Watch for the Florida School Shooting to be Blamed on the Russian Probe

Get ready for the GOP and the limited-information Trump supporters to condemn the Robert Mueller investigation and the FBI for ignoring their duty to protect Americans. They will claim the FBI and its agents were too blindsided trying to pin a “collusion” badge on Trump - and in doing so they missed a chance to stop a real crime.

A report has been released that shows the FBI was warned about Nikolaus Cruz in January, but they did nothing about it. 

On January 5^th, over a month before Wednesday’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, the bureau received a warning from someone close to the teenager that they were concerned about Cruz and that he might carry out an attack on the school. The tipster, identified only as an adult who knew the gunman, contacted the FBI public tip line and told “about Cruz’s gun ownership, his desire to kill people, his erratic behavior, and even disturbing social media posts.”

Red flags should have gone up and a warning klaxon begun blaring but the call center never passed on any information, according to a federal law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The bureau knew the identity of the tipster and the tip involved a threat to life, meaning it should have been passed on. The tipster did not describe an attack plan by Cruz with a time and place, but it did provide specific information on him and warning signs that any law enforcement official would have acted on.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, hoping to win back Trump’s trust and loyalty, said he is ordering deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to review the bureau’s handling of the matter. “It is now clear that the warning signs were there and tips to the FBI were missed,” Sessions said in a statement. “We see the tragic consequences of those failures.”

There’s the set up for - “if the FBI hadn’t been distracted by the probe into Russian collusion, they would have easily connected the dots.” This will play right in to Trump’s hands that if the FBI had not thrown all their agents and staff at the Russian investigation, which everyone knows is just fake news, made up, a witch hunt, a scheme by Democrats to cover up their loss in the 2016 election, and a waste of taxpayers’ money, they would have been able to nab Cruz before he gunned down 17 students and wounded 14 others on Valentine’s Day.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement “We are still investigating the facts. I am committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our processes for responding to information that we receive from the public.

But again, the lapse will be blamed on so much of the FBI’s attention diverted to a useless probe into Russian hacking, Russian collusion, those innocent meetings with Russian agents- the Russian ambassador-Russian Bank CEOs-and Russian lawyers by members of Trump’s campaign. When it comes to all the obvious Russian collusion links, Trump and his supporters just say "Move along. Nothing to see here."

It will not be surprising if Trump, his GOP sycophants, or the far-right fringe call for Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray (maybe even Jeff Sessions) to step down in light of this FBI failure. Then there will most likely be a demand to end the Russian investigation because Americans are being slaughtered due to FBI negligence from looking into all those false leads about Russians meddling in our 2016 election. It will be much easier in the future to also point to FBI neglect the next time ANY tragedy happens that might have been stopped if only those law enforcement agents had been available to spot the warning signs.

This is how democracy’s head is held under water until it drowns.

Orlando massacre reaction

      

         

          For a Sunday afternoon in Orlando, it is unusually quiet. By now, normally the roads and streets are bustling, lawn mowers are humming, sidewalk joggers rush by in pairs, and there is chatter in the air; from neighborhood grill outs, get togethers, and pool parties. But today, the silence is eerie. The whole area seems to be stunned by the news that 49 people were murdered and even more injured in this morning’s shooting at the Pulse nightclub in downtown Orlando. 49 people dead! These are battlefield numbers. These are casualties that occur when at war. So this isn’t a tragedy. It’s an atrocity.

          The gunman, identified as Omar Mateen, called 911 reportedly from within the club around 2 AM with a message of support for ISIS just minutes before he opened fire. He decided, on the basis of his avowed faith in Islam, that killing people was what Allah wanted. A Texas pastor used the occasion this morning to declare the Christian god was in complete agreement. He is saying that Yahweh or Jehovah sides with Allah, and that justifies the slaughter. Would Mateen have killed if not motivated by a religious belief? Would a Christian minister have sided with an Islamic jihadist if not for his religious belief? These men are evil. They are the face of what is wrong when motivated by their holy books. When was the last time someone killed because of what they read in a Harry Potter book?

          Like that Texas preacher, a longtime FORMER friend on Facebook (who will remain nameless as I will never acknowledge them as a member of the human race again) decided to show his love and understanding of the situation this morning by quoting Galatians 6:7 from the bible: “Don't be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows he will also reap.” When I read that, I went to his Facebook page and was astounded that he had published even more vicious, gay-bashing, and biblically-oriented rantings and ravings all in support of this mass killing. I did not bother sending him a message or ask for clarification. I immediately unfriended him. If I see him at any upcoming national meetings that we have attended together in the past, I will not shake his hand or even nod in his direction.

          This is the face of 21st century Christianity. This is what he really thinks Jesus meant in Luke 19:27 when he supposedly said “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.”

          I’ll state my reaction plainly….WHAT HORSESHIT! You, FORMER friend on Facebook, are the reason more and more people find your religion not just stupid, but wicked. And YOU are stupid and wicked for quoting it. You give the word HATE a whole new meaning. The Orlando victims did not sow death and destruction anywhere. They did not reap any godly justice for any sin. It’s like saying because people were buying fatty foods at a San Ysidro California McDonalds that James Huberty has a right to come in and gun them down on July 18, 1984…or that if you watch the movie The Dark Knight Rises, you should expect someone like James Holmes to pop in and open fire as he did in Aurora, Colorado on July 20, 2012, because clearly watching a movie or eating McDonalds food is worthy of death. And now Christian bigot, loudmouth, and homophobe Pat Robertson has claimed that this is God's judgment on our nation because same sex couples are allowed to marry. As I stated at the beginning of this paragraph...WHAT HORSESHIT!

