Did you know that Melissa Hortman’s murderer has still not been charged with domestic terrorism, despite the fact that he specifically targeted Democrats in Minnesota?
Also, we still have no serious restrictions on gun ownership. You can gun down small children and far-right political figures, and we still can’t get gun control. In South Korea, guns are tightly regulated — even hunting rifles are expected to be locked up in the city courthouse, and if you want to use them, they have to be checked out. I would vote for that.
In Britain and Australia, conservative (!) governments introduced strict gun control after especially awful spree shootings.
The Repubs have no ideology, beyond “please the base with bullshit that cost no money while we let our corporate sponsors rob them blind”.
Don’t forget Gilbert.
Source : https://houseandwhips.com/melissa-hortman-dog-gilbert/
Oh and her husband Mark as well.
This isn’t as bad as it sounds.
Melissa Hortman’s murderer has been charged with murder under the state laws of Minnesota.
This means that if and when he is convicted then…Trump can’t pardon him!
The Federal power to pardon only applies to Federal crimes.
Would Trump pardon this hate and terrorist criminal?
He might.
No one trusts the Federal government any more for very good reasons.
He is now far into dementia and is mostly a meat puppet of the far right wingnuts around him.
Kirk will get more sympathy and amplified publicity, mostly attacking the radical left.
Guns and killings will continue to make headlines for years to come. After Sandy hook, we, as a country, did nothing and nothing will continue to happen regarding gun control.
Here is a headline in my local news feed.
After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Trump and MAGA make explosive accusations: ‘Party of murder’
I’m going to explain why it looks like Trump is losing contact with reality.
Most know that Poland was attacked by 19 Russian drones a few days ago. This is a major escalation of the Russian war against NATO and the West.
Poland and Dutch fighter jets shot them down.
The various NATO leaders had a lot to say about this.
Canada Prime Minister Michael Carney “Russia’s incursion into Polish airspace last night was reckless and escalatory. Canada stands with Poland and our NATO Allies,” Carney said in a statement posted to X.
President Trump “”What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday.
The Canadian Prime Minister said Canada stands with NATO.
Trump seemed confused and didn’t say much of anything useful. There has since been no US followup. It is quite possible that Trump has since forgotten it and moved on to whatever shiny thing has since caught his attention.
We are heading to the point where we don’t actually have a functioning president any more.
this is an illustration of a very real problem. we see memes and jokes (from the ‘right’) posted when Paul Pelosi was attacked, and (at best) incidents like this one ignored by them. Yet we (on the ‘left’) get immediately blamed for our rhetoric – labeling people extremists or nazis – and the derision that sympathies offered are not sincere. The hypocrisy is breathtaking, and it is overwhelmingly one sided. I have seen nothing but prominent democrats and democrat leaning pundits expressing horror at Kirk’s murder and offering sincere condolences to his family. While the current president rants about retribution and lists a number of attacks against GOP folks (and ignoring the rest of the attacks – like the subject of this post)
As I learned on The Daily Show, Switzerland has a level of gun love which is similar to America’s. Well, aside from the fact that the Swiss still value human lives more than their guns. https://youtu.be/tNpl9Nh85TM
After Charlie Kirk’s killing, MAGA influencers call for violence
Here’s a random thought I had last night. I may have read too many sci-fi novels in my day, but here goes. What if the Kirk killing was the equivalent of the old question, If you could, would you go back in time and kill Hitler in his youth? Perhaps Kirk’s killer is from the future. He may have come back to stop Kirk from becoming president, and causing all sorts of mayhem, perhaps even the destruction of the nation. If the shooter is never caught, that would be grist for the time travel idea.
As I said, I may be steeped in too many time travel tales seeking to undo a terrible past.
raven @6: There are already signs that Trump’s lost contact with reality. His health is obviously failing, he probably had a large medical event a couple of weeks ago, and his social media account is increasingly obviously being written by someone other than him. But that’s off topic for this thread.
Back on topic, we have a man who’s actions by any sane metric made him a terrorist, and his death is attracting far more sympathy from Democratic lawmakers than the tens of thousands of children in Palestine that have been killed by Israel’s actions or the eleven innocent civilians killed because Trump had a “vibe” that they were drug runners.
