BLUF:
[PJ] The media quickly sought to blame conservative Christians for the shooting, concluding that the shooter specifically targeted the Pulse nightclub because it was a gay nightclub.
This wasn’t true.
For starters, the shooter wasn’t even Christian; Omar Mateen was Muslim and had pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Nor was the shooting about anti-LGBT hate. As Vox reported in April of 2018, "There’s now conclusive evidence that the shooter wasn’t intending to target LGBTQ people at all."
According to a report from the Huffington Post titled "Everyone Got The Pulse Massacre Story Completely Wrong," also published the same month, "Mateen had never been to Pulse before, whether as a patron or to case the nightclub. Even prosecutors acknowledged in their closing statement that Pulse was not his original target; it was the Disney Springs shopping and entertainment complex."
Despite this, the myth that the attack was a hate crime specifically targeting the LGBT community remains alive and well. There’s even a planned memorial and museum — yes, a museum — dedicated to perpetuating the lie that this was an LGBT hate crime.
May or may not have "jumped the gun." No toxicology reports released. No information on the possibility of drugs found in the home. Investigators probably know more than is being released in news briefings. Just my guess.
"Targeted killing." Killer might have been after one person. Darkened rooms may have led him (or them) to kill everyone in order to get the target.
Hopefully a chronological 'social network' deep-dive is being conducted. Friends & family, travel, cell phones, etc.
#2
Asshole shooter's been flagged in the past for bomb threats. He's White and also the grandson of our soon-to-be-former Assemblyman in East San Diego County, Randy Voepel
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/21/2022 9:11 Comments ||
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#3
It is not known why, if this is the same person, he was out on the streets already, but his violent history would seem to point to mental health problems, not a political agenda.
But doesn't a mental health problem suggest he is (pick one) a left-wing loonie, or a conservative, Christian, election-denying, Trump-loving, gun-toting right-wing loonie?
Posted by: Bobby ||
11/21/2022 9:40 Comments ||
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#8
"Everyone Got The Pulse Massacre Story Completely Wrong,"
The intent was to set a narrative, truth be damned. and it worked. the left realized long ago that get in early with the lies and that is what many will believe forever even after disproven. See Paul Pelosi stories, or nearly anything involving Trump.
#12
I should have got in early with my theory that he was radicalized by Pokemon Go. I guess I need to rustle up a couple hundred boys to help me out when the next radical known to the FBI goes berserk.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
11/21/2022 20:03 Comments ||
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[ZERO] The lords of lockdown barely escaped their worst possible fate, namely that the topic would become the national and international source of scandal that it should be. And let’s add the vaccine mandates here too: even if such had been morally justified, which they were not, there is absolutely no practical reason for them at all
To have imposed both of these within the course of one year — with zero evidence that they achieved anything for public health and vast amounts of unfolding evidence that they ruined life quality for countless millions — qualifies as a scandal for the ages. It was in the US but also in nearly every country in the world but a few.
Might that have huge political implications? One would suppose so. And yet today it appears that truth and justice are further off than ever. The most passionate of the anti-lockdown governors — those who never locked down or opened earlier than the rest of the country — won on their record. Most of the rest joined the entire political establishment in pretending that all of this is a non-issue. Tragically, this tactic seems to have worked better than it should have.
Meanwhile, a few points to consider:
The US government, through the Transportation Safety Administration, has signed yet another order extending the ban on unvaccinated international visitors until January 8, 2023. This means that no person who has managed to refuse the shot is allowed to come to the US for any reason. This is 30% of the world’s population, banned even to enter the US on their own dime. Something like this would have been inconceivably illiberal three years ago, and been a source of enormous controversy and outrage. Today, the extension hardly made the news.
The Biden administration has once again extended the Covid emergency declaration another 90 days, which continues to grant government vast powers without Congressional approval. Under a state of emergency, the Constitutional structure of the US is effectively suspended and the country remains on a wartime footing. This announcement was not controversial, and, like the above, it barely made the news.
Many colleges and universities, and also other schools and public agencies, continue to enforce the vaccine mandate even without any solid science behind the approval of the bivalent shots or any real rationale behind the push, given that most people have long ago been exposed and acquired natural immunity, and, moreover, it is very well established that the shots do not protect anyone from infection nor stop transmission. They just keep doing this anyway.
Masking is not in disrepute because we never really obtained anything like an honest admission of their failure to control the spread. Even today, there is a percentage of people out there permanently traumatized. On travels, I’m seeing perhaps 10-20% but in some Northeastern cities, regular wearing of masks is also very common. Once they became a symbol of political compliance and virtue, that sealed the deal and the culture was changed. Now we face the threat of mask mandates whenever government deems it necessary because the Transportation Safety Authority has been given the go-ahead by the courts.
The end of vaccine mandates in most areas of life, and hence also the drive for a passport to distinguish between clean and unclean people, is a good sign. But the infrastructure is still in place and becoming more sophisticated. It is hardly a final victory. It might only be a temporary respite, while all the ambitions are still extant.
More than that, the Biden administration (and all that it represents, including the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, and everything else called the establishment) has its own pandemic plans in place. The idea is not to dial back the mandates or cool it on them. It’s the reverse: centralize all pandemic planning to make a South Dakota, Georgia, and Florida experience impossible the next time. Also, spend tens of billions in more money.
The principle seems to have emerged among the agencies, intellectuals, and politicians who did this. Whatever you do, never admit to having made any major mistakes. And never connect the economic, cultural, health, and educational disasters all around us to anything the govenrment did in 2020 or 2021! That would be nothing but a conspiracy theory.
The pandemic racket is so huge at this point that it is even embroiled in the FTX meltdown over the weekend. Sam Bankman-Fried’s brother Gabe actually founded a nonprofit solely for the purpose of providing "support" for the $30 billion that the Biden administration has allocated to pandemic planning. The institution "Guarding Against Pandemics" is very obviously a honeypot for such funding, complete with on-the-record endorsements from many Democrat Party candidates who won election.
Meanwhile, yes, there have been many successful court challenges to many features of the pandemic response. But not enough. The main machinery that took away liberty and property in the name of virus control is still in place in all its essentials. The CDC to this day brags of its awesome quarantine powers that it can deploy any time government deems it necessary. Nothing about that has changed.
In the big picture and rendered in a philosophical sense, humanity seems to have lost its ability to learn from its own errors. Put in more gritty terms, too many people among ruling-class interests gained financially and in terms of the lust for power during the pandemic to prompt any serious rethinking and reform.
In any case, that rethinking and reform is now put off for another day. Anyone seriously concerned about the future of humanity and the civilizations it built must throw themselves into the long-term battle for truth and reason. That will require that we use every bit of what remains of free speech and what remains of the longing for integrity and accountability in public life. The group we have come to call "they" want a demoralized population and a silent public square.
We cannot allow that to happen.
My note: You people deserve the government you vote for.
#2
Yeah, but why do we hafta get what they deserve?
Posted by: Bobby ||
11/21/2022 9:43 Comments ||
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#3
So it was not clear so here is a fact for the unvaccinated in America. If you are an American citizen, you travel abroad, You are allowed back into the united states without a vaccine or quarantine..
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
11/21/2022 10:06 Comments ||
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#4
"The US government, through the Transportation Safety Administration, has signed yet another order extending the ban on unvaccinated international visitors until January 8, 2023." Did I mis the pics of the TSA mafia checking the 5 million Biden let in over the border, did they bring their vax cards with them?
#9
If you are a US citizen who travels abroad, you can return without the clotshot.
Posted by: Regular joe ||
11/21/2022 15:35 Comments ||
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#10
I suspect that in the end the Covid crisis will hang around longer than the Afghan War.
With respect to lockdowns, the pushback in Ohio would be pretty significant. They might be able to get away with shutting down in restaurant dining and some other Ad Hoc measures, but PSAs won’t work any better than Tim Ryan ads did.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
11/21/2022 19:50 Comments ||
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[BBC] Amidst the gentle rock of the sea, the breeze tickling their skin and the distant caw of seagulls, six people in lifejackets close their eyes for a "mindful check-in". They are aboard the deck of Irene, a 120ft (37m) tall ship with timber frames and majestic sails which is cruising off the coast of Cornwall in the UK.
These kind of mindfulness exercises have become increasingly mainstream in the last decade, but they tend to be practised from the comfort of the home or a therapist's office — not the deck of a ship.
However, UK charity Sea Sanctuary, which operates Irene, believes its combination of marine activities and therapy provides a uniquely beneficial form of mental health support. A practitioner of "blue health" — the concept that being in or near blue spaces such as rivers, lakes and the sea boosts our emotional wellbeing — the charity has been organising trips around the Cornwall coastline since 2006.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/21/2022 9:20 Comments ||
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#4
No, Dungeness, ed. It's the closest thing they got to desert. I think they had a nuke power thingy there. I was told it would be picturesque by a rather optimistic lad. I actually felt like drowning myself just for the tour to end.
#5
There are two nuclear power stations at Dungeness, identified as "A" and "B", the first built in 1965 and the second in 1983. They are within a wildlife sanctuary designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and birds flourish in the warmer water created by the station's outflow.[citation needed]
The older power station closed on 31 December 2006,[11] while the current owner EDF Energy announced in June 2021 that the newer station would not resume operations, which had halted in September 2018, and would move into the defuelling phase with immediate effect.[12]
There is a public visitors centre, and tours of "B" station are available. Tours were stopped in 2001, and the visitor centre subsequently closed in 2003, in the wake of the September 11 attacks. EDF opened a new visitor centre in 2013 and resumed tours, albeit with new security procedures which have to be cleared some weeks in advance of visits.
Looks pretty desert-like.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/21/2022 10:44 Comments ||
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#6
Yes that's it, Murcek. That pic's the Plant B with the lighthouse to the right of it. The sanctuary around it is nice. Some birds and shit. Other than that, the place is like something out of those fever dreams you get if you watch The Cell and take codeine at the same time.
#1
mmmmmmmmmm yeah that or the 56 Pontiac Club De Mer - I won't argue.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
11/21/2022 15:32 Comments ||
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#2
Nice, but for less money, I’ll be content with a 1962 Pontiac Catalina 421 SD, aluminum front end, a swiss cheese frame would be icing under the cake, so to speak.
American muscle any day.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
