The right-wing distraction machine has shifted into high gear. Now Republican presidential wannabe Ted Cruz is seizing on the bizarre notion, advanced by fringy right-wing ideologues, that the alleged Planned Parenthood shooter, Robert Lewis Dear, is a trans woman.
And he’s doing so as a way to distract from the increasing evidence that Dear’s terrorist assault on a Planned Parenthood clinic might just possibly have something to do with abortion.
Here’s what Cruz said earlier today, as reported by the Texas Tribune.
“The media promptly wants to blame him on the pro-life movement when at this point there’s very little evidence to indicate that,” Cruz said.
When a reporter reminded Cruz it has been reported Dear made a comment about “baby parts” while being apprehended, Cruz retorted, “It’s also been reported that he was registered as an independent and a woman and transgendered leftist activist, if that’s what he is. I don’t think it’s fair to blame on the rhetoric on the left. This is a murderer.”
That’s right. Cruz wants us to think that it’s as silly to conclude that Dear is anti-abortion as it is to conclude that he’s a “transgendered leftist activist.”
Cruz is also fighting against the notion that an armed assault on a Planned Parenthood clinic that left three people dead should be called terrorism.
Asked if we could call the shooting an act of domestic terrorism — as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has — Cruz again urged caution about drawing conclusions from the shooting at this point.
“I would call it a murder, and we’ll see what the facts are,” Cruz replied. “It was a multiple murder of what appears to be a deranged individual. And it was horrific, it was evil, and we’ll find out more out about the facts, but I don’t think we should jump to conclusions.”
Nothing to see here!
H/T – Thanks to AnAndrejaPejicBlog, the first person to let me know about this
So as always, Cruz can do nothing but regurgitate asinine opinions spewed out by hateful right wingers.
Admittedly, if you parse Cruz’s grammar, he’s claiming that Dear murdered “a deranged individual.” Since he likely believes that to be a good description of pro-choice people, he wins either way.
I really do wish republicans would stop seeing hitting the bottom of the barrel as a reason to accelerate.
Cruz is the most dangerous Republican running for president, and is best positioned to pick up the supporters of Trump and Carson when they inevitably flame out. At the point, I’d bet on him to win the nomination.
I really fucking hate Republicans…
I’d say Rubio’s chances are still about as good as Cruz’ (currently, I’m putting Cruz, Rubio, and The Donald all at 33% chance), but calling Cruz “unpopular” doesn’t make much sense. His campaign is actually in pretty good shape.
Oh now we call it terrorism! Any other person who is not a White, straight, cis man then it’s terrorism but if not then it’s “nothing to see here move along”.
How is that I’m watching Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and it’s not the most bizarre, surreal thing I’ve seen today?
How does registering as an independent and having an error on the gender box in one of your forms make one a leftist transgender activist. What?
Funny how that doesn’t work when it comes to the Muslim parts of our nation, hmmm? It’s perfectly okay to draw conclusions about Muslims, after all – even when they have committed no crimes and have given no cause to believe they will commit crimes in the future.
Not that I wish to bemoan what would otherwise be a perfectly reasonable act, were it not for the obvious double standards on display. Yes, we SHOULD be waiting for all the facts before drawing any conclusions. Too bad we selectively apply that reasoning in many cases. Do what I say, and not what I do, eh?
Hadn’t realized that Cruz was up so much in the polls, removed “unpopular.”
I’d like to give the Huckabeast props for the very first time for calling this terrorism, but …
He also made it all about the precious reputation of the forced birth movement.
I giveth the snaps and I taketh them away.
That certainly sounds reasonable. However, we’ll never get all the facts, because that kind of perfect knowledge is impossible. I think everyone knows that; the only question is when to cut off the waiting process and say, “Okay, enough facts are known, time to draw some conclusions.”
That cutoff point seems to differ for many folks depending on the political implications of the probable conclusion. So whenever there is a shooting, gun-rights organizations and any group with some possible connection to the shooter start to counsel that we wait until all the facts are in. Since we will never actually have all the facts, this can be used to delay conclusion-drawing indefinitely, and since it sounds reasonable to counsel waiting for all the facts, if you point out what they’re doing it becomes you who seems unreasonable for not wanting to wait for all the facts to come in.
If the political implications of the immediately apparent conclusion are politically favorable, then the person in question is likely to mark the cutoff point now and draw conclusions right away. There is no benefit to waiting for more facts, and since the cutoff point where we decide that we have sufficient facts now is fairly arbitrary, there’s nothing intrinsically contradictory to wanting to dispense with further fact-finding straight off.
@Rabid Rabbit:
Even better, if you parse his grammar, he’s actually claiming that dear murdered “a deranged individual” multiple times, somehow. Maybe he brought the “deranged individual” back from the dead and killed them again?
OBVIOUSLY THIS IS PROOF that Dear is a NECROMANCER! *gasp*
You heard it here first!!
Muslim shooter: whole religion guilty
Black shooter: whole race guilty
White shooter: mentally troubled lone wolf
Gotta love that double standard.
wish we could forbid saying “it has been reported” when those “reports” are total bullshit on hate sites.
Lold at saying “hes a transgendered, but Im not blaming the left!”
riiight….
a murderer killed people at a planned parenthood and people think its related to right-wing propaganda?! Perposterous!
kinda like how Eliott Roger’s motive was so mysterious
and how when men kill their spouse and then themselves people wonder what drove that poor man to suicide (yes I have a specific example of this in mind, it was an ethics column in I think the NYT).
Oops, I also posted this on the other thread about this shooter.
“Planned Parenthood singles out Republicans for ‘hateful rhetoric’ that incited Colorado attack”
http://www.dailykos.com/
And again, if he is registered as a woman but appears as a man, if you are going to assume he is trans, why call him a trans woman rather than a trans man? Ill take misogyny for $500 Alex.
Carly Fiorina on the faked video that likely helped to incite the shooter to violence:
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/11/fiorina-doubles-down-fetal-parts-lie
Just wanted to say the Chief Clancy Wiggum is both a vastly superior public servant and a much better human being than Ted Cruz.
Crimes against women are hate crimes and part of the body of behaviours targeting women and women’s groups that comprise terrorism. I don’t care if the man in question is black/white/brown, left or right, religious or atheist, or wearing a friggin’ dress. This stuff needs to be taken seriously. Quibbling over racism, religion, politics, or what have you, is missing the most important thing here and serves as a derail. A feminist perspective is usually quite clarifying here.
Gawker summed Cruz up nicely: “a gnarly gourd slowly depressing a fully inflated whoopee cushion”,
weirwood: His proper title is “Child Molester Apologist Mike Huckabee.” Just so you know.
Wiggum: Where on my badge does it say anything about protecting people?
Lou: Uh, second word Chief.
Mostly agree; in many cases would completely agree. The problem is that in this case, religion and especially politics may have been a significant contributing factor to this terrorist assault. We have no idea if this shooting would still have happened if Planned Parenthood hadn’t been targeted so often and heavily in the past few months, and if that doctored “selling baby parts” video hadn’t been released. But consider that the man was talking about “baby parts” when he was arrested, it certainly sounds like he was influenced by those things.
So yes, it’s a hate crime and a terrorist act. I just don’t think that discussing the religious and political rhetoric that we have reason to believe contributed to it is missing the point or is any way a derail. The most relevant thing we can do after something like this is to figure out *why* it happened and take steps to prevent similar things from happening in the future. Examining how much the perpetrator was influenced by religiopolitical climate and propaganda seems to me an important step in that process.
*consider=considering
Probably at least one other typo too. 😛
Nequam:
Anisky: search for “mike huckabee duggars”.