Notice From My Cold Dead Hands......

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Where was this said?

 

In the era of Donald Trump, a major plank of the modern Republican Party platform is outright racism. Whether it’s the leader of the free world telling four congresswomen of color to “go back” to the “totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came,” a U.S. senator saying he wasn’t afraid of the January 6 rioters but would have been worried if they were Black Lives Matter protesters, a U.S. congresswoman speaking at event put on by a white nationalist, the complete and total hysteria over the idea of children being taught about systemic racism, or a prime-time conservative host’s regular white-power hour, this hateful little ecosystem just loves to appeal to the lowest common denominator by demonizing anyone who isn’t white. But when their actions actually have consequences? And it turns out their hate speech matters? And people have the audacity to suggest they’re part of the problem? Well, they really get their noses out of joint.

Take, for instance, New York representative Elise Stefanik. Following the horrifying mass shooting in a Buffalo grocery store that left 10 dead after a gunman allegedly targeted Black people, The Washington Post and other outlets thought it was important to note that Stefanik, the third-ranking House Republican, among other conservatives, had previously echoed the “great replacement” rhetoric (the conspiracy theory that liberal politicians are trying to replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants). In a series of Facebook ads highlighted in a tweet Saturday by Representative Adam Kinzinger, Stefanik’s campaign claimed in September 2021 that Democrats were letting undocumented immigrants into the country in an attempt to ultimately silence Republican (read: white) voters. “Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION,” reads one of the ads, with an accompanying image of migrants reflected in Joe Biden’s sunglasses. “Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.” At the time they ran, Albany’s Times Union, the congresswoman’s hometown paper, called the ads ”despicable,” and blasted her in an editorial, writing that she “isn’t so brazen as to use [Nazi-inspired] slogans themselves; rather, she couches the hate in alarmist anti-immigrant rhetoric that’s become standard fare for the party of Donald Trump.” As The New York Times reported over the weekend, Payton Gendron, the 18-year-old white suspect in the Buffalo shooting, “had posted a hate-filled manifesto online,” in which he wrote of his plan to shoot Black shoppers and went on “racist, anti-immigrant” rants “arguing that white Americans are at risk of being replaced by people of color.” Kind of like the ads run by one Elise Stefanik!

The congresswoman, though, did not appreciate any insinuation whatsoever that someone might have actually taken her words to heart, and in a statement released on Sunday, a senior adviser, Alex deGrasse, insisted that the “implication or attempt to blame the heinous shooting in Buffalo on the congresswoman is a new disgusting low for the Left, their Never Trump allies, and the sycophant stenographers in the media. The shooting was an act of evil and the criminal should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” He added, “Despite sickening and false reporting, [the] congresswoman has never advocated for any racist position or made a racist statement,” a claim that is obviously not true at all. On Monday, Team Stefanik followed that up with a press release accusing the media of “disgraceful, dishonest, and dangerous” smears.





Stefanik, of course, is far from the only member of her party to push racist rhetoric intended to rile up the base. As the Post notes, Pennsylvania Republican representative Scott Perry, current chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said during a subcommittee hearing concerning migration from Central America last year that many Americans believe “we’re replacing national-born American—native-born Americans—to permanently transform the political landscape of this very nation.” Senator Ron Johnson has suggested that Democrats “want to remake the demographics of America to ensure their—that they stay in power forever.” Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick has declared that the “revolution has begun” and Democrats are “trying to take over our country without firing a shot” by allowing immigrants to enter the country who will vote for Democrats to “thank the Democrats and Biden for bringing them here.” Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance has claimed Democrats want to let in 15 million immigrants into the U.S. to “shift…the democratic makeup of this country” so “Republicans [will] never win a national election in this country ever again.”


And, of course, we can’t forget the fear-mongering, hateful commentary that appears on Fox News on a daily basis, which has included Laura Ingraham’s claim that Democrats “want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever-increasing number of chain migrants”; Jeanine Pirro’s that Democrats’ immigration policies are “a plot to remake America, to replace American citizens with illegals who will vote for the Democrats”; and basically everything that comes out of Tucker Carlson’s mouth…



...which got a shoutout from Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer on Monday:



While we don’t have an inside line to Carlson’s production meetings, it’s probably a pretty good guess that his monologue tonight will be something about how he (and his viewers) are now being silenced for “just asking questions”—the kind that lead to nearly a dozen people being killed.


