Early Night Open Blog

I'm basically just cruising on having written two decent posts on Tuesday.

Pam Geller has posted a response to her critics, in Time, which is apparently still a magazine with graphics and fonts and, golly gee whiz, almost looks like it's still a real thing.

How extraordinary!

Sunday in Garland, Texas, a police officer was wounded in a battle that is part of a longstanding war: the war against the freedom of speech. Some people are blaming me for the Garland shooting-- so I want to address that here.

[M]ake no mistake: If it weren't for the free-speech conference, these jihadis would have struck somewhere else -- a place where there was less security, like the Lindt cafe in Australia or the Hyper Cacher Kosher supermarket in Paris.

So, why are some people blaming me? They’re saying: "Well, she provoked them! She got what she deserved!" They don’t remember, or care to remember, that as the jihadis were killing the Muhammad cartoonists in Paris, their friend and accomplice was murdering Jews in a nearby kosher supermarket. Were the Jews asking for it? Did they "bait" the jihadis? Were they "provoking" them?

Are the Jews responsible for the Nazis? Are the Christians in the Middle East responsible for being persecuted by Muslims?

According to Islamists: Yes to both questions.

Meanwhile, Josh Marshall and Sally Kohn are praising Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Bill Donohue, Martha McCallum and other "conservatives" for standing up for #JihadistPrivilege.

Author Brad Thor isn't impressed:

Update: So many cartoonists to worry about, says FBI director.

Thre may be as many as thousands of people inside the United States consuming online "poison" from ISIS alone, and, "I know there are other Elton Simpsons out there," FBI director James Comey warned today, referring to one of the men who opened fire outside of an event in Texas earlier this week celebrating artists' portrayals of the Prophet Mohammad.

By the way, notice that these writers offer a very neutral, professional, even slightly positive descriptor of the event.

"We have a very hard task" in trying to identify and stop anyone inspired to launch an attack inside the U.S. homeland, Comey told ABC News' Pierre Thomas and a small group of reporters...<

[ISIS social media operatives] ask Americans and other foreigners "to travel to the so-called caliphate to fight" but simultaneously say, "If you can’t travel, kill where you are," according to Comey.

"It's almost as if there is a devil sitting on the shoulder saying, 'Kill, kill, kill, kill' all day long," he said. "[They are] recruiting and tasking at the same time. .. In a way, the old paradigm between 'inspired' and 'directed' breaks down here."

He also says the distinction between who is a "talker" and who is a "doer" is breaking down, so that's why they didn't stop these guys.

Which is funny. You know what that's funny? Because being a guy on the Scary Rightwing, if I began "talking" about taking action against this federal government, you can goddamned well bet your life they would be all over my ass and would not care very much about the distinction between "talking" and "doing."

But with an aggressive, violent, alien religious/political ideology we're actually at war with -- gotta cross all those t's, dot all those i's.

More: Eric Wemple notes that most of the media, including unexpected people like Jake Tapper, failed free speech in attacking Pamela Gellar in one way or another, or questioning why she should say things that make assassins angry.

More: "Holy shit," as Iowahawk says.

posted by Ace at 06:23 PM

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