lies continue. He lies about the popular vote, he lies about everything. No, honesty is not a virtue of Trump’s. It’s not a virtue of Joyner’s, either. Trump fired a number of campaign managers, and I doubt anyone was fired for “cutting off access to Christian leaders”.

“If you look at the disciples that Jesus chose, they were all Donald Trump,” Joyner later declared. “Every one of them were Donald Trumps.”

Well, there’s a nasty image, leaves a bad taste in the brain. Good description of Christianity though.

Via RRW and Raw Story.

No Citizenship for You! Or You! Or You!

CREDIT: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana.

I had thought that Richard Dawkins was the prime example of old, white, straight male privilege spilling out all over Twitter like toxic waste. We have a new winner for that position, one Donald Trump. For fuck’s sake, if he can’t control himself on effing Twitter, what does that say for when he’s handed the keys to the country?

Adorable, isn’t it, electing a jackass who doesn’t know one thing about government, history, the constitution, or the bill of rights. These are things you should know from grade school, but as we’ll see in an upcoming post, Trump doesn’t think that sort of thing matters, no. It’s just as well to keep in mind that this may well be another smoke screen, give the rubes something to watch, while I do this next evil thing. It’s best not to forget the proposal for legislating “economic terrorism“, aka protests. Everyone in the resistance has to keep all this in mind. Okay, back to the current idiocy:

But even setting aside Trump’s unconstitutional call to criminalize flag burning, which became a staple of American conservative politics long before Trump emerged as a presidential candidate, Trump is calling for something even more extraordinary. He wants to strip citizenship — and with it, voting rights — from political dissidents. Federal law does permit Americans to lose their citizenship after “committing any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States,” but flag burning is a far cry from treason or armed rebellion. It is a political statement, and democracy depends on the free expression of political ideas.

The president-elect of the United States has proposed stripping a political protester’s very status as an American. In the process, he would take away that person’s ability to vote — and thus to vote for someone other than Donald Trump. Today, Trump proposes this consequence for a very specific category of speech that most Americans view as odious. But once a person’s voting rights can be made contingent upon their beliefs, or their silence, then elections become increasingly meaningless.

We have to remember that Trump isn’t done appointing people as of yet; we have to remember that people with truly repugnant views control the senate and congress, so there’s little point scoffing with a “can’t happen”. We’ve seen what can happen. If that “economic terrorism” bill goes through, and there’s no particular reason to think it won’t, especially given Standing Rock, this isn’t quite as impossible as it seems right now. It doesn’t even matter whether or not Trump means what he says, he said it, he said it in a very public manner, and all the bigots, white supremacists, and other weak people who are desperate for a chance to kick others will embrace it. Welcome to the Nightmare.

Via Think Progress. * Support The Resistance.

A Line in the Snow.

ict_editoon_112516

No DAPL: Drawing a Line in the Snow.

And because I was at the Oceti Sakowin camp last Thursday, this year’s Thankstealing:

ict_editoon_112316

Seeing Through The Distortion.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko.

It’s not a simple matter, cutting through the constant distortions and lies which characterize the new administration here in uStates. There’s a strong inclination to simply dismiss Trump as an irrelevant blowhard, but that’s not the smart thing to do, because whether or not Trump has the slightest idea of what he’s doing (not much, in my opinion), the people behind him, those appointed and who now have unprecedented power, they do know what they are doing. They also know what they want. There are certain similarities to the Bush Jr. regime, but there’s much more “baffle ’em with bullshit” and “give them a reality show!” going on here. With Bush, there was a deadly calculation put into the manipulation of the public at large. Fear was whipped up to a point that people were willingly signing their rights away. I’d like to think that isn’t going to happen again, but it’s already in process. Whatever rights we thought we had are being carved away in great swathes, there’s no subtle whittling away here. Too many people simply want a ‘good’ show to watch, and Trump is capable of that much. What’s shameful here is that so much of the public doesn’t seem to want much more than that. If they ever do wake up, it will be much too late.