The source of evil.

          Why did it happened? Some are already claiming that it’s the atmosphere of hate created by candidates like Donald Trump. I doubt that. I think it has more to do with holy books and people’s interpretation of what they read that led to this massacre. This is a logical extension of the Huguenot slaughter perpetrated by the Roman Catholic Church in the 1100s, the wholesale murder of Mormons by Christians in the state of Missouri in 1838, the Cave of Patriarchs massacre by Baruch Goldstein on Muslim worshipers February 25, 1994 near Hebron Israel, or the mass shooting in Peshawar Pakistan by Islamic militants at a school crowded with children on December 16, 2014. The common denominator is religion. In each case, the killers indicated god told them, through their holy books, to kill. Christopher Hitchens had it absolutely right. Religion does poison everything.

When massacres occur, god is behind it?

           

          On Friday, December 14, 2012, a tragedy occurred in Newtown Connecticut where twenty children and six adults were killed in a shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The echoes from the gunfire had barely stopped when the kooks came out to air their impressions on what happened. One group in particular, certain Christians, conveyed the strangest explanations or rationalizations that I have ever heard. God BLESS Sandy Hook? Not since airliners were crashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in September 2001 have there been so many Christian enlightenments and justifications to explain what happened, and why it happened. In a nutshell…god did it.                 
          
                I all but choked on the coffee I was sipping as I listened to one radio talk show and heard a woman, who identified herself as a God-fearing Christian, claim that God saw he needed twenty new angels (apparently He wasn’t aware of the shortage prior to casting His gaze around paradise) and set in motion the events that led to the slaughter.
                For even a second, do you consider it in good taste the implication of what she is suggesting? That God looked around, saw he had twenty fewer angels than he needed to be worshipped or entertained by, (Never mind the six adults, I guess) and sent a mentally unstable man into an elementary school to mow down 6 to 7 year old children?

Now that the killing has stopped, it's time to get on our knees to thank God, or ask God why it happened...and never get a response.

 But of course, other Christian callers quickly hastened to add their own beliefs that God didn’t know this was coming and He was simply making something good out of a bad situation by turning adolescent murder victims into instant angels. (Like making lemonade when you are handed a lemon.) They didn’t stop to think “Why would god work this way?” As the great Greek philosopher Epicurus wrote over 2400 years ago:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but is not able?  Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing?  Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing?  Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing?  Then why call him God?

Why don’t Christians consider this when tragedies occur?

                On another talk show, a caller suggested that because secularists had forced god out of the schools, this is what would inevitably happen. When kids can’t pray Christian prayers in the classroom, when bibles are banned from the library, and when thanking God and Jesus at ceremonies and graduations is prohibited, then we reap what we sow…ergo, mentally unstable, heavy-armed, young, white males will automatically begin thinning out the human herd with gunfire. This caller said that God has turned His back on us because we turned our backs on Him. These kinds of Christians believe that God knows these acts will happen and, if not causing them, simply allows them to happen. I don’t see any difference between the two. It’s an act of malevolence either way.

              Do they really believe God thinks this is reasonable? Killing, or allowing to be killed, children who have done nothing to offend Him, and that they should die in such a horrific manner? What the hell kind of Christian sits around thinking this pile of garbage up? Of course, throughout the Christian bible, God DOES kill children without batting a holy eyelash. For example, God killed children in the tenth plague of Egypt. Their deaths were senseless because there were peaceful alternatives that could have accomplished His goal of getting the Hebrews released by Pharaoh and out of slavery.  When you kill children to accomplish a goal, and that goal could have been achieved without killing them, then their deaths were senseless because they weren't key to reaching that goal. The Proverb about babies being ripped from their mother’s womb certainly sounds like killing innocent kids is part of god’s plan. Also, the great flood in Genesis that only Noah and his seven family members escaped from is another classic example showing that babies and adolescents are not exempt from god's wrath. God doesn’t mind killing children at all. It just has to be for the right reasons. I deliberately didn’t seek any information about how the lunatic fringe at the Westboro Baptist Church would interpret this because I was certain they would blame the whole situation on gays. They most likely insist that, since the U.S. allows homosexuality to exist in our society, God sent this gunman into the school to bring us back to God (their version anyway) in a most shocking manner, by killing children. Homosexuality = murdering kids. WBC has perfected the non sequitur.

                After the massacre, area churches opened their doors for special services in order to make people feel better by telling God what he should do. God apparently didn't know this would happen.

                 If Christians are saying their God allowed these kids to be killed because Americans don’t have the Ten Commandments plastered everywhere, don’t go to church as frequently as they should, don’t pray enough, allow homosexuality, alcohol drinking, and even bowling on Sunday, then they are just as bad as that god they worship, if not worse. Blaming an invisible, nebulous, mysterious supernatural creature is delusional and amounts to passing the buck. However, human beings thinking it up, believing it, insisting others should believe it, and act on it as well, is nothing short of evil...man-made evil.
                God-fearing Christians...if this is the kind of god you believe in, you should be fearful. The rest of us just think you're nuts.