| No, We Don't Need to Look at Ourselves or Demonstrate Our Values The "we need to look at ourselves" comments throughout social media on Sunday were insufferable. Did you go and kill 50 people in a nightclub? No? Then you're cool. Why are so many of us hell-bent to steer responsibility away from the person who did something abominable and direct it towards our political foes? "We all need to look at what we could have done to prevent this." No, we don't! The odds are good there's nothing you personally could have done. You probably never even met the guy. President Obama, yesterday: In the coming hours and days, we'll learn about the victims of this tragedy. Their names. Their faces. Who they were. The joy that they brought to families and to friends, and the difference that they made in this world. Say a prayer for them and say a prayer for their families — that God give them the strength to bear the unbearable. And that He give us all the strength to be there for them, and the strength and courage to change. We need to demonstrate that we are defined more — as a country — by the way they lived their lives than by the hate of the man who took them from us. Wait. We need to demonstrate we're not defined by the hate of a man who pledged loyalty to ISIS? Americans do that every day from the moment they wake up to the moment they fall asleep at night. Some Islamist bastard goes on a killing spree, and suddenly Americans need to prove they have the right values? What the hell? John Podhoretz: So determined is the president to avoid the subject of Islamist, ISIS-inspired or ISIS-directed terrorism that he concluded his remarks with an astonishing insistence that "we need the strength and courage to change" our attitudes toward the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.
That's just disgusting. There's no other word for it. America's national attitude toward LGBT people didn't shoot up the Pulse nightclub. This country's national attitude has undergone a sea-change in the past 20 years, by the way, in case the president hasn't noticed. An Islamist terrorist waging war against the United States killed and injured 103 people on our soil. We Americans do not bear collective responsibility for this attack. Quite the opposite . . . To suggest we must look inward to explain this is not only unseemly but practically an act of conscious misdirection on the president' s part to direct out attention away from Omar Mateen's phone call. When the Unforeseen Doesn't Seem So Unforeseen No one saw this coming, right? The gunman, who was killed in a shootout with police about 5 a.m., was identified by the FBI as Omar Mateen of St. Lucie County. The agency interviewed Mateen, 29, three times in 2013 and 2014 for expressing ties to terrorist organizations and contacting a suicide bomber, but they determined he wasn't a threat.END I keep hearing from experts who insist three interviews by the FBI in connection to Islamist terrorism don't prove any connection to terrorism or any potential threat. But to the average American, who's never been interviewed by the FBI ever for anything, three interviews sounds like a lot. How many times can you just coincidentally happen know a suicide bomber, or just happen to be overheard expressing ties to terrorist organizations? No one saw this coming, right? The ex-wife of the slain Orlando nightclub shooter described him late Sunday as a mentally and emotionally unstable -- and possibly bipolar -- spouse who physically abused her during their brief marriage.
Speaking to reporters from her home in Boulder, Colo., Sitora Yusufiy said the couple were together just four months before she fled their Florida home and filed for divorce.
She described Mateen as "very short-tempered" and said he would often get into arguments with his parents. "But because, I guess, I was the only one in his life, most of the violence was towards me at that time."
He soon "started abusing me physically, very often, and not allowing me to speak to my family, keeping me hostage from them," she said. No one saw this coming, right? Two Florida corporations created by [the shooter's father] Seddique Mateen, the Provisional Government of Afghanistan Corp. and The Durand Jirga Inc., are related to that border dispute. And Seddique Mateen announced his candidacy for president of Afghanistan in 2015, one of several YouTube videos posted by Mateen related to the issue.
A Washington Post translation of one video has the elder Mateen praising the Taliban: "Our brothers in Waziristan, our warrior brothers in (the) Taliban movement and national Afghan Taliban are rising up," he said.END No one saw this coming, right? A former co-worker of Omar Mateen said Sunday that the man identified as the mass shooter in the Orlando nightclub massacre often used slurs against African Americans, gay people and women.
Daniel Gilroy, 44, worked with Mateen for about a year as a security guard at PGA Village South in Port St. Lucie, Fla. "I complained multiple times that he was dangerous, that he didn't like blacks, women, lesbians and Jews," Gilroy told The Times on Sunday. Mateen threatened violence in front of him, Gilroy said. Once when Mateen saw an African American man driving past, he said he wished he could kill all black people, using a racial slur, Gilroy recalled. "You meet bigots," Gilroy said, "But he was above and beyond. He was always angry, sweating, just angry at the world." Gilroy, a former Fort Pierce police officer, described Mateen as "unhinged and unstable." Gilroy said he quit his security job after Mateen began harassing him, sending as many as 20 or 30 text messages a day and more than a dozen phone messages. Gilroy said his employer, G4S, did not intervene. "I saw this coming," he said. Oh. Twitter's Trust and Safety Council Is a Joke Emily Zanotti lays out what's become increasingly clear: when Twitter set up a much-hyped "Trust and Safety Council," the purpose was to alleviate the concerns of select group of left-wing activists; so far there's no sign the company cares about any vile or threatening messages outside of those council members. While Twitter was quick to shut down critics of Trust and Safety Council member and #GamerGate foe Anita Sarkeesian citing their "online harassment," the Council has been slow to address some real, violent, and virulently anti-Semitic content that's flying around their "safe space."
New York Times editor Jon Weisman shut his Twitter account down after he was flooded with anti-Semitic attacks from Bernie Bros, some calling him racial slurs, others threatening to "put him in the oven." Bernie Bros also spent hours harassing a New York Times reporter who called the delegate count for Hillary. Just this week, Evan Siegfried, a Washington Post contributor, revealed that he'd received violent threats on Twitter after penning an article critical of Donald Trump (one user Tweeted, "No you are trying to Make Hillary win!! When the Supreme Court gone we are hunting you!"). Conservative commentator Bethany Mandel provided Heat Street with an example of the threatening tweets she received after speaking critically of Donald Trump. Photoshopping someone into a pile of bodies fresh from a concentration camp gas chamber should be enough to make any Twitter Trust and Safety Council member's toes curl.
But while you may be scandalized by this sort of behavior, Twitter, whose Terms of Service specifically outlaw using its platform to issue threats of violence or engage in "hateful conduct" (which they define as attacking someone based on race, religion or national origin), has almost completely ignored victims' request for relief. And Twitter's crack anti-harassment force has been completely silent. Maybe we need something like Public Enemy's "9-1-1 is a joke". . . 
Messaged Trust and Safety long time ago Don't you see how late they're reactin' . . . They only come and they come when they wanna Must be Stacy McCain they're busy whackin'! They don't care 'cause they get paid anyway Goin' after Gamergate critics all day! Gettin' threats from an alt-Right anti-Semite Nazi-- All day, every day, more hate they do not see! Over and over, gas oven jokes never ended But heaven forbid, some lefty's offended! Nothing but hate, every hour in your mentions Cause only Sarkessian gets any protections! So get up, get, get get down Trust and Safety's a joke in Twitter town! Get up, get, get get down Counting on them's certain letdown! Maybe that's why Flavor Flav was always wearing a clock; he was measuring response time . . . 
ADDENDA: Urgh, what an awful, depressing, enraging weekend . . . Hopefully next weekend will be better. Father's Day is this coming Sunday. Heavy Lifting is a great gift for the new dad—or not-so-new dad in your life—just $7.93 as of this writing with Amazon Prime! Or if Dad enjoys laughing at why the federal government works, or fails to work, the way it does, he may prefer The Weed Agency. Just $13 at Amazon, and only five are left in stock! | 
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