Last Call For Trump's Rump

Fellow liberals, we should be ashamed of thinking Trump supporters are anything other than working-class real Americans who are simply tired of a broken political system and an increasingly difficult economic future for those without college degrees, I mean it's not like they're listening to Trump's rhetoric and trying to blow up Muslims as a result or anything.

A Donald Trump supporter was arrested after police detonated an explosive device they believe he planned to use against Muslims. 

Police received a tip Thursday that 55-year-old William Celli, of Richmond, California, was making explosive devices and threatening to harm Muslims, reported KPIX-TV.
Officers evacuated his neighborhood Sunday morning and detonated a suspicious device found in Celli’s home. 

Police have not yet determined if the homemade device was inert or active, but they said the reported threats greatly concerned law enforcement officers. 

Celli posts frequently on his Facebook account, where he complains about Syrian refugees, Democrats and insufficiently conservative Republicans. 

He appears to be a strong admirer of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump — who has been fanning the flames of anti-Muslim hysteria in the wake of mass shootings in Paris and San Bernardino, California. 

“Donald trumps on again I’m happy leaders okay but this guys a great point man I’ll follow this MAN to the end of the world,”Celli posted Oct. 21.

Yep, rock-ribbed, salt-of-the-earth conservatives here.  Nothing to worry about.

Domestic terrorism?  What's that?

Huckleberry Hounded Out

Sen. Lindsey Graham is smart enough to take his Christmas vacation early, it seems.

Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is dropping out of the presidential race. 

“While we have run a campaign that has made a real difference, I have concluded this is not my time,” he said in a statement Monday 

Graham, who first told CNN of his decision in an interview, faced the deadline Monday to be removed from the ballot in his home state of South Carolina. Graham has been mired at the bottom of polls - both nationally and in his home state - and could have faced an embarrassing showing in the state’s February primary. 

The hawkish South Carolina senator had been the Republican field’s most vociferous early critic of Donald Trump.

Which is true, and being the "Hey guys, Trump is goddamn crazy on immigration and Muslims but let's send tens of thousands of US troops into Syria" candidate got him a whopping 0% at the polls and seriously threatening to break the crucial 1% mark.

I'm thinking since we're in effectively in election news dump mode until January, we're going to see a few folks drop out over the next week or two anyway.

Time to catch up on your Netflix queue, man.

The New Gunmerican Workplace

More and more companies in the US are responding to the Age of the Active Shooter not with lockdown and shelter-in-place procedures, but by training employees to team up and fight back to overwhelm and incapacitate.

The paradigm shift in response — from passive to active — has been endorsed and promoted by the Department of Homeland Security. Last month, it recommended that federal workplaces adopt the training program “Run, Hide, Fight,” which it helped develop. D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier used the same phrase on a recent episode of “60 Minutes.”

“Your options are run, hide or fight,” Lanier said last month. “I always say, if you can get out, getting out’s your first option, your best option. If you’re in a position to try and take the gunman down, to take the gunman out, it’s the best option for saving lives before police can get there.”

Gun rights proponents have a much different view of what works. They say that if more law-abiding citizens were armed, more mass shootings could be prevented. But most employers ban guns from the workplace, even in states that embrace concealed-carry permits.

At NeighborWorks, almost three dozen employees were taught to throw things at a shooter — chairs, books, purses, pens, phones, anything — and swarm. Those items don’t seem all that threatening compared with an AR-15, but that’s not the point.

“If you can move him from offense to defense, you have changed the outcome of the event,” said Greg Crane, a former SWAT officer whose company, the ALICE Training Institute, trained workers at NeighborWorks as well as at Facebook and Apple. “He’s thinking about what you are doing to him, not what he’s doing to you. Mentally, he’s going through a whole different process.”

ALICE, based near Cleveland, has been teaching these methods since about 2001. But in the past few years, as mass shootings have killed moviegoers, congressional constituents, first-graders, Navy Yard workers, TV journalists and college students, hundreds of competitors have sprung up, charging thousands of dollars for classroom lectures and intense simulations. 

In other words, the new cost of Second Amendment "freedom" is paying experts to teach your employees how to disorient a somebody armed with an AR-15 with a thrown object.  Lots of money for training they will almost certainly never have to use, but why should gun manufacturers and ammo makers be the only folks profiting from Gunmerica?

Call it the cost of doing business in the US.  Part of me is upset that corporate America has resigned themselves to a workplace that will at some point include an armed employee on campus willing to kill.  The other part is impressed that the American way is to find a way to make money off of tragedy, and this looks like a solid growth industry for the economy, right?

StupidiNews

• Both FIFA President Sepp Blatter and European soccer head Michel Platini were banned Monday from the sport for eight years by FIFA's Ethics Committee.
• Nashua, New Hampshire schools will be closed today due to threats of violence specific to Monday, they will be re-opened tomorrow as police investigate.
• One person was killed and more than two dozen injured as Las Vegas police say a woman deliberately drove her car onto a crowded hotel sidewalk on the Strip.
• The box office awakened with 'Star Wars: Episode VII' easily claiming the all-time biggest opening weekend total over this May's 'Jurassic World', topping $238 million domestically.
• House Republicans have included measures that would allow private companies to share their online data with the government as part of the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill.