WELCOME BACK, EREBODY! I had a spectacular holiday with the fam and I hope you enjoyed yours as well. Now it's on to Christmas!
THE CLUB Q SHOOTING REQUIRES A FEW UPDATES This shooting is almost certainly not the anti-LGBTQ event it was immediately purported to be by many on the left in the early days after the horrific attack. We know now that the shooter identified as non-binary and goes by they/them pronouns, which does undermine that narrative even though we still have so few details about motive it's impossible to be sure. I say this not as some sort of dunk on those who jumped to conclusions, but only to remind people that one should never, ever jump to any conclusions about a situation when no real facts are in evidence. I've been guilty of this in the past and have embarrassed myself by doing so. The other update that is coming out of this story is about the Colorado Healing Fund, which many donated to in the days after the shooting because they believed that the money they are donating was going to go to the actual victims of THAT shooting. That's not how the fund works, as they are open about the fact that they donate to MANY organizations INCLUDING those trying to help victims, but ultimately the money is filtered twice before it might reach the victims. They were forced to explain themselves this past weekend here. They operate the same way the Red Cross does in that respect, in that they fundraise off tragedies for not JUST that tragedy and now people are not happy. All this played out as the media, going on zero facts, rushed to paint the entire horrible shooting as the result of anyone and anything who might lean right. Miranda Devine writes a scathing column about it here.
I WOULD BE REMISS IF I DIDN'T MENTION THE HERO IN ALL THIS And that is the heroism of Army veteran and brewery owner Richard Fierro, who stopped the gunman and beat him with his own gun. This is a great story about how the internet has reacted to his heroism. I will be stopping by for a beer the next time I'm in town for sure. For me the lesson in all this is you can't wait for the cops. You can never wait for the cops.
AND ABOUT THAT RED FLAG ORDER STUFF Former DA George Brauchler writes here about the missing pieces of information being ignored as everyone beats up the Colorado Springs law enforcement community about this shooting and why a red flag order wasn't entered. Read the details here.
THIS AS A PREVIOUS VIOLENT SHOOTING NEEDS A REVISIT Not to relive the horror that occurred at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando where 49 people were slaughtered, but to revisit the media coverage of that event. Journalist Glenn Greenwald writes extensively here about how the media willingly took up the narrative that the shooter acted out of hatred for gay people when in reality, he chose a soft target with lax security to unleash his revenge about the US bombing Syria and Afghanistan. That's right, it had nothing to do with gay people and everything to do with the policies of the US government under Bush and then Obama. Read the article here, it's very illuminating and hopefully will give people pause before jumping on board to whatever narrative is being pushed. From the column:
But journalism is supposed to function on evidence, not speculation, and there never was any evidence that supported the storyline that he was driven by hatred for LGBTs. The evidence that was available suggested the opposite.
On June 12, 2016, Mateen spent just over three hours in PULSE from the time he began slaughtering innocent people at roughly 2:00 a.m. until he was killed by a SWAT team at roughly 5:00 a.m. During that time, he repeatedly spoke to his captives about his motive, did the same with the police with whom he was negotiating, and discussed his cause with local media which he had called from inside the club. Mateen was remarkably consistent in what he said about his motivation. Over and over, he emphasized that his attack at PULSE was in retaliation for U.S. bombing campaigns in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. In his first call with 911 while inside PULSE, this is what he said about why he was killing people:
"Because you have to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. They are killing a lot of innocent people. What am I to do here when my people are getting killed over there. … You need to stop the U.S. airstrikes. They need to stop the U.S. airstrikes, OK? . … This went down, a lot of innocent women and children are getting killed in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan, OK? … The airstrikes need to stop and stop collaborating with Russia. OK?"
In the hours he spent surrounded by the gay people he was murdering, he never once uttered a homophobic syllable, instead always emphasizing his geo-political motive. Not a single survivor reported him saying anything derogatory about LGBTs or even anything that suggested he knew he was in a gay club. All said he spoke extensively about his vengeance on behalf of ISIS against U.S. bombing of innocent Muslims.
It's cute that he says journalism is supposed to function on evidence. That's adorable. By the way, lest you think Greenwald is some sort of right winger, he and his husband live in Brazil. Just a point of order.
DISNEY PROVES AGAIN THAT YOU GO WOKE, YOU GO BROKE The Bob Chapek tenure at Disney is over but it will be a long while before Disney fully recovers, if they can. My brother and his family are hard core Disney fans who had annual passes for YEARS for Disneyland even though they live in Nevada and he said this past week, "Disney is dead, they killed the magic at the park" so that's kind of a big deal. This past weekend Disney suffered a couple of blows with the abject failure of the first Disney film with an openly gay character Strange World and the continued underperformance of Wakanda:Forever. Fans have had enough with sexuality being shoved down the their throats and have spoken by simply not showing up. We'll see if Disney listens and goes back to making family movies with great stories and dead parents. I'm talking with Christian Toto who wrote a book about this very thing called Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul that you should buy here.
IF YOU LOVE YOUR LOCAL WINE STORE, DON'T FORGET ABOUT THEM We finally know that wine is going to be sold in grocery and convenience stores after a really long time of vote counting. This story talked to wine store owners who are worried, but you know what to do. Keep shopping with wine stores that give great service and have a good selection and everything will be okay.
WHITE MEN NEED NOT RUN FOR OFFICE ANYMORE That seems to be the gist of what 9News' Marshall Zellinger is saying by continuing to question why a white man would run for Denver mayor. The question is absurd on the face of it, as Denver is still a white majority city and the notion that a white man can't have great ideas on how to run it is just stupid. Even if Denver weren't a white majority city it's still an absurd question, but here we are.
DOES IT MATTER THAT TRUMP HAD DINNER WITH AN ANTI-SEMITE AND A WHITE SUPREMACIST? I most certainly think it does, but I'm guessing for many Trump supporters they will find a way to dismiss his dinner at Mar-A-Lago with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes as no big deal. The good news is that Trump said between all the shameless flattery he got from the pair there was no time for anti-Semitism. Yay. Not a good look, Trump. Not a good look. Even Republicans are criticizing his latest tone deaf move.
WATCHING THE LEFT FREAK OUT ABOUT TWITTER ON TWITTER HAS BEEN AMAZING And I'm not the only one sitting here with popcorn watching allegedly rational people have complete meltdowns that they share on the platform they are melting down about. This is a long column that gets the best of the best for you so you don't have to scroll your life away to keep up. These people need help. Big time. Twitter is now the talk radio of social media platforms because they dare to treat everyone equally.
FASHION BRAND TRIES TO DEFLECT FOR ITS CHILD PORN AD CAMPAIGN To be clear, this isn't GRAPHIC child porn but fashion house Balenciaga used small children holding teddy bears with BDSM gear on in an ad campaign they are now SUING over. Who are they suing? The ad agency who created the ad. They aren't suing because children were holding bears dressed for fetish sex, they are suing because the producer ALSO included a copy of a Supreme Court ruling on child porn in the ad as well. This seems pretty purposeful to me, and why Balenciaga is upset or confused is beyond me, they approved the ad where they could clearly see the BDSM bears but are mad about a court ruling they didn't notice. I have no sympathy for them, as I know how many people at Balenciaga saw this ad for approval before they ran it. It's a lot. It says a lot about their culture that the bears didn't raise an eyebrow. This is a great column on the rise of pedophilia chic and why it must be crushed.
kay, it's an orangutan but you know what I mean. This is what happens when you drop your sunglasses into the orangutan enclosure. MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO O
MARK THIS AS ANOTHER JOB I DON'T WANT These guys are in charge (see what I did there?) of getting the fireworks ready on top of the Panthers stadium to blow if/when they win. They blew yesterday.
THE HUNTER BIDEN INVESTIGATION IS LONG OVERDUE But I bet this investigation into whether or not an American President may be compromised by a foreign power will be treated much differently than the two year probe into Russian collusion was. First off, Biden is a Democrat. Second, because his son Hunter is the main force in this, politicians will tell us this doesn't involve the President and is a waste of time. Third, unlike the opposition research created Russian collusion story, there is a lot more corroborating evidence, much of it from Hunter Biden's laptop and witnesses like Tony Bobulinski who are willing to testify about it. Read this article here and wonder what we'd be doing right now if the media had just done it's damn job instead of trying to get Biden elected.
REMEMBER WHEN I TOLD YOU THOSE NEW IRS AGENTS WEREN'T GOING AFTER THE RICH? Because why do we need 88,000 new agents for so few people, amiright? Now we know who they are going after, and if you're in the gig economy, it's you. The IRS is warning people that they need to file a 1099 for income they received via cash apps like Venmo and Zelle if it's over $600 a YEAR. Just in case you're wondering, the gig economy is over $300 billion dollars now, so yeah, this is why they hired the agents. I can't wait until a bunch of self righteous Gen Zers get audited and crushed by the government they all voted for. Heh.
WANT A BIG HAT? THIS DUDE CAN HELP WITH THAT This is just funny. Big hats are silly and weird and I hope they catch on because I find them entertaining.
DEAR GEN Z, STOP EMBARRASSING YOURSELF AT WORK By doing crap like this. Click here if it doesn't load.
IT'S NOT JUST HUMANS WHO GET SICK OF THE SQUEAKY TOY As this good boy shows us. Click here if it doesn't load.
MEN, WHO DOES THIS? Points for creativity but he's got some explaining to do. Click here if it doesn't load.
ABOUT THAT DIED SUDDENLY DOCUMENTARY If you've seen the previews as I did, they looked very alarming. Now that the film is out via Twitter, the fact checkers are now doing their thing and dissecting the entire film nicely. To start with, if you want to make a movie about people dying suddenly, you should probably make sure those people actually died. Many in the film portrayed as dead are alive and well. There are many more reasons to trash this film found here, and this is the kind of thing that shuts down conversation about real negative outcomes from happening.