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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40278024

Looked around for the shootout in Virginia, and did not see a thread, so here.... we..... go.

It will probably be locked as it will devolve into a politics thread

The shooter is getting a lot of play in my local news, as he's from Belleville, IL:
http://www.stltoday.com/ (see front page)

In light of the current rhetoric we've been seeing in DC, the response by our politicians are unanimously non-partisan... such that it does give me hope that things can get better.

Also, Scalise’s security detail engaging the shooters with their side-arm? fething Heroes.

This is beyond other political attacks, because they were at least against individual politicians. This was an attack intended to kill anyone present who was Republican.

This needs to be a wake up call to many people. Not an excuse to attack the other side. And not a cause to self flagellate about past language. But a call to make sure political debate is made at the highest standards, with honesty and accuracy. And to call out any politician who falls short of that standard.

that was just the opening, there were 4 mass shootings today. just another day in america.

The media has been painting conservatives as literally fascists for over a year how is this shocking

Oldmike wrote:
The media has been painting conservatives as literally fascists for over a year how is this shocking

And this is exactly the bs that has to go. There's also a huge amount of conservative media that does the exact same thing about Democrats. If you want to turn this in to a tit for tat then congratulations, you've managed to keep the hate going.

Or what you can do is look at all media, all commentators, all politicians, and say that what you want is for them to speak accurately and honestly about their politics and the politics of their opposition. Take the dishonest, incendiary stuff out of politics.

Oldmike wrote:
The media has been painting conservatives as literally fascists for over a year how is this shocking

Remind me again which party just barred journalists from talking with elected officials leaving the voting floor?

The media hasn't had to do much to "paint" conservatives in a negative light. Your statement is, at best, ill-informed. At worst it is willfully ignorant of the reality we live in.

 sebster wrote:

Oldmike wrote:
The media has been painting conservatives as literally fascists for over a year how is this shocking

And this is exactly the bs that has to go. There's also a huge amount of conservative media that does the exact same thing about Democrats. If you want to turn this in to a tit for tat then congratulations, you've managed to keep the hate going.

Or what you can do is look at all media, all commentators, all politicians, and say that what you want is for them to speak accurately and honestly about their politics and the politics of their opposition. Take the dishonest, incendiary stuff out of politics.

I 100% agree with this. Nobody here is Hitler. Neither party is facist. They both have strengths and they both have flaws. The sooner people realize that we're all in this together the better off we will be. This was not an event of the left attacking the right, it was an event of America attacking itself.

 sebster wrote:
This was an attack intended to kill anyone present who was Republican.

Is this confirmed, or just speculation? The guy shot at easy targets in an open field, and supposedly got 50+ shots off. And the only politician wounded (not even killed) is someone the average person probably hasn't even heard of, not anyone more prominent? For a guy with a goal of "kill as many republicans as possible" that seems pretty underwhelming. Did he leave any explanation for the attack, or are we just assuming that the target was general and not personally directed at the one guy?


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Oldmike wrote:
The media has been painting conservatives as literally fascists for over a year how is this shocking

Don't blame the media for calling it like it is. What do you expect them to do, refrain from commenting on the parallels with fascism because people might not like fascists?

 Kanluwen wrote:

Oldmike wrote:
The media has been painting conservatives as literally fascists for over a year how is this shocking

Remind me again which party just barred journalists from talking with elected officials leaving the voting floor?

The media hasn't had to do much to "paint" conservatives in a negative light. Your statement is, at best, ill-informed. At worst it is willfully ignorant of the reality we live in.

The Trump admin has been pretty open to [relatively] independent media and journalists besides the MSM, no?
Obama hid more info than I can ever remember - a thousand Watergates.
The Clinton email scandal - what happened to that?
Seth Rich murdered...?

Discourse is necessary, but it seems that people in the US have forgotten how.
The government being so corrupt, well - the same thing happens from Bahrain to Brazil these days.
Global leadership needs a complete overhaul.



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 Peregrine wrote:

 sebster wrote:
This was an attack intended to kill anyone present who was Republican.