Here’s my take on what’s going on here. Stupid Idiot Dump deliberately ordered Kirk to be killed and is making it look like an American hero has tragically fallen while Kirk was in fact a vile, hate preaching, close ally of Dump who threatened to expose Dump’s involvement with Epstein. Thus, leading Dump to order a hit on him while he fakes a national mourning period to deflect from his heavily involvement with Epstein and to cover his crime against his former ally Kirk.
Remember this terrorist attack?
It was a whole month ago that an antivaxxer terrorist fired 500 rounds at the CDC headquarters and killed a cop.
The right wingnuts didn’t say much of anything about this terrorist attack and it was soon forgotten.
Not to mention that this is an attempt by that Stupid idiot to make people forget about the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack that occurred 24 years ago.
#13
I would bet that this Kirk ordeal with be completely forgotten after a few days as well.
rtwing xtian terrorists ignore any decent caring person that is killed. But, rant like banshees when some rtwing ahole is shot.
The violent gun fondling rtwing aholes blame everything on anyone who opposes them and almost always without honest facts to support the manure they spew. This nation is being MURDERED by rtwing xtian terrorists. They are busy pushing us down the Death Spiral.
Shermanj @ 16
“Oh no. Septic tank man was killed.”
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19yRvFEwQL/
Behold Charlie Kirk in all his glory.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/1B7hsVew8H/
Good points, PZ. Thanks for posting that.
Let us honor Charlie Kirk by respecting his belief. I do not feel empathy for him because he would have wanted it this way!
.https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17DMTxQjUP/
From The Infinite Thread:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/07/02/infinite-thread-xxxvi/comment-page-6/#comment-2277218
@ 12 Owosso Harpist
Would not surprise me in the least.
I would not be surprised if that turned out to be true. This is not beyond Trump’s game plans. It would fit his pattern and align with his methods and not come as a shock.
More elected Democrats have eulogized this ghoul that they ever did for any Palestinian, trans person, or ever representative of their own party who was murdered, and they have the fucking gall to immediately demand everyone else, including those victimized by him, condemn “political violence”. Trying to whitewash a man who spent his life encouraging violence against the marginalized, and who was literally shot in the middle of a racist quip. Seeing so many replies to them on social media with screenshots showing nothing found when searching their posts for “Hortman”. Really shows whose lives they actually think matter, really shows how beyond corrupt, hypocritical, spineless, and utterly ignorant they are.
So far, I feel (a bit less than) 9% as unhappy about Charlie Kirk than about the crew and passengers of a certain speedboat a few miles off the coast of Venezuela.
I don’t have any reliable figures to compute my comparative disquiet with a small Strip along the coast of the eastern Mediterranean, or a larger space just north of the Black Sea.
We might somewhat console ourselves with the recognition that Kirk died spreading lies and bigotry: he ended his life doing what he loved.
They – the FBI – sure were quick to label the Annunciation school shooting as terrorism. Even absent a motive.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7760x87r4po
Owosso Harpist @12: There wouldn’t need to be an Epstein connection here. Trump (or someone else in the GQP) may simply have decided that Kirk is more valuable as a dead and sainted martyr than as a live activist.
But right now, I don’t believe there was any such GQP/Retrumplitarian conspiracy to kill Kirk. Just for starters, the shooter would have had to be willing to either be killed himself, or go to jail and spend the rest of his life pretending his motives were something very different from what they really were. I don’t see any Republican, even the most bald-faced nazis, having either the will or the self-discipline to do that; nor could any top GQP conspirators trust any of their own to do that. Nor do I see any evidence that anyone in the GQP is actually competent enough to pull off such a conspiracy.
I very much doubt that CK was killed so as to make a martyr. After all, he still had at least 40-50 years of hate speech in him. If a martyr was required, how about a Mitch McConnell? That makes a LOT more sense to me…
and
To the surprise of no one, multiple DNC offices and multiple historically Black universities have received bomb threats and death threats.
Explain to me again how the GOP is the party of law and order.
Right wing terrorist events outnumber leftist terror events by something like 10 to 1.
Isn’t much support of the 2nd amendment rooted in the ideal of political violence?
pretty sure he’d think his death was “worth it”
https://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/worth-it-charlie-kirks-thoughts-on-gun-control/video/f68e1c16e57b1790fcce201efe6868fb
We couldn’t ban bumpstocks.
It’s such a small thing.
@7, notaandomposter
As always, the hypocrisy is the point. It’s a power move, punishing others for breaking rules you yourself don’t adhere to. And going high when they go low dovetails all too nicely into that.