If Bush and Rove constructed a fantasy world with a clear internal logic, Trump has built something more like an endless bad dream. In his political universe, facts are unstable and ephemeral; events follow one after the other with no clear causal linkage; and danger is everywhere, although its source seems to change at random. Whereas President Bush offered America the illusion of morality clarity, President-elect Trump offers an ever-shifting phantasmagoria of sense impressions and unreliable information, barely held together by a fog of anxiety and bewilderment. Think Kafka more than Lord of the Rings.

It is tempting to suppose Trump built this phantasmagoria by accident — that it is the byproduct of an erratic, undisciplined, borderline pathological approach to dishonesty. But the president-elect should not be underestimated. His victories in both the Republican primary and the general election were stunning upsets, and he is now set to alter the course of world history. If he does not fully understand what he is doing, his advisers certainly do.

Steve Bannon, former head of the white nationalist outlet Breitbart News, is Trump’s Karl Rove. He knows. In a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Bannon suggested that the key elements in his strategy are dissimulation and “darkness.”

[Read more…]

The Disavowal That Wasn’t There.

President-elect Donald Trump, left, gestures as he talks to the media as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie looks on at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016, in Bedminster, N.J. CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster.

President-elect Donald Trump, left, gestures as he talks to the media as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie looks on at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016, in Bedminster, N.J. CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster.

I remember talking with Rick about all the white nationalists and supremacists embracing Trump, and he said “but he disavowed them”, and I said “no, he didn’t”. People might think Trump did disavow all the racists and nazis worshiping at his feet, but he really didn’t, anymore than he disavowed and condemned all the acts of hate which started during the election process, and continue. A weak and muttered “Sad. Stop. Don’t do that.” doesn’t mean a thing, and all the white supremacists and every other brand of racist and bigot well know that. They also know his supposed disavowal doesn’t mean a thing. If you’re someone who did vote for Trump, and has been trying to salve your increasingly uneasy conscience, at least be as smart as all those racists you “didn’t vote for”, and understand that it’s not what Trump sort of says that matters, it’s what he does, and what he’s doing is appointing white supremacists and zealous racists. Think Progress has a very good article about that so-called disavowal.

[Read more…]

James Means Murder Update.

James Means.

James Means.

It was days ago I posted about the brutal and senseless murder of 15 year old James Means, who bumped into a vicious bigot with a gun.

The shooter, William Ronald Pulliam, has been charged with murder. What makes this murder even more agonizing, in this country with way too few gun laws, is that Mr. Pulliam should never have been allowed a gun at all, going by the paltry gun laws which are in effect. Supposedly in effect.

Pulliam and Means argued after the two bumped into each other on the sidewalk in front of the store. When Pulliam left the store a few minutes later the two argued again, police say, before the 62-year-old shot Means with a .380 revolver he should have been barred from owning due to a 2013 domestic violence conviction for battering his then-pregnant daughter.

Not only was Mr. Pulliam wandering about with a gun he should not have had, the police were aware of his vicious bigotry, and that he frightened local residents.

Pulliam, who is white, was a familiar villain to some of Means’ friends. Fourteen-year-old Teonno White had tried to talk to Pulliam after the man picked on White’s younger brother.

“He said, ‘Get the [expletive] off my property.’ He said I need to go on with my nappy Latino self. He’s just a real bad guy,” White told the Gazette Mail. White had called police about Pulliam before, the paper noted, and had been told to stay away from him.

And yet, Mr. Pulliam, who was quoted as saying “The way I look at it, that’s another piece of trash off the street,” about his murdering young James, claims not only self defense, even though James was unarmed, he claims he gets along with all the pieces of trash:

“I don’t care if they’re white or black. Nobody is going to do me like that,” he said. “It doesn’t make any difference if he’s black. My God, everybody I live around over there is black. I get along with all of them, ask them.”

I don’t imagine Mr. Pulliam ever asked all those people he gets along with how they felt about him.

Full story at Think Progress. Here’s hoping this does not go the way it did in too many other cases, with yet another white bigot being excused for outright murder.