Senator Dick Durbin suggests there’s an outside possibility Tucker Carlson has a soul



You’ll never believe it but Republicans don’t think the latest mass shooting should lead to stricter gun control



https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/05/buffalo-shooting-great-replacement-theory-republicans

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/were-tops-shooting-started-survived-115927660.html

BUFFALO, N.Y. — On weekends, the employees at the Tops Friendly Market in East Buffalo tend to be younger, the ones unable to work weekdays, often because of school. Cashiers, shopping cart attendants, shelf stockers — their manager, Lorraine Baker, 57, calls them “my babies.” One of them, Nia Brown, 20, was just back to work Saturday after having had her own baby seven weeks earlier, a daughter named Aniyah.

Baker said goodbye after her shift Saturday afternoon and walked out of Tops. The store hires heavily from the surrounding neighborhood, and if the employees weren’t her actual babies, they might still be family: In the parking lot as Baker left, her cousin, Zaire Goodman, 20, was collecting carts.

About 2:30 p.m., he was helping a woman with her groceries when a blue car pulled up. The driver’s door opened, and a nightmare stepped out, covered from head to toe in tactical gear and carrying an assault rifle.

Much has been discovered and will be learned in the weeks ahead about the massacre and the man who authorities say perpetrated it. But this is a story about the men and women who were at work that day at an uncommonly beloved supermarket — one that functions like a family — and what they did when that place became the scene of a massacre.

Jermaine Saffold, 38, was just pulling into a parking spot nearby to duck into Family Dollar next door for a birthday present for his young son. He heard gunshots and saw a man crouch-walking toward the store. He jumped back in his car, shouting, “He’s shooting! He’s shooting!”


Goodman, in the parking lot, saw the older woman he was helping fall, struck, just as a round pierced the right side of his own neck. He dropped and froze, both playing dead and wanting to help the woman if he could.

Nearby, two other people fell almost simultaneously. The gunman approached the sliding doors of Tops and entered.

The store opened 19 years ago and became a neighborhood hub and gathering place in what had been a food desert. Regular customers greeted workers by name, and employees were known to hang out after their shift, catching up with friends.

This very community is what drew the gunman. An avowed racist, he selected this Tops after researching predominantly Black ZIP codes and drove hundreds of miles from his nearly all-white hometown.

By the time Saturday arrived, the man knew the store — where the security officer usually stood, where the cameras had blind spots. He’d drawn a map of the interior and plotted his assault through the aisles. He’d been inside before, according to people who remembered noticing him, the white stranger. Ashley Marks, a cashier who likes to joke with customers, was sure she rang up his two Red Bulls days earlier.

On Saturday morning, he walked inside and fired, over and over. He shot women old enough to be his grandmother. Brown, the cashier with the new baby, was helping customers in the self-checkout lanes when the shooting began, and she dove between two taller cash registers. Beside her, a new manager named Chris took a bullet in the knee.

Chris quietly urged Brown to stop crying so she wouldn’t draw attention. She didn’t even realize he’d been hit.

She froze. She’d never heard gunfire before. She thought about the baby at home.

In those moments in the store, a tight and cheerful network of co-workers who were friends, neighbors and family shattered into isolated individuals making split-second decisions. Some tried to help; others were alone; everyone was trapped.

Barry McQuiller, a 31-year-old man who stocks shelves, was just walking back into the store from a break room when he realized he’d forgotten his juice, and he turned to grab it when the shooting began. That may have saved his life. He bolted for a nearby back door to his car. Sidney Grasty, 32, a produce worker, was also in a break room and ran to a restroom and locked the door.

Latisha Rogers, 33, was standing behind the customer service counter when she heard the first shots. Too far from an exit, she ducked down behind the counter and pulled out her cellphone. She called 911 and, afraid of revealing herself, whispered softly to the dispatcher: There’s someone shooting in the store.

I can’t hear you, the dispatcher told her. Why are you whispering?

Their connection broke. Afraid the dispatcher might call back, Rogers switched her phone to silent mode. But then the office landline above started ringing. Standing up and answering it could mean getting shot, so she stayed down and let it ring. She was terrified that whoever was shooting would come for a closer look.

Jerome Bridges, 45, a scan coordinator checking bar codes in the dairy section, was in Aisle 14. The sounds of gunfire were coming closer, and, thinking quickly, Bridges made it to a conference room. Others were already there. Bridges pushed a table against the doors as a barricade, then fortified that with a filing cabinet.

Long minutes passed this way as the death toll rose: the 86-year-old mother of a former city fire commissioner, a 77-year-old woman who ran a food pantry, the 55-year-old security guard who would be hailed as a hero for returning fire.