Is this confirmed, or just speculation? The guy shot at easy targets in an open field, and supposedly got 50+ shots off. And the only politician wounded (not even killed) is someone the average person probably hasn't even heard of, not anyone more prominent? For a guy with a goal of "kill as many republicans as possible" that seems pretty underwhelming. Did he leave any explanation for the attack, or are we just assuming that the target was general and not personally directed at the one guy?


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Oldmike wrote:
The media has been painting conservatives as literally fascists for over a year how is this shocking

Don't blame the media for calling it like it is. What do you expect them to do, refrain from commenting on the parallels with fascism because people might not like fascists?

Yeah, the guy apparently asked someone who was playing, Dem or Rep.
Then unloaded.
The politician (majority whip) is in critical after surgery, but went in stable.
If he dies, seems it will be because of a bad surgery.

 jeff white wrote:
Yeah, the guy apparently asked someone who was playing, Dem or Rep.
Then unloaded.

This appears to have been an error in identification, the person asking who was playing was someone else: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/new-details


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 jeff white wrote:
Seth Rich murdered...?

No.

And we can already see that it's just easier to blame the other side or throw hands up and declare 'it all sucks!' rather than fairly evaluate anything. This is why we deserve this.

So, a writer for the Huffington post (acting as a individual, not for the company) stated this guy could have been morally justified in committing violence, and the one flaw he pointed out was, "For violent resistance to work it'd need to be organized. Individual acts can be understandable, but likely counterproductive/ineffective".

 cuda1179 wrote:
So, a writer for the Huffington post (acting as a individual, not for the company) stated this guy could have been morally justified in committing violence, and the one flaw he pointed out was, "For violent resistance to work it'd need to be organized. Individual acts can be understandable, but likely counterproductive/ineffective".

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
-Thomas Jefferson

 sebster wrote:

Oldmike wrote:
The media has been painting conservatives as literally fascists for over a year how is this shocking

And this is exactly the bs that has to go. There's also a huge amount of conservative media that does the exact same thing about Democrats. If you want to turn this in to a tit for tat then congratulations, you've managed to keep the hate going.

Or what you can do is look at all media, all commentators, all politicians, and say that what you want is for them to speak accurately and honestly about their politics and the politics of their opposition. Take the dishonest, incendiary stuff out of politics.

What main stream media has done anything like what they have done with trump?



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 Kanluwen wrote:

Oldmike wrote:
The media has been painting conservatives as literally fascists for over a year how is this shocking

Remind me again which party just barred journalists from talking with elected officials leaving the voting floor?

The media hasn't had to do much to "paint" conservatives in a negative light. Your statement is, at best, ill-informed. At worst it is willfully ignorant of the reality we live in.

Never seen this so called barring of talking but I have seen the media take out right lies and play them up



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 Peregrine wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Yeah, the guy apparently asked someone who was playing, Dem or Rep.
Then unloaded.

This appears to have been an error in identification, the person asking who was playing was someone else: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/new-details


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 jeff white wrote:
Seth Rich murdered...?

No.

The gunman was a big anti republican who thinks crap like the 4chan piss story is true


As for Seth Rich .... Aye lots of robberies happen with a guy shot in the back with not a thing taken

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I 100% agree with this. Nobody here is Hitler. Neither party is facist. They both have strengths and they both have flaws. The sooner people realize that we're all in this together the better off we will be. This was not an event of the left attacking the right, it was an event of America attacking itself.

Yeah, sort of. I mean, I think the Nazi/fascist stuff has to end. And I agree that this is an attack on American democracy. Coming in the wake of two candidates stepping down due to death threats, this is pretty chilling stuff.

But I don't think it means we have to pretend the political differences aren't real, and aren't very important. But it is a call to make sure the political debate is done right.

Oldmike wrote:
As for Seth Rich .... Aye lots of robberies happen with a guy shot in the back with not a thing taken

Read the link. And then please listen to his family's request to stop continuing the absurd conspiracy stuff and using his death for political reasons.


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Oldmike wrote:
The gunman was a big anti republican who thinks crap like the 4chan piss story is true

That still doesn't answer the question I asked, which was if there has been any confirmation of his motive: a personal attack directed at one particular target, or a general (and laughably ineffective) attempt to kill as many republicans as possible. Pointing out his political beliefs doesn't answer this at all.

