God Bless Dallas UPDATED
I hate to make any comments until we know exactly what happened. However, I feel compelled to say that the Dallas Police Department and their Chief of Police just might be our finest.
My heart aches for Dallas.
UPDATE: I’ve decided to add something. I write a humor column for OutSmart, an LGBT magazine in Houston. This is what I wrote last month.
Please tell Congress that we want a vote on gun safety.
Please call (202) 224-3121 and ask to speak to your U.S. Representative in the House. Tell him/her you want to see a vote on the Feinstein “Terror Gap” legislation in the House, NOT the weak Cornyn bill.
Then call Speaker Ryan at (202) 225-0600 with the same exact message.
When will the gun nuts finally give in and admit they are wrong? (I am a gun owner, and good enough shot at one time to have qualified to go to the national pistol shooting championships at Camp Perry, Ohio. I went to Vietnam instead.)
1I am sick of all the nastiness and violence that is happening in our country today.
2We will destroy our our country without any help from terrorists.
Not to worry, Congress will have a moment of silence and prayer.
3I posted this earlier at the BLM post from yesterday.
e platypus onion says:
July 8, 2016 at 7:01 am
Here is a vicious reminder from a vicious right wing son of a bitch! My sincerest apologies,Mama.
http://www.wmur.com/politics/expol-deletes-tweet-calling-for-war-on-obama/40416788
4And Paul Ryan had the nerve to condemn the House sit-in protest for gun restriction as shameful. He’s actually trying to prosecute those representatives who participated. The real shame is allowing innocent people to be gunned down with assault rifles. Special place in hell.
5Agree with every word. Very well said!
6Appropriately said, Juanita Jean Herownself. All is speculation at this point, except for two facts: five members of DFWPD are dead, in addition to 7 officers injured and two citizens. Even those numbers are subject to change. They were killed or injured by weapons that neither police or civilians should possess.
Words of wisdom from my Dad, a combat veteran, and the best man I know. “nuclear non-proliferation, or whatever lie politicians decide to call their next defense of global capitalists, those bozos have risked our lives repeatedly and now in the pockets of the gun manufacturers have brought the ‘fight’ to our neighborhoods. Our homes. Stalemate under the cold war was saner than this Reaganesque amplified by Dubya/Dickey.”
The issue is weapons. Military style weapons should not be a feature of our local law enforcement and certainly NOT in the hands of any moron with vigilante notions of st00pid.
Pray, if you desire. But exit your home or house of worship with the understanding your God of choice has chosen NOT to take part in this debate or limit the carnage. This is “render unto Caesar time” – allow LE and saner citizens to circumvent the militarization of the USA.
Simply, no more assault weapons or carnage cartridges.
FWIW Dallas, my family stands with you, your police Chief, Mayor and sane citizens.
7No matter who, no matter why, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE let there be no more senseless deaths.
8An eyewitness who took video footage (full disclosure: I don’t watch ANY of these sorts of videos, ever. I am not a voyeur) was quoted as saying “…this is terrorism, pure and simple.” Which statement pretty well sums it up, IMO. I left a comment something at the BLM post too, but It probably won’t add much to the discussion. I am just overwhelmed with sorrow that we have reached this point.
9Downtown Dallas has always creeped me out. The attack on DPD headquarters last year and now this doesn’t do anything to urge me to go eat in Downtown. I guess Kevlar is now the new Downtown fashion statement.
10E platypus onion, saw Joe Walsh’s traitorous tweet last night when it first came out. He has subsequently deleted it, probably because of the swift outrage it received. It has been suggested that the Tweet be repeated to remind people (particularly folks in his home state) exactly why they should NEVER have voted for the idiot in the first place. I’ll leave that up to JJ to decide, this is her place, but I’ll simply add that while Twitter is an interesting place which provides an opportunity for public discourse and a platform for social activism, there is some ugly stuff out there. This was one of the ugliest I’ve seen in a long time. He is now, and always has been a deadbeat, arrogant, jerk I’m surprised he’s not on Trump’s VP short list, they are kindred spirits.
11What a moving article. I cannot imagine losing a child.
12It is time for our country to take a long hard look in the mirror. Is this the country we want?
One more thing and this is what I should have said first, in times of crisis it’s always best to let the dust settle before passing judgment. Here is what I do know: the Dallas police department and their chief have a reputation for transparency that other departments can only dream of achieving. Those officers were simply doing their jobs; prior to the shootings they were talking and walking with the completely peaceful protesters and posing for pictures with them. They did not deserve this, NO ONE deserves this.
“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth leaves the whole world blind and toothless.”
13How many ‘thoughts and prayers’ before Congress takes some real action? I don’t mean grilling Comey, I mean banning assault weapons.
14Speaking for myself, I can certainly understand the frustration and anger Blacks show because it certainly appears that their people are being indiscriminately singled out and killed for being Black.
I do not condone retaliation against police that had nothing to do with the senseless deaths. This may be what is needed to get congress and other authorities to pay attention to actual crimes-and stop the 30 year personal vendetta against the Clintons.
15I, too, think of my son everyday.
And it makes me so angry that children die everyday, needlessly due to carelessness of gun owners and gun violence.
Time to write my Congresswomen, she “who did not go to Washington to protest”. What a jerk.
16Well, we already knew that Walsh was an idiot and a deadbeat. But now he’s revealed himself to be an even more vicious summbitch than we could imagine.
Not condoning violence, huh? Yeah, that’s why you used the word War. Burn in the Hell that your twisted faith promotes, you human skid mark.
17My heart aches for Dallas, but even more for every person of color in the country, all of whom (quite reasonably, given the facts) feel bereft of equal protection under the law.
The white supremacist scumbags have been asking for a civil war for years now.