Outside the store, three victims were dead, and one was bleeding from a shot to the neck — Goodman, the cart worker. In the frantic minutes after he fell, another worker found him, helped him to his feet and fast-walked him across the street. The woman he had been helping was one of the dead. Inside Tops, those who had found shelter froze in place — in the bathroom, behind a register, beneath the customer service counter.

The shooting stopped. The next sound Rogers heard beneath the counter was the squawk of a police radio. She slowly stood, hands in the air, and saw a police officer. She asked, “Can I get out?”

Brown, the young mother behind the register, looked up to see an officer. She and others would soon learn what had happened: The gunman, who had written that his plan was to drive around the neighborhood, shooting more Black people and possibly striking a second store, had emerged from Tops and, confronted by police, raised the barrel of his rifle to his chin before officers tackled him. The Erie County sheriff, John Garcia, would later refuse to speak his name at a news briefing: “As far as we’re concerned, he’s Inmate Control Number 157103.”

Soon after the gunfire stopped, another aspect of the plot became clear: The gunman had worn a camera mounted on his helmet, livestreaming the carnage. Despite efforts to remove the video from the internet, it was viewed millions of times — including, surprisingly, by employees at Tops.

Workers who had been inside the store and others who were off Saturday watched the video after the fact, finding a measure of comfort, even pride: It was a document of a horror they had survived.

Zachary Johnson, 19, who was trained to collect carts by Goodman, watched the aftermath of the attack on Facebook Live. “That’s my man Zaire!” he shouted. Brown, standing with co-workers outside Tops a day after the shooting, watched the helmet camera video with her daughter asleep in her arms. She realized the gunman had come one register away from where she had been hiding.

Jihad Green, 26, had been fresh out of jail for forgery and larceny two years ago when a Tops manager hired him — “They gave me an opportunity.” He has since left the store, but returned Sunday, tearfully embracing that same manager.

That same day-after, Bridges, the scan coordinator who had barricaded the conference room, walked past the back doors from which he and others had made their escape. It was blocked off with police tape like the rest of the store.

“I don’t know if I can go back,” he said.

He was not alone. Goodman was treated for his neck wound, which had narrowly missed major arteries, and was released from a hospital Saturday evening. His mother, Zeneta Everhart, said the next day that he would not be returning to Tops either.

“We’re counting our blessings today,” she said.

And Marks, the joking cashier, said she could not imagine standing in that post with her back to the front door ever again. The new manager, who is white, had been shot in the knee while working at her register. Marks, who is Black, said she couldn’t help but think that had she been in that spot, she would have been murdered for one simple reason:

“Because of the color of my skin.”

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost...ns-plan-shared-online-just-before-attack/amp/

The shooter shared his plans online, on Discord a half hour before the attack.

 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/18/...investigation-twitch-discord-buffalo-shooting

The NY Attorney General is investigating Discord, Twitch, and 4Chan over their role in allowing the shooter to plan, post, promote, and stream the shooting.

 

Republicans vow to kill domestic terrorism bill in Senate

Senate Republicans are lining up against a House-passed bill that would authorize special offices within the government to investigate and monitor domestic terrorism, which is being pushed in the wake of a racist shooting in Buffalo that left 10 people dead.

The GOP compares the proposal, which sets up offices in the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the FBI to target domestic terrorism, to the recently paused disinformation board set up by the Biden administration.

“It sounds terrible,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) of the House-passed bill, predicting it won’t get 10 Republicans in the Senate.

“It’s like the disinformation board on steroids. Another way to look at is the Patriot Act for American citizens,” he added, referring to the law passed immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that expanded the government’s power to monitor phone and email conversations and collect bank records.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) says he will bring the bill to the floor this week as a response to the killings at a Buffalo supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood. The bill passed the House 222-203 on a mostly party-line vote, with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) casting the only GOP vote in favor.

Democrats increasingly see the need for the government to take more action against the threat of domestic terrorism given a long string of incidents that includes the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and several mass shootings targeting Black, Hispanic and Jewish people.

But the efforts have run into opposition from the GOP.


Senate conservatives say empowering the departments of Homeland Security and Justice with new authority to monitor domestic terrorism could easily morph into federal policing of political speech, and they worry it would be more targeted toward anti-government, anti-immigration activists than extreme left-wing groups.

https://thehill.com/news/senate/3496328-republicans-vow-to-kill-domestic-terrorism-bill-in-senate/

 

I know we've had stupid fucking people for centuries.... But wtf has happened since 2016.

Oh... Yeah.