 Peregrine wrote:
Is this confirmed, or just speculation? The guy shot at easy targets in an open field, and supposedly got 50+ shots off. And the only politician wounded (not even killed) is someone the average person probably hasn't even heard of, not anyone more prominent? For a guy with a goal of "kill as many republicans as possible" that seems pretty underwhelming. Did he leave any explanation for the attack, or are we just assuming that the target was general and not personally directed at the one guy?

An eye witness reports that he asked which were the Republicans and which were the Democrats. And then went and shot at the Republican group. As to why he only hit one Rep congressman, two Rep aides and two policemen, I don't know. I guess we got lucky.

 sebster wrote:
An eye witness reports that he asked which were the Republicans and which were the Democrats. And then went and shot at the Republican group. As to why he only hit one Rep congressman, two Rep aides and two policemen, I don't know. I guess we got lucky.

The witness was wrong. Later reports changed the story based on better information, the guy asking that appears to have been someone entirely different and unrelated: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/new-details

 jeff white wrote:
The Trump admin has been pretty open to [relatively] independent media and journalists besides the MSM, no?

No. Trump is friendly to media that's showed it wants to ally with him. FOX. Breitbart. Infowars. Other junk like that. That is not journalistic freedom.

The Clinton email scandal - what happened to that?

It underwent investigation by the FBI lasting more than a year, at the end of which it was decided that failure to US govt servers was a breach of policy, but not illegal.

Seth Rich murdered...?

This is an absurdly stupid conspiracy, backed by nothing but easily disproven lies from people with no regard for reality. The only reason to believe it is out of a desire to believe the very worst imaginable things about politicians. It is a very key part of the kind of bs that absolutely has to fething stop.

Discourse is necessary, but it seems that people in the US have forgotten how.

No. You can't play with a baseless conspiracy speculating a Democratic plot to murder one of their employees, and then turn around and lament the lack of discourse in the country.


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 Peregrine wrote:
The witness was wrong. Later reports changed the story based on better information, the guy asking that appears to have been someone entirely different and unrelated: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/new-details

Ah, thankyou. I normally try and stay out of these threads early on because of the false info that gets put out early on. I'll remember to wait on confirmations in future.


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Oldmike wrote:
What main stream media has done anything like what they have done with trump?

What political candidate has ever spent his first few days in office doing something as vain and absurd as lying about the size of his inauguration crowd? Who has entered office with FBI investigations in to his staff colluding with Russia to manipulate the election, and organising money laundering operations? Who within his first few months in office has fired the head of the FBI, and then said it was because of frustration over the investigation in to Russia, which then led to investigation for obstruction of justice?

You need to realise that Trump is attracting a lot of criticism because there is a lot that objectively requires criticism.

Complaining that media outlets doing that criticism are biased is a lot like the shoplifter who complains that police are always picking on him, that it's unfair that he's the only person getting arrested constantly, and never realising the police are just arresting the guy who keeps breaking the law. In the same way, the media is just criticising the guy who keeps telling lies and putting himself in to scandal.

Never seen this so called barring of talking but I have seen the media take out right lies and play them up

Then you should probably read some honest media sources. Because journalists have just had massive restrictions placed on where they can go and operate in congress, a rejection of generations of journalistic tradition.

As for Seth Rich .... Aye lots of robberies happen with a guy shot in the back with not a thing taken

If a robbery goes wrong and you shoot the victim, then taking stuff is the absolute stupidest thing you can do. It would be taking evidence from the scene of a murder. If you keep it, then police finding that in your possession would make the case for you as the killer. If you sell it then the item is out of your control but able to be linked back to you - a crazy risk for making $100 bucks selling it. Anyone with a lick of common sense is going to leave that scene with nothing from the victim.

People claiming that bit of 'evidence' are goofball amateurs on the internet playing pretend sleuths. or they're manipulative liars who are trying to con the aforementioned goofballs. Please don't be either.

Also, above you complained about the media being unfair to conservatives. And here you're claiming you think it reasonable that Seth Rich was killed by an evil conspiracy from people within the Democrats. That strikes me as a big part of the problem.

Well we stayed out of politics for as long as we could, but since we seem to have moved onto "why doesn't X do Y with the media, what about conspiracy A, B, C those damn D party-ites!" you guys lose the thread