18Another situation where the “a good guy with a gun… bad guy with a gun” theory is meaningless.
Let’s face it, we need more good guys with a law, because the bad guys in this situation are doing nothing. I want my 2nd Amendment rights to… “well regulated.”
19You all will hate me saying this… again.
PLEASE… tell anyone you know to STAY AWAY FROM CLEVELAND. I’m very, very serious. This type of thing, or much worse can happen. Tensions are high and guns are everywhere. PLEASE STAY AWAY.
And also… those of you thinking of “making a point” in Cleveland can make a bigger point in Philly. Bring your love and creativity to the City of Brotherly Love and party about the goodness and promise of America. Let’s turn Philly into the biggest celebration of progressive goidwill that’s ever been seen.
Let’s use our energies in the right way, okay?
20Thanks, JAKvirginia. All this reminds me of the 60s and the riots in big cities all over the USA. We had a friend shot in East New York because he was white and friendly to his neighbors. If we ever had a time to be peaceable, this is it.
21Many years ago, maybe in 1972 or so, I went to listen one night to a self-avowed wizard-y something in the KKK in Michigan. I forget his exact “title” but he claimed to have had some position of authority locally. Whatever. What I’m reminded of today is his talking of the “impending race war” that he and his fellows were expecting to happen real soon. So my very first thought on seeing the news this morning was, hmmm, wonder if this was a set-up by some gaggle of KKK sympathizers, seeing an opportunity to trigger their wet-dreams.
Of course, the actual shooters have turned out to not be white folks after all, and so my next thoughts were, this is exactly what the NRA wing-nut brigade favorite talking point in favor of “protecting” the 2nd amendment has always been: citizens need to be able to arm themselves to protect against unlawful incursions by the government. It strikes me that there are lots of folks these days who feel set upon by the government and feel justified in fighting back. Except it’s no longer just the white militias that are taking up arms against the government. As long as it was just them, the McVeys and the Bundys and the like, well that’s just boys havin fun and all, nothing to get all het up about. But this is different. Now it’s them N___s picking up the guns. Now we’ve got to crack down on them.
Trump’s campaign may have taken a hit after Orlando, but who cares, that was just a bunch of weirdos who died there. This here is White Cops who are dead. Now Something Must Be Done.
I fear for my country. As someone above has said, we don’t need terrorists to take us down, we’ll do it all by our own selves thank you very much. The toothpaste is out of the tube and it’s not going to go back in again.
22It will happen again. And again. Some people are consoled by prayer, but I don’t think it makes any difference. Isn’t there something in the Bible about God helping those who help themselves? The only solution I see involves more violence. I have no more optimism. Or hope.
23BillR, Reagan as CA governor said that nobody needed to walk around with a gun. I think that was shortly after the Black Panthers started doing it.
24Remember Charles Manson, and the Helter Skelter thing? That’s what I keep thinking about.
25This just crushed me when I heard about it, particularly after I found out the cops were mingling with the protesters, talking, sharing selfies. Please indulge me while I tell a story:
Back in the 80s, my Dad, rest his soul, was Chief of the WI state capitol police (he was the department’s creator and its 1st chief, actually). There was a long-term occupation of the building and grounds by folks agitating for the UW-Madison to pull all of its investments in South Africa. When they refused to leave, Dad had his men commandeer all of the wheelchairs they could find, and carted the occupiers out to the lawn, where Madison police met them and … did the same damn thing the Dallas cops were doing when they got killed. They circulated through the crowd and engaged in conversation. Everyone went home in one piece after what could have been very ugly.
Words fail. These officers were doing the right thing the right way.
FWIW, the Madison Chief of Police at the time was David Couper, who literally wrote the book on community policing. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/us/first-cop-then-cleric-now-hoping-to-heal-a-rift-between-blacks-and-police.html?_r=0
26Dice-what do you think of Walker’s hired thug of a Capitol Police Chief?
27My personal experiences, including sit-ins in Tallahassee in the late FIFTIES, all during the Sixties, and some in the early Seventies, lead me to believe that the outraged non-whites should unite with the outraged whites and form their own militias to protect each other from the militarized arm of “society”.
28@epo #27: Chief Irwin is a complete bastard. The state just settled a lawsuit agreeing to pay one of our local radio personalities $75,000 because the brownshirts arrested him during a demonstration for doing nothing. He was there as a journalist, working. There is a class-action suit afoot as well.
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/state-to-pay-radio-host-k-for-capitol-arrest/article_ed07f047-78f5-597d-b174-e082da8438e7.html
29@epo #27, reprise: Irwin is what happens when police officers forget they are public servants and become enforcers for politicians like S**t Talker.
Thanks; good to gak all that out.
30epo: It’s Erwin, not Irwin. Sorry. BTW, here’s how Walker bought him:
http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/move-to-ghost-job-and-back-gives-capitol-police-chief-big-raises-b9977329z1-220063431.html
31@Dice
Thank you so much for introducing me to David C. Couper.
32Haven’t heard if NRA has said anything, but then again the majority of main stream media, print and air, has been dominated by other voices – thank God! However, you can quit holding your breath as senseless and brainless (zombies?) just don’t give a damn and don’t quit, so it should be just a matter of 2, 3, 1 . . . show time!
33Good reads, Dice. Muchas gracias.
34http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/07/nra_faces_internal_revolt_over.html
Here you go, Maggie. The NRA claims to be the nation’s oldest civil rights organization.
35The NRA sends their thoughts and prayers. for themselves,I think.
The “shooter” was a loner,not afilliated with any BLM group. He was observed singing and laughing. Methinks he was crazy.
36I don’t think I’ve ever heard this song before, but the phrase has been running through my head all week. I Googled it, and found these great lyrics by Ronnis Dunn.
https://youtu.be/FkdCwC5jzPc
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