WACO: (May 17, 2015) Rival motorcycle gangs turned a local restaurant into a shooting gallery Sunday afternoon and when the gunfire was over, nine people were dead and 18 were injured.
Early Monday, law enforcement had turned their attention to the risk of additional bike gang members looking to retaliate, and initiate further violence in the Waco area.
Sunday afternoon, Waco Police, assisted by Department of Public Safety troopers, police officers from several cities and deputies from the McLennan County Sheriff's Office were surrounding the Twin Peaks Restaurant, in the Central Texas Market Place after several people were reported shot during a rival motorcycle gang fight, Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said.
Police initially said three gangs were involved, but later said factions from at least five gangs took part in the melee.
Police and troopers were in the parking lot trying to secure the area and protect citizens when a fight broke out inside the restaurant and spilled into the parking lot.
Swanton said the fight quickly escalated from fists and feet to chains, clubs and knives, then to gunfire.
Gang members were shooting at each other and officers at the scene fired their weapons, as well, Swanton said.So - a few questions:
"High-level lying nevertheless remains the modus operandi of US policy." Where Hersh goes wrong (and what everyone attacking the article follows) is pretending that his conclusion about President Obama and his administration making up a story about the bin Laden raid is earth-shattering. Christ, we just expect the president to lie to our faces. Hersh is living in a pre-Nixon era if he thinks we have that outrage gene anymore.
This is a nation that reelected the man who lied them into war. We are so apathetic that we just want to believe whatever story makes us sleep better at night. If we pull at the threads, if we start saying what the lies are in our "war on terror," there's a mighty big, comfy blanket that will fall apart. We will never allow that to happen. Truth carries a trigger-warning for Americans, so we choose to ignore it. Whether or not the real story is Hersh's, it sure as hell isn't the official one. It never is.
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.
In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914.
I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.
I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.
I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912.
I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916.
I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.
In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.
Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
It is bad enough that much of white America sees fit to lecture black people about the proper response to police brutality, economic devastation and perpetual marginality, having ourselves rarely been the targets of any of these. It is bad enough that we deign to instruct black people whose lives we have not lived, whose terrors we have not faced, and whose gauntlets we have not run, about violence; this, even as we enjoy the national bounty over which we currently claim possession solely as a result of violence. I beg to remind you, George Washington was not a practitioner of passive resistance. Neither the early colonists nor the nation's founders fit within the Gandhian tradition. There were no sit-ins at King George's palace, no horseback freedom rides to effect change. There were just guns, lots and lots of guns.
We are here because of blood, and mostly that of others; here because of our insatiable and rapacious desire to take by force the land and labor of those others. We are the last people on Earth with a right to ruminate upon the superior morality of peaceful protest. We have never believed in it and rarely practiced it. Rather, we have always taken what we desire, and when denied it we have turned to means utterly genocidal to make it so.
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us – and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. it is simply too painful to acknowledge—even to ourselves—that we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.) --Carl SaganI think of this quote pretty much every time I hear any "conservative" start to talk about almost anything.
New findings from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey reveal that nearly half of women between ages 15-44 were childless in 2014, a 1.1 percent increase from 2012. This is consistent with recent National Center for Health Statistics data showing a six-year decline in U.S. birth rates. The report says America's fertility rates dropped to record lows in 2013 with women ages 15-44 only having 1.86 babies on average. In order to maintain a stable population, the average has to be at least 2.1 children.Family-Friendly my dyin' ass. This is one of the reasons I find it so hard to resist kicking "conservatives" right in the nuts.
5/06/2015
Conservatives Really Need You to Care About the Garland Thing
Honestly, conservatives, most of us on the left look at Pamela Geller's stupid ass Mohammed cartoon thing, which was attended by a handful of Fox "news" zombies and more media than it deserved, and think, "Well, if that's what you wanna do." 'Cause, see, we all knew that images of Mohammed piss off loser jihadi-wannabes who need to prove their street cred. So, oh, gee, you mean the deliberately provocative act provoked someone to violence? Well, fuck us all with a surprise stick. Shit, considering the nonsensical conspiracy theories floating around Texas right now, why not say that the two idiot gunmen were promised cash and seven minutes in paradise with Geller to come shoot up the joint in order to justify the whole goddamned effort?
But the right really, really needs us to give a shit. They need us to condemn Geller's show. Look at what Erick "Erick" Erickson of the Red State blarg had to say right after the shooting: "Over the next twenty-four hours, we can expect the media to wring its hands about 'Texas gun culture,' the unnecessary provocations of Pamela Gellar [sic], and a host of other issues. They will work very hard to suggest Muslims were somehow the victims and try to distance the story from Islam." Look at that list. One of those things has come true - about Geller being an attention whore who makes real whores think, "Fuck it. I should retire and give her the whole block" - and the rest? No one of any note has said shit about guns in this case (except maybe how the bad guys got the guns). No one has said Muslims were victims, except to say that a bunch of needy fucknuts tried their hardest to get a reaction from Muslims.
Later, Erickson says, "[T]he most telling thing to me is how quickly prominent leftists placed blame on the event organizers for holding than event instead of on a group of Muslims for deciding they can kill because they are offended." No, sweet, pudgy Christ fellater, we are all blaming the dudes with the guns. We can also say, without contradiction, that the event wouldn't have taken place if the threat of violence wasn't built into it, and that shit's reckless. By the way, aren't you the people who think that the problem with rape on college campuses isn't that rapists do it, but that sexy coeds get drunk and are easy targets?
Anyway, you know who some of the loudest voices against Geller are right now? Other conservatives who think Geller's full of shit, which, of course, made Geller screech even louder than usual. (That last link has all the cartoons from the event, and you will forever regret clicking on it.) Skeevier attention whore Donald Trump even said that Geller was "dumb."
Still, people like Rush Limbaugh blubber on about how much eeevil liberals don't give a goddamn about free speech. Meanwhile, most of us real lefties, not the fantasy flesh-eating gorgons conjured by the deranged minds of conservatives, feel about the cartoon display the same way we feel about flag burning: You have the right to do it, but you sure as shit aren't doing it to make people believe in your cause.
It's your right to fuck with people's core beliefs. And it's our right to think your point is worthless.
Average global levels of carbon dioxide stayed above 400 parts per million, or ppm, through all of March 2015 -- the first time that has happened for an entire month since record keeping first began, according to data released this week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Scientists with NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory have called the news a "significant milestone" in the growing scourge of man-made climate change.
“This marks the fact that humans burning fossil fuels have caused global carbon dioxide concentrations to rise more than 120ppm since pre-industrial times,” Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA's greenhouse gas network, told The Guardian on Wednesday. “Half of that rise has occurred since 1980.”Lotsa people spend lotsa time worrying about and wondering why it seems "The Millennial's" are so self-absorbed and uncaring. If ya get a chance to sit down and talk with a few of 'em, ask a coupla questions about the way we're runnin' the joint and what they think the future holds for them. And then try not to fuck up your knuckles too bad punching the mirror when you get home.
