It Just Gets Worse

And suddenly, this is an older and - though it doesn't seem possible - an even sadder story.

NY Daily News:

Omar Mateen lived a double life.

The homophobic maniac who murdered 49 people inside Orlando’s gay-friendly nightclub Pulse Sunday morning had been hanging out there for three years — and chatted with men via online dating services like Grindr, said multiple witnesses who claimed to have firsthand knowledge of Mateen’s habits.

Mateen’s family said his bloody rampage was sparked by anti-gay hatred.

But his ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, when asked on CNN Monday if he was gay, sat in silence for a few seconds before answering, “I don’t know.”

The Guardian:

His former classmate Samuel King, who also worked at the same shopping mall as Mateen after high school, said Mateen had known that he and many of his friends were gay but never expressed any disapproval. “He had to know it, but I never got any sense of homophobia or aggression from him,” he told the Washington Post.

The information adds to a complex and often contradictory picture that is emerging of the gunman and his motivation for the outrage. His father, Seddique Mateen, hours after the shooting said that Mateen had once become incensed when he saw two men kissing in Miami in front of his wife and child.

I don't know that any of this will matter much because the narrative has been set for the DumFux News crowd - Radical Islamic Terrorism.  So the part about the guy being a closeted gay is secondary. 

Except when it comes to a maybe kind of a subtle little kink for the Rabid TheoCons.  You've got a Muslim with an assault rifle shooting down a buncha QueerFolk.

Forget about all the social toxicity of the Authoritarian shit and the Daddy Issues and Self-Loathing and the Blame-Shifting, and turning that anger outward to keep from totally imploding, while at the same time taking action that will ensure your own demise.

Let's not think about any of that, and let's be sure we don't even try to keep guns away from the nutty people.

The only thing that matters is that we've got a political trifecta for the Right Radicals - a guy they hate is using a weapon they love to kill other people they hate.  It doesn't get any better than that for a modern GOP, where thinking things thru is just not something they wanna encourage.

They don't do anything about it - and they obstruct everything anybody else wants to do about it - because it's working for them.  They benefit from the problem politically, and their Crony Contributors profit from both the problem itself and the false solutions they support.  USAmerica Inc.

These people have no soul and no honor.

One More Time, Indiana

Apparently, Mike Pence has been quite surprised and even a little shocked that the reaction to his little Fuck-Them-Uppity-Queers-Anyway law has caused such a stir.  I'd really like to see the law as just another political calculation to appease the Right Radicals who got out the vote and put his ass in the governor's chair etc etc etc, but I think he's being fairly genuine here - I think he was actually convinced that what he did was gonna be OK with everybody.  

And I think he believed it because he's so totally insulated from everything that might in any way run contrary to his preconceptions.  Nobody ever says 'no' to this guy, and that's the way he wants it.

Pence is like your knuckleheaded brother-in-law or Uncle DumFux who never seeks out any information that might require him to modify his positions, or to rethink any of his opinions on  policy.  Call it Government By Confirmation Bias, or whatever, but here's the thing, Mikey:  when you've got your head up your ass, even if you open your eyes, all you're gonna see is your own shit.

hat tip = phantom power at Democratic Underground

And I'm still wondering (as well as still waiting for a Press Poodle to step up and ask) - precisely what "religious freedom" has been lost that makes government intervention necessary to restore it?

Today's Wingnut

Steve Swanson via RightWing Watch, via Addicting Info:



Almost right from the start, Mr Swanson tries to bring the warning home; basically saying, "If I were the devil I'd buy Disney..." to make that standard leap-of-stoopid: Gay is bad; Disney is Gay; and so Disney must be bad.

BTW - it wasn't all that long ago that Disney was one of the mainstays of the Christianists' version of USAmerica.  But then, of course, Disney went all shove-the-gay-down-our-throats by recognizing that gay money spends really good too, and there's a lot of it, so let's try not to treat the customers like shit - and that's what ruined it for everybody.

BTW #2 - with all the Princess Fantasies and the show tunes and the pixie dust, aren't Disney and Teh Gay just kinda the perfect fit?  Seems like the classic no-brainer if you know anything about bidness.

Anyway, how do we know Swanson isn't the devil?  Satan's supposed be all wily and sly, and really good at fooling us into thinking he's the good guy so he can get us to do all those horrible things that Swanson says Disney's doing - seems maybe Swanson's actually implying we should do something to gay people and then blame Disney for it(?)  Gets a little complicated.

Just wonderin'.

Here's A Thought

Nobody likes Foreign Aid, and nobody much likes Uganda's prez, and practically nobody's at all in favor of spending tax dollars to help fuck people over (well - not out in the open anyway).

So let's take the $485 Million we'd normally wrap neatly and ship to Museveni's bankers in Switzerland; and instead, divvy it up and give $150 to every public school teacher here at home.  Can we try that just this one time?

Today's Wingnut

That should prob'ly be "today's best blog post headline" - from Wonkette:

LOUIE GOHMERT: IF YOU LIMIT THE NUMBER OF BULLETS IN A CLIP, POLYGAMISTS WILL GAY-MARRY YOUR DOG

Mr Gohmert, if you please:

In fact, I had this discussion with some wonderful, caring Democrats earlier this week on the issue of, well, they said “surely you could agree to limit the number of rounds in a magazine, couldn’t you? How would that be problematic?”

And I pointed out, well, once you make it ten, then why would you draw the line at ten? What’s wrong with nine? Or eleven? And the problem is once you draw that limit; it’s kind of like marriage when you say it’s not a man and a woman any more, then why not have three men and one woman, or four women and one man, or why not somebody has a love for an animal?

There is no clear place to draw the line once you eliminate the traditional marriage and it’s the same once you start putting limits on what guns can be used, then it’s just really easy to have laws that make them all illegal.

Wonkette's summary (as usual) is just too too - y'know - too.

So we should never limit how many bullets can be in a murder-death-kill machine, because freedom, but we SHOULD limit how many people you marry to exactly one opposite sex person, because freedom. Is that right? We have no idea. Let’s try it another way. If you limit the amount of bullets people can cram into a magazine, then you can’t limit people from marrying friends, neighbors, the dog, and some birch trees en masse? Wonket is in favor of this tradeoff! Less bullets, more group marriages! (Though not with dogs because setting aside the ewwww factor, sexytime with the unable to consent is not cool. We’re sort of neutral on if you want to sex up a tree though.)

Connections(?)

From The Raw Story:

Michael L. Leisner, the man who became world famous for an anti-LGBT protest gone wrong, has died suddenly at the age of 65. According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the father of four abruptly passed away while sitting in his car, waiting for his two sons to finish their Saturday afternoon tennis practice.

I can feel sympathy for the guy's family and friends of course - but, here's a picture of all the fucks I give about this booger-eatin', bug-fuckin' jag-off: