Patterico's Pontifications

3/17/2021

Eight Dead At Atlanta Area Spas, Suspect In Custody (UPDATE ADDED)

Filed under: General — Dana @ 12:29 pm



[guest post by Dana]

Awful:

Federal agents on Wednesday joined the investigations into shootings at three Atlanta-area spas that left eight people dead Tuesday evening.

The attacks began around 5 p.m., when four people were killed in Acworth, a suburb north of Atlanta, authorities said. Less than an hour later, four women were killed in two shootings in Atlanta. The victims in Atlanta appeared to be Asian women, as were two of the victims in Acworth, officials said.

Authorities arrested a suspect, Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock, after a brief manhunt, Cherokee County sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker said. Investigators were working to confirm that the shootings were related.

The suspect, who was charged with four counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault in Cherokee County, confessed to the crime and told law enforcement that he had issues with pornography and wanted to remove the temptation:

We are still early in this investigation so we can not make that determination at this moment,” said Atlanta police Chief Rodney Bryant.

Baker said Wednesday that the suspect likely acted alone.

“These locations, he sees them as an outlet for him, something he shouldn’t be doing,” he said, adding that Long indicated he had an “issue with porn” and was “attempting to take out that temptation.”

“He was fed up, at the end of his rope,” Baker said. “He had a bad day, and this is what he did.”

It remains unclear whether the attacks were racially motivated:

Thank God he was apprehended when he was:

According to Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the suspect was on his way to Florida to carry out more shootings when he was arrested.

Prayers for the families of the victims at this horrible time.

UPDATE: Police have announced that the suspect is being charged with eight counts of murder.

UPDATE 2: More info:

Long spent time in rehabilitation for sexual addiction last year, a former roommate told CNN Wednesday.

The roommate, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he lived with Long for several months in summer 2020 at a transition house for people exiting rehab. He declined to identify the transition house or say which state it was in…

“It was something that absolutely would torture him,” Bayless said. He said Long was a “deeply religious person — he would often go on tangents about his interpretation of the Bible,” and was distraught about his addiction to sex.

Bayless said that on multiple occasions during his stay at the facility, Long told him that he had “relapsed” and “gone to massage parlors explicitly to engage in sex acts.”

Additionally, the suspect’s gun was legally purchased:

Long had a 9 mm firearm in his car when he was arrested, Baker said.
Long purchased his gun legally at a local gun store, Big Woods Goods in Holly Springs, Georgia, an attorney for the company confirmed to CNN.
In a brief statement to CNN, Matt Kilgo said the company is fully cooperating with law enforcement and there is no indication that there was anything improper with the transfer on Tuesday.

And about the Georgia’s sheriff’s spokesperson who said that the suspect “had a bad day”:

A Facebook page appearing to belong to a Georgia sheriff’s office spokesman who is helping to investigate the recent massage parlor slayings promoted a T-shirt with racist language about China and the coronavirus last year.

“Place your order while they last,” the March 2020 Facebook post said, along with a smiley face emoji.

…Asian American activists said Baker’s comments and the Facebook post undermine public confidence that investigators are adequately addressing Tuesday’s atrocity.

–Dana

89 Responses to “Eight Dead At Atlanta Area Spas, Suspect In Custody (UPDATE ADDED)”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (fd537d)

  2. What a terrifying nut job. I’m glad they caught him.

    Time123 (ca85c9)

  3. Good Lord, what a ridiculous nutjob.

    But given what I have been told about the “spas” and “massage parlors” on La Cienega Boulevard near LAX Airport back in the 90s and early 00s, are we to assume reading between the lines that some form of sex work was going on at these suburban Atlanta spas? I know the mayor of Atlanta is claiming that the businesses were legitimate and not under investigation, but I’m left wondering if the Asian women who sadly were killed were immigrant women, since Asian immigrant women made up a huge portion of the women who were working at the LA parlors that were busted. Most of them were being exploited by gangs and other criminal enterprises, naturally.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  4. #3 What difference does that make?

    As for his motive, a surviving witness has told Korean media that he said during the killings that he wished to kill all Asians:

    https://www.balloon-juice.com/2021/03/17/breaking-eyewitness-reports-indicate-the-atlanta-mass-shooter-domestic-terrorist-was-specificaly-targeting-asians-contradict-this-mornings-law-enforcement-statements/

    The statement of the sheriff that he was a guy with a sex addiction who was having a bad say looks more and more problematic.

    Victor (4959fb)

  5. Yes, America’s ‘gettin’ back to normal’ in Joey’s USA.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  6. The price we pay for the second amendment. At least they were not first graders.

    asset (9cb92c)

  7. Here is a translation of the original text in The Chosun Ilbo news outlet that Victor’s link went to:

    A total of eight people were killed and one injured in a series of shootings in Atlanta, Georgia and three nearby Asian massage parlors on the afternoon of the 16th (local time). A local Korean media reported that he made a remark of’I will do this.’

    On the 17th, the Hankook Ilbo, Atlanta, quoted A, an employee at the “Gold Massage Spa,” a massage parlor where the shooting took place, and said that the suspect at the time of the crime “will kill all Asians”. It is known that Mr. A was in the store at the time of the shooting, but managed to evacuate and then conveyed the information to a nearby Korean business.

    Dana (fd537d)

  8. DSCA,

    What a strange thing to say.

    Victor (4959fb)

  9. While it’s too early to know for certain the shooter’s specific motivation (other than hate), I can’t help but be appalled at the Cherokee Sheriff spokesperson’s description of the suspect that he was fed up, at the end of his rope, and had a bad day. I’m fairly certain we have all had times like that in our lives, and yet we didn’t go out and kill 8 people as a result.

    Dana (fd537d)

  10. #3 What difference does that make?

    It doesn’t make any difference, but one of the more stupid notions of this era is that you can’t ask these sort of questions lest you be accused of “blaming the victim,” which is something that the mindless mayor of Atlanta suggested. And it in the big picture, it reminds us that illegal businesses operating with a nod and wink from authorities tend to attract nutjobs and other unstable people awash in social pathologies.

    The NBC story is updated with a classmate of the shooter’s giving us the requisite “he was the nicest guy in the world, always toting around his Bible, the last guy I would expect this from.” While that trite summation may actually be true in this case, the fact that it so often comes up in these tragic situations suggests to me it might not always be entirely sincere. But I guess this sort of trauma generally elicits the same banal quotes to the media; just look at this afternoon’s statements from the President and Vice-President.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  11. While it’s too early to know for certain the shooter’s specific motivation (other than hate), I can’t help but be appalled at the Cherokee Sheriff spokesperson’s description of the suspect that he was fed up, at the end of his rope, and had a bad day. I’m fairly certain we have all had times like that in our lives, and yet we didn’t go out and kill 8 people as a result.

    Yeah. There’s this weird need by some to contextualize these sort of things, when the heart of the matter probably is that lots of people have mental problems and oftentimes under stressful situations (and sometimes even without a stressful situation) they snap.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  12. Many times a person who kills a lot of people killed one person close to him at the start. Not always, though. The heart of the matter is that he had no compunctions about murdering people. Not the irrational motive. People do things for irrational reasons all the time.

    Sammy Finkelman (ff268d)

  13. given what I have been told about the “spas” and “massage parlors” on La Cienega Boulevard near LAX Airport back in the 90s and early 00s,

    Back when we lived near LAX, my wife operated an acupuncture clinic in the general area. From time to time some clown came in looking for acupressure with a happy ending, even though that trade had moved to other locations.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  14. So, has this been spun into a political thing yet. I’m afraid to look.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  15. Back when we lived near LAX, my wife operated an acupuncture clinic in the general area. From time to time some clown came in looking for acupressure with a happy ending, even though that trade had moved to other locations.

    I moved here in ’96, and I remember when that area seemed to have a “deep massage” business seemingly every 500 feet. People who lived here earlier than I did said it was notorious for various forms of vice.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  16. So, has this been spun into a political thing yet. I’m afraid to look.

    President Biden and Vice-President Harris said exactly what you would expect them to say, and I don’t mean that in a good way.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  17. I think that people have an inherent need to make sense of something like this. The go-to is often to latch onto whatever fits their politics and worldview. I’ve been careful to not assume any of these positions in the post because I simply don’t know why he did it and whether he was intentionally targeting Asians. As it always goes, we’ll know more in the next week or so.

    Dana (fd537d)

  18. I’ve read both that he did it because he was a sex addict and wanted to kill the women at the spas because he blamed them for providing an outlet for his habit. I’ve also read that he stated he wanted to kill all Asians.

    Either way he’s nuts. But I would like to know more.

    Time123 (89dfb2)

  19. Remember – if you are wondering why the media and Democrats are scrambling to affix the “shooter hated Asians” label to this horrific crime, it’s all because of politics.

    The shooter was white and would make a great face for the rise in anti-Asian violent acts, many of which have been perpetrated by other minorities, like blacks.

    Gone are the days when we can allow law enforcement to do their job.

    Hoi Polloi (b28058)

  20. Well one of the reasons people are affixing the anti Asian label to the shooter is because most of the people he killed were Asians, he seems to have purposely sought out massage parlors with Asian women, and he is reported to have said he was going to kill all Asians.

    But sure other than that it’s just some kind of political smear job by liberals.

    Victor (4959fb)

  21. Dana = the man has apparently confessed, and it’s hard for me to extract any specific conscious animus towards asians from his confession; it basically boiled down to “those evil temptresses were tempting me and i had to make them stop”.

    the thing is, though, that his confession doesn’t explain why he picked these massage parlors instead of different ones (or, for that matter, strip clubs). was there a conscious or subconscious racist motivation at play? how would we *know*? it seems plausible, but that doesn’t mean it is or isn’t so.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  22. @8. Not if you’ve known someone touched by ‘the slaughterhouse jive.’

    Buy a piece on Monday, kill on Tuesday, headlines and yellow ribbons Wednesday. Swamped borders and gun play: Joey’s USA; yes, America’s gettin’ “back to normal.”

    … and Putin smiled.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  23. 6.The price we pay for the second amendment. At least they were not first graders.

    ???

    Guess if they were ‘Asian first graders’ it would have made all the difference.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  24. aphreal, I will go out on a limb to suggest that the man targeted the type of woman that attracted him. I imagine he knew where he was going. Not to suggest that he frequented those particular places, but who knows? Did someone recognize him?

    felipe (484255)

  25. the thing is, though, that his confession doesn’t explain why he picked these massage parlors instead of different ones (or, for that matter, strip clubs). was there a conscious or subconscious racist motivation at play? how would we *know*? it seems plausible, but that doesn’t mean it is or isn’t so.

    aphrael (4c4719) — 3/17/2021 @ 3:45 pm

    If he had frequented the spas in the past, then he would know that there were Asians that worked at them. So he could have been targeting the places that he felt were tempting him, and not necessarily the workers specifically. I think he chose the locations because he had frequented them. I don’t know whether the fact that the workers were Asians actually played a part in that decision.

    Dana (fd537d)

  26. the man targeted the type of woman that attracted him.

    Yeah, that is certainly possible. So, did he target the business because of the services it provided, or did he target the workers because of the services they provided – possibly to him?

    Dana (fd537d)

  27. Texas Man Arrested Outside of Gates to Naval Observatory in D.C. Has Been Identified. He Now Faces Weapons Charges
    ……
    Fox 5 DC reported that (31-year-old Paul Murray of Texas) faces weapons charges, including for possessing unregistered ammunition, possession a large capacity ammunition feeding device, and carrying a dangerous weapon. The BOLO alert shared by Fox 5 DC reporter Lindsay Watts indicates that Murray was suffering a mental health crisis. The former Army drone operator was medically discharged from the military in 2014 and had recently purchased an AR-15—even telling his mother that he went to D.C. to “take care of his problem.”
    ……
    “Subject has been experiencing paranoid delusions of people, mainly the military and government being after him and want to kill him. He recently purchased an AR-15 and may have it in his possession,” the alert said. “Mother received a text from home this morning stating he was in Washington DC and was going to take care of his problem.”
    …….

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  28. The suspect had been in treatment for sexual addiction:

    Long spent time in rehabilitation for sexual addiction last year, a former roommate told CNN Wednesday.
    The roommate, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he lived with Long for several months in summer 2020 at a transition house for people exiting rehab. He declined to identify the transition house or say which state it was in…

    “It was something that absolutely would torture him,” Bayless said. He said Long was a “deeply religious person — he would often go on tangents about his interpretation of the Bible,” and was distraught about his addiction to sex.

    Bayless said that on multiple occasions during his stay at the facility, Long told him that he had “relapsed” and “gone to massage parlors explicitly to engage in sex acts.”

    Dana (fd537d)

  29. Per Jake Tapper, President Biden said he will not make a connection on the possible motives for the shootings until the DOJ weighs in. Also, the police just announced that the suspect will face 8 counts of murder. I’ve updated the post.

    Dana (fd537d)

  30. Asian massage parlors are a thing in Atlanta. This guy, going to these places, knew exactly what he was targeting. Asian was part of the mix he was trying to protect himself against.

    Appalled (1a17de)

  31. This is a very sad story for all the people involved.

    I also find it disappointing that so many people (not the people here, the people in general) seem not to understand the job of a reporter and are busy commenting about how this or that reporter is terrible because they aren’t calling the guy racist and/or the women sex workers/hookers/prostitutes and/or aren’t framing it in political terms. My dudes, a reporter is supposed to report the facts, not speculate or provide political commentary. What you want for that is a political commentator. A reporter doing it as part of a story is bad reporting unless it is part of the known facts of the story.

    Nic (896fdf)

  32. There are some issues with the police captain who excused the spa shooter’s behavior as having a “bad day”. A typical human’s “bad day” doesn’t involve driving to multiple locations to commit mass murder.

    Paul Montagu (77c694)

  33. I moved here in ’96, and I remember when that area seemed to have a “deep massage” business seemingly every 500 feet.

    The last block of Sepulveda just north of the airport remained a bit of a dive, mostly bars though. But the rest of the are was transformed into restaurants, medical offices and other normal businesses starting in the late 90’s when the Drollinger Company that owned the land decided to clean it all up. So, sushi, Thai, In’N’Out, Ralph’s, several medical buildings, etc.

    Probably something to do with being surrounded by homes that now average $1M plus.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  34. This guy, going to these places, knew exactly what he was targeting. Asian was part of the mix he was trying to protect himself against.

    The irony is that hostility to Asians in urban settings often comes from the Black community. But had the shooter been Black, the usual suspects would have been spinning it differently (e.g. We need to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, instead of anti-Asian prejudice (since Blacks cannot be bigots)).

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  35. There are some issues with the police captain who excused the spa shooter’s behavior as having a “bad day”

    The first of which is not the quality of his character.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  36. We need to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill

    Religion and sex too, apparently.

    Dave (1bb933)

  37. Why do I suspect that the “sex addiction treatment” of the *youthful offender* was part of a court-ordered diversion program following his arrest for (serial?) sex offenses, not necessarily limited to solicitation of prostitutes? And that his Bible-thumping was part of his *evident* rehabilitation?

    I suppose we’ll learn more as the case develops. I wonder if we’ll hear from his mother.

    nk (1d9030)

  38. Anyhow, “racism” and “sexism” are what’s buttering the woke parsnips at the moment on the internet.

    nk (1d9030)

  39. Anyhow, “racism” and “sexism” are what’s buttering the woke parsnips at the moment on the internet.

    How long before they get to “Chister”?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  40. Kevin,

    Can you give examples of people saying Blacks are incapable of anti-Asian prejudice or is that your assumption as to how the world must work?

    And Nk, when a guy decides to shoot a lot of women, and mostly Asian women, then why wouldn’t sexism and racism be part of the discussion? Or do you believe those are mythical concepts?

    Victor (4959fb)

  41. 40. It’s not that blacks are incapable of anti-Asian prejudice, but more like they supposedly are not, or rather must not be, since to say that a black person is a bigot is to denigrate him.

    Sammy Finkelman (ff268d)

  42. Sammy, which examples are you working off here?

    Bob (7faf7c)

  43. RIP Dic k Hoyt. He ran 32 Boston marathons while pushing his son in a wheel chair. He was 80.

    mg (8cbc69)

  44. We need to teach our homicidal sexual perverts to only kill people of their own sex and race.

    I think it’s fuzzy thinking, Victor. Deliberately so — fuzzy that is — to promote a political agenda and to give its promoters something to do besides browse the internet and jerk off.

    We had Richard Speck up here. He killed eight Filipino nurses. We just called him a murderous degenerate and put him on death row (which Thurgood Marshall took him off of but that’s a different story).

    nk (1d9030)

  45. Anyhow, “racism” and “sexism” are what’s buttering the woke parsnips at the moment on the internet.

    nk (1d9030) — 3/17/2021 @ 7:35 pm

    Can you believe how fast people are jumping to conclusions just because every one of the 8 people he killed in multiple locations was an Asian woman?

    Time123 (f5cf77)

  46. We need to teach our homicidal sexual perverts to only kill people of their own sex and race.

    I think it’s fuzzy thinking, Victor. Deliberately so — fuzzy that is — to promote a political agenda and to give its promoters something to do besides browse the internet and jerk off.

    We had Richard Speck up here. He killed eight Filipino nurses. We just called him a murderous degenerate and put him on death row (which Thurgood Marshall took him off of but that’s a different story).

    nk (1d9030) — 3/18/2021 @ 4:58 am

    Sarcasm aside, while we may find out that the race and gender of the people he killed wasn’t part of his decision making process it’s not unreasonable to conclude that based on the fact pattern. If different facts come to light we should be open to changing that of course.

    Time123 (f5cf77)

  47. Or possibly in the period when Speck killed 8 Filipino nurses people didn’t really want to spend time thinking about why men kill lots of women and why Speck happened to kill Filipinos.

    Perhaps doing that, instead of nonchalantly announcing “murderous degenerate”, shrugging and moving on, might have helped a little bit to stop the next occasion.

    And “sexual pervert”. You seem to think the problem was his sexual issues as opposed to the fact that he thought a good solution to problems was to take a gun out and kill people. People in the U.S. do that for a lot of reasons other than sexual. Perhaps that should get our attention.

    Victor (4959fb)

  48. Good grief, this man killed eight people! THAT is what should fuel our outrage and shock, but some people appear to be more outraged by his racial animus than by the fact of the murders themselves.

    Roger (e34354)

  49. And that asymmetric haircut. Maybe it means something else in Georgia, but up here it’s a lesbian badge. There is definitely an androgynous component to it. Have you read or seen Silence Of The Lambs?

    nk (1d9030)

  50. And “sexual pervert”. You seem to think the problem was his sexual issues as opposed to the fact that he thought a good solution to problems was to take a gun out and kill people.

    No, I do not think that, that is the kind of thinking I am objecting to.

    People in the U.S. do that for a lot of reasons other than sexual. Perhaps that should get our attention.

    John Wesley Hardin killed a man for snoring. And it has gotten our attention and we have laws, police and prisons.

    And I don’t how he could have gotten that gun legally if he had been in in-patient mental treatment, BTW.

    nk (1d9030)

  51. This is the kind of thing that’s raising my hackles, comrades:

    Atlanta spa shooting suspect’s ‘bad day’ defense, and America’s sexualized racism problem

    Contrary to the insinuations and assumptions made by Georgia law enforcement officials, I can’t remember ever experiencing racism separate from sexism.

    By Nancy Wang Yuen, author of “Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism”

    nk (1d9030)

  52. Good grief, this man killed eight people! THAT is what should fuel our outrage and shock, but some people appear to be more outraged by his racial animus than by the fact of the murders themselves.

    Roger (e34354) — 3/18/2021 @ 5:16 am

    Why can’t I be outraged because a nut job killed 8 Asian women for racist, sexist reasons?

    Time123 (f5cf77)

  53. @50, NK, i don’t understand what you would get upset at that. I can see disagreeing with it but i can’t follow the emotional reaction. Do you feel like elaborating?

    Time123 (7cca75)

  54. Roger said it for me, Time123. The outrage should be that eight people died. I resent the “never let a crisis go to waste” opportunistic political activism.

    nk (1d9030)

  55. Kevin,

    Can you give examples of people saying Blacks are incapable of anti-Asian prejudice or is that your assumption as to how the world must work?

    Victor,

    Many people say black people cannot be racist, period. Have you never stumbled across that concept?

    Patterico (f4072c)

  56. Roger said it for me, Time123. The outrage should be that eight people died. I resent the “never let a crisis go to waste” opportunistic political activism.

    nk (1d9030) — 3/18/2021 @ 6:02 am

    It’s fine to be mostly outraged that he murdered 8 humans. Maybe we’ll find out that he’s a serial killer and the source of his pattern is just a random choice. But it doesn’t look that way. Right now it looks like he was specifically trying to kill Asian Women who are sex workers.

    I read the article you linked. She seemed sincere to me and her point; that Asian women suffer from the stereotype of being sexualized servants, seems very relevant to the events.

    Say someone had targeted 8 people for death because they were elderly, or Police officers, or homeless. I think it would be entirely fair to talk about the elderly are targeted because they’re weaker, or the police are targeted because of the current anti-police sentiment.

    I agree that the left is overly focused on race. But that doesn’t mean it’s never an issue.

    Time123 (7cca75)

  57. Kevin,

    Can you give examples of people saying Blacks are incapable of anti-Asian prejudice or is that your assumption as to how the world must work?

    Victor,

    Many people say black people cannot be racist, period. Have you never stumbled across that concept?

    Patterico (f4072c) — 3/18/2021 @ 6:10 am

    Isn’t part of that argument tied to the idea that racism requires an element of institutional power which the group ‘black people’ doesn’t have? I’m sure you can find at least 1 or 2 nuts who claim Blacks are incapable of feeling racial animus or buying into harmful stereotypes but from what I’ve read that isn’t the heart argument.

    Time123 (7cca75)

  58. When Governor “Ma” Ferguson tried to put together a death squad to hunt down Bonnie and Clyde, and just kill them where they found them, because Bonnie and Clyde had so far killed every peace officer who gave them fair warning and tried to arrest them, she ran into a problem with the Texas Rangers.

    Many had already resigned because they refused to work for a woman. Period. Was that sexist?

    Of the remainder, many said

    “We don’t shoot people from ambush ….” Was that sexist? Toxic masculinity? Machismo? Real men don’t kill people from ambush?

    “… and we don’t kill women.” Was this sexist?

    nk (1d9030)

  59. “Why can’t I be outraged because a nut job killed 8 Asian women for racist, sexist reasons?”
    Of course you can be outraged by that. Who say’s you can’t? My point is that there are some people who seem to think that his racial animus trumps every other consideration.

    Roger (e34354)

  60. *sigh*

    The discussions that result from incidents like this are often maddening. Usually because people want to repeal the concept that correlation is not causation.

    The specific murderer, by his own testimony, has a sex obsession he is trying to cure by shooting up massage parlors. The three parlors he arrived at feature young Asian women who give massages — likely with what is called “a happy ending”. It’s pretty clear the race of the his victims was part of the reason he murdered them. One of his kinks is Asian women. People who love themselves some p*rn tend to fixate on women of certain races and that’s very evident if you stumble on one of those sites. It’s part of the branch of racism that sexualizes the women of the race the racist is prejudiced against.

    So the folks who say racism has got nothing to do with it are wrong. Whether it is mendacity or stupidity — who knows?

    BUT, this guy’s kinks were a long time in breeding. It has nothing to do with Trump mouthing off about the “Wuhan Flu” or any of Trump’s other awfulness.

    Appalled (1a17de)

  61. @58, I think refusing to work for a woman is clearly sexist.

    Time123 (7cca75)

  62. “Why can’t I be outraged because a nut job killed 8 Asian women for racist, sexist reasons?”
    Of course you can be outraged by that. Who say’s you can’t? My point is that there are some people who seem to think that his racial animus trumps every other consideration.

    Roger (e34354) — 3/18/2021 @ 7:09 am

    I guess i’d find your complaint more compelling if there were specifics.

    Time123 (7cca75)

  63. dr seuss has a lot to answer for

    JF (3efb60)

  64. I’ve added another update to the post.

    Dana (fd537d)

  65. #64

    It is unfortunate that this criminal entered the detention system in Cherokee County (rather than Atlanta/Fulton County). Cherokee County is very white and the sort of place to have a cheerfully racist sheriff. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district is right next door.

    This should have been a one day outrage and then families could mourn in peace. But, with the Cherokee County cop having played a racist on social media, everyone will take the opportunity to get pointlessly hysterical.

    Appalled (1a17de)

  66. Covid-19 did come from China. It did break out first in Wuhan. The Chinese, with WHO’s and Trump’s help, concealed it, deceived, dissimulated, and dissembled, in order for it spread all over the world and hurt other countries along with their own as much as possible. If it’s racist to say that, then I proudly proclaim myself a racist.

    Most skags who commit violent crimes have no better reason than that they are bad people having a bad day. The Sheriff’s captain was not at all off the mark as far as I’m concerned.

    nk (1d9030)

  67. Patterico,

    I am familiar with the argument that because black men suffer generally under a racist system their actions, including murder, have to be understood within that system and can never be understood as racist. I would quibble with the claim that “many people” think that way, but I agree it’s out there.

    But more common among those I read is that there are distinction between systematic and personal racism, and that black men are capable of both. Individual in harming people of other races because of personal dislike, and systematic, e.g. black police officers, when they do unnecessary violence to other black people as part of trying to fit into a system with historical racism.

    But I do not claim to know enough about what everybody says. I just think right wing self pity that oh, we’re called racist but black people never get called racist is just that – pointless self pity.

    Oh and thanks again, sincerely, for running a blog where my often contrary opinions are given a fair hearing.

    Victor (4959fb)

  68. Rest in Hell for Ronald DeFeo (69). Family annihilator killer who inspired the “Amityville Horror” story.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  69. nk (1d9030) — 3/18/2021 @ 9:02 am

    Covid-19 did come from China. It did break out first in Wuhan. The Chinese, with WHO’s and Trump’s help, concealed it, deceived, dissimulated, and dissembled, in order for it spread all over the world and hurt other countries along with their own as much as possible.

    I don’t think they did it to hurt other countries. I think they tried to keep it contained in China so as not to hurt China. That didn’t work, because other countries took steps to isolate themselves from China and Xi Jinping couldn’t prevent it from escaping. Possibly he wanted the whole world to have the epidemic so China would not be alone. Australia suspects they wanted to ac

    If it’s racist to say that, then I proudly proclaim myself a racist.

    Most skags who commit violent crimes have no better reason than that they are bad people having a bad day. The Sheriff’s captain was not at all off the mark as far as I’m concerned.

    Sammy Finkelman (ff268d)

  70. Elderly Asian Woman Who Clobbered Her Attacker Talks About Terrifying Assault In San Francisco
    An elderly woman attacked on Market St. in San Francisco Wednesday – the latest victim in a wave of attacks on Asians in the Bay Area – spoke to KPIX 5 about turning the tables on her assailant, leaving him with injuries that required a trip to the hospital.

    From her senior retirement home in San Francisco, Xiao Zhen Xie candidly talked to KPIX 5 in an exclusive interview about the attack and her injuries, with her daughter Dong-Mei Li interpreting.
    ……
    Surrounded by her family, the 76-year-old who has resided in San Francisco for 26 years said she was quite shaken up and that the attack was completely unprovoked. Her immediate instinct was to fight back.

    Xiao Zhen Xie says she was just waiting at the traffic light and then the suspect punched her by her left eye.

    Immediately, her instincts kicked in to defend herself. While she suffered injuries and required medical attention, it was her attacker that ended up on the stretcher. “She found the stick around the area and fought back,” said Li.

    Li said her mother cannot see at all out of her left eye and hasn’t been able to eat. The hope is that time will heal the physical and emotional wounds, but her family said the incident has left her scared for her life.

    “As you can see she is extremely terrified,” Xie’s grandson John Chen told KPIX 5. “She’s terrified to even step out.”
    ……
    Coming upon the scene during his morning run was KPIX Sports Director Dennis O’Donnell.

    “There was a guy on a stretcher and a frustrated angry woman with a stick in her hand,” said O’Donnell.

    In a video he captured on his cellphone, Xie is seen with an injury to the side of her face and eye and holding an ice pack to her face. Police said both Xie and her assailant were taken to a hospital for treatment.

    Witnesses told KPIX 5 they saw Xie pummeling the assailant. In the video, the alleged assailant is handcuffed to a stretcher with his face bloodied. A sobbing Xie berates the man and waves what looks to be a wooden board at him as he’s being taken away.

    “You bum, why did you hit me?” she said to the man on the stretcher in Chinese.

    Xie then turned to the crowd of people who had gathered, saying, “This bum, he hit me,” as she raised the stick she held and sobbed. “He hit me, this bum,“ she repeated.

    The victim added that she had been leaning against a light pole and all of a sudden, the man punched her without provocation.

    “The woman said that she was hit,” O’Donnell says. “She attacked back. From what I could see, she wanted more of the guy on the stretcher and the police were holding her back.”

    Police did not disclose a motive for the attack and it was not clear whether the victim’s race had anything to do with the assault.

    Officers also say there was a second victim Wednesday morning, an 83-year-old Asian man. A 39-year-old man is now being investigated for both attacks, and police say they are working to determine if bias was a factor.
    ……..
    This is what happens when you have strict gun control. She was lucky to find a stick lying around.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  71. I’m more upset at what I see as a suggestion by Appalled @60 that men are not supposed to sexualize women and, additionally, that it’s a kink if you sexualize women who don’t look like your relatives, but maybe I misunderstood, and in any case a world population of 7.9 billion people is already a better argument than I could make. 😉

    nk (1d9030)

  72. I have even less patience for hypothetical racial self pity. If a black man does gun down mostly Asian women than that would be a good time to check media to see the reaction. Making up stories about what you are sure liberals will say in such an instance is pure deflection from what just actually happened.

    Victor (4959fb)

  73. #71

    Hm. I wasn’t aware that I had buried that implication in my torrent of words. It’s not racist to like the looks of Asian women. It’s racist if you think they are an easier mark for your “sex addiction”. When it comes to what you –nk– sexualize — you do you, but please don’t tell me about it.

    When it comes to crimes like this — I’m not that big on trying to figure out racist intent simply because, if you kill people at random, you’re beyond the pale and the “why” doesn’t matter. Still, it bugs me when people downplay the obvious. It gives the woke brigade something to prattle on about.

    Appalled (1a17de)

  74. I’m more upset at what I see as a suggestion by Appalled @60 that men are not supposed to sexualize women and, additionally, that it’s a kink if you sexualize women who don’t look like your relatives, but maybe I misunderstood, and in any case a world population of 7.9 billion people is already a better argument than I could make. 😉

    nk (1d9030) — 3/18/2021 @ 9:30 am

    There’s a difference between being attracted to, even preferring, women who look a certain way, assuming insulting sexual stereotypes about women of a certain group are correct, and reducing women from a group to nothing more than an object that provides sexual gratification.

    Time123 (b0628d)

  75. @73. You’re saying it’s obvious that he’s racist? That’s not obvious. And you said that it’s clear race is part of why he murdered them. That also is not obvious. It’s most likely that the majority of places Long visited for a “happy ending” are staffed by asian women. I don’t know all the reasons for that. but the fact is, massage parlors tend to be staffed by asians. Nail salons happen to be staffed by asians — I don’t know why. But if the guy had a nail salon addiction and went on a nail-salon shooting spree, chances are the victims would be asian. It wouldn’t mean he was necessarily racist. Sad and dangerous nutjob, anyway you slice it.

    Another Observer (52aed3)

  76. Xavier Becerra confirmed as HHS Secretary 50-49. That’s how an opposition party should vote. Every Biden appointee should have had a vote like that.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  77. @75, If you kill 8 people from the same minority group, having to drive to different places to do so and passing up many other people your crazy self could kill I’m going to assume you have an issue with that group until there’s clear evidence your murder spree wasn’t racially motivated. Actually, I’d probably be willing to make that a working conclusion on numbers of victims lower then 8.

    Time123 (36651d)

  78. Xavier Becerra confirmed as HHS Secretary 50-49. That’s how an opposition party should vote. Every Biden appointee should have had a vote like that.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 3/18/2021 @ 11:30 am

    That would weaken the power of the opposition by turning no votes into a pro-forma. Any need to hold hearings or address the concerns of the opposition party would be eliminated.

    Additionally it ends with presidents who don’t hold the senate unable to get any candidates confirmed.

    Time123 (36651d)

  79. Another attack on Chinese women:

    https://www.thecut.com/2021/03/elderly-asian-woman-viciously-attacked-in-san-francisco.html

    Not a black guy this time either. But I am sure it will happen at some point. And then we can finally get a test of the theory that black men are never accused of racism.

    Victor (4959fb)

  80. Additionally it ends with presidents who don’t hold the senate unable to get any candidates confirmed.

    They can always serve in an acting capacity.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  81. Errata @69 . I accdentally sent this too soon, and I still had something
    from nk beneath the screen.

    Picking up from where I left off:

    Australia suspects they [China] wanted to acquire as much personal protective equipment as possible but I think that was just an incidental byproduct of their main goal – to conceal the existence of the disease so that protective measures would not be taken against China.

    China told countries, especially in Asia, that if they restricted travel from and to China they would be regarded as unfriendly.

    There’s nothing racist about that because there’s nothing Chinese about that. It’s the Chinese Communist regime.

    Now what is interesting here is that we have Thomas Friedman of the New York Times thinking China lied , but he thinks he heard a report telling him what Chinese officials really think but that’s he should know enough to know that that’s very possibly a lie. But that thought doesn’t even seem to occur to him. (that the low down – the inside dope – is just another lie)

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/opinion/covid-pandemic.html

    A report Monday on NPR said Chinese officials themselves think a mammal from one of its wildlife farms — which breed civets, porcupines, pangolins, raccoon dogs and bamboo rats and were supplying wet markets in Wuhan — was the likely bridge carrier of the coronavirus from a bat to humans. Beijing has to curb its wildlife diet.

    Oh, please. Not this time.

    They leaked a somewhat more innocent story to NPR, and he’s all ready to believe it.

    The place they originally blamed for the outbreak is not a wet market. It was a seafood market. This is so implausible, it has to be near the scene of the actual cause of the outbreak because they thouht that might be traceable. Otherwise they would have Picked a real wet market. There were plenty of them in Wuhan.

    True, it might have had one or two stalls with animals that breathed air, but it is still an implausible scapegoat. Except that it must have been close to the real source of the outbreak..

    What’s about 300 yards away is called the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

    I suspect the secret research was moved there from the Wuhan Center for Virology, which is some eight miles away, to keep it more secret and to keep non-military affiliated scientists from
    interfering.

    I think the research was more in the nature of basic research than actively developing a pathogen.

    Now when I started to read Thomas Friedman’s column, I thought he was going to say it came out of a lab, something technological. I remembered that Steve Bannon said it was a biological Chernobyl last year. So I thought Friedman would say lab accident.

    He wrote:

    Imagine that in December 2019 country X had a nuclear accident — a missile test gone awry. It resulted in a small nuclear explosion that sent a cloud of radioactivity around the world, causing 2.66 million deaths, plus trillions of dollars in health care costs and lost commerce that nearly triggered a global depression. What do you think we’d be talking about today?

    We’d be discussing a new global regime of nuclear weapons safety protocols to try to make sure it never happened again.

    First, well, you’d try to convince that country’s military, even if it was an adversary, that they didn’t have things under good control. I think this kind of thing actually worked with the Soviet Union. I think they were persuaded to put in better codes and locks and so on. But this idea of course a big neutral international organization that a military would be
    subservient to is ridiculous. I don’t understand how somebody could say something so stupid.

    Lab accident is what Matt Pottinger says. (and it’s an accident because if they released it deliberately because, let’s say, they wanted to harm the rest of the world, they wouldn’t have released it in China! This is an accident. Not by good people, but an accident.)

    Matt Pottinger also has possibly been told some backup cover stories or maybe just didn’t figure things out. But still he also knows that the origin of the virus is considered a state secret n China, and the fact that it is a secret is also a secret (except that it is a secret they can’t keep. You can’t keep secret the fact that the truth about the origin of the virus is secret, is itself a secret, so long as people have any kind of substantial contact with people who normally would talk freely.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/matt-pottinger-trump-deputy-national-security-adviser-face-the-nation

    MARGARET BRENNAN: So the World Health Organization has said that COVID-19 was circulating in Wuhan, China in late 2019. Why didn’t U.S. health officials or U.S. intelligence know earlier about this threat?

    POTTINGER: Well, U.S. intelligence wasn’t focused on these kinds of questions. They were relying on the CDC. The problem was the Chinese Communist Party did not turn to their CDC to deal with this crisis. They turned to their military. And our CDC did not have relations established with the Chinese military. [and the Chinese military would have told outsiders? He even says they tried to conceal!] So the director of the Chinese CDC, based on public reporting, didn’t know either. I mean, <b? the Chinese CDC director did not know that this thing was circulating until the last day of December, which is incredible when you think about that. So it looks like the Chinese CDC to some extent was cut out because the Chinese Communist Party turned to its military to try to cover this thing up, to try to contain it until it was too late.

    The part in boldface is unlikely to be true unless he was something of a figurehead.

    Nobody was allowed to publicize it, and China didn’t say anything about a virus until cases, and news, escaped.

    If China hadn’t notified the WHO on Dec 31,2019, Taiwan would have been credited with discovering it.

    More:

    MARGARET BRENNAN: So the Biden administration and their national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said he has deep concerns about the World Health Organization’s recent report and Chinese interference in it.

    POTTINGER: Look, the World Health Organization made all sorts of- of un-untruthful or misinformed claims about this virus. So the WHO has a lot to answer for. When it comes to this investigation into the origins, unfortunately, we’re seeing a panel that’s been sent to China that is deeply conflicted. You have people who were hand selected by the Chinese government. They had a veto over who could come in.

    MARGARET BRENNAN: U.S. intelligence has said COVID, according to wide scientific consensus, was not man-made or genetically modified. You are not in any way alleging that it was, are you?

    MATT POTTINGER: No. If you weigh the circumstantial evidence, the ledger on the side of an explanation that says that this resulted from some kind of human error, it far outweighs the- the side of the scale that says this was some natural outbreak. We have very strong reason to
    believe that the Chinese military was doing secret classified animal experiments in that same laboratory, going all the way back to at least 2017. We have good reason to believe that there was an outbreak of flu-like illness among researchers working in the Wuhan Institute of virology in the fall of 2019, but right- immediately before the first documented cases came to light.

    I think that would have happened either because it was a different, milder version of the virus that circulated in the Wuhan Institute of virology in the fall of 2019, or people went back and forth.

    I think the people working with the coronavirus were told by the director of the WIV or some high ranking civilian to stop doing any work there and they went to the other more secret (and less secure) site near the seafood market.

    Sammy Finkelman (03c829)

  82. I realize I am being cruel to a dead horse, but when I saw this article it seemed to work pretty well with what I’ve been on about, so here it is:

    https://www.vulture.com/2021/03/teen-vogue-new-editor-alexi-mccammond-racist-tweets.html

    An editor at Teen Vogue, who is black, is being fired because of anti-asian tweets she made when younger.

    So it does appear to be both black and publicly described by liberal media people as racist.

    Victor (4959fb)

  83. I realize I am being cruel to a dead horse, but when I saw this article it seemed to work pretty well with what I’ve been on about, so here it is:

    https://www.vulture.com/2021/03/teen-vogue-new-editor-alexi-mccammond-racist-tweets.html

    An editor at Teen Vogue, who is black, is being fired because of anti-asian tweets she made when younger.

    So it does appear to be both black and publicly described by liberal media people as racist.

    Victor (4959fb) — 3/18/2021 @ 1:28 pm

    It’s also stupid. Really stupid to fire an adult for something they said as a teenager. Just like it was stupid to pull the harvard admission from the parkland kid that said dumb stuff.

    Time123 (36651d)

  84. William Burns confirmed unanimously as CIA director. Another unqualified appointee, Burns has no background in national intelligence agencies.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  85. Time123 (36651d) — 3/18/2021 @ 1:33 pm

    Really stupid to fire an adult for something they said as a teenager.

    It’s not stupid, it’s cowardly. This is not genuine. They’re afraid of getting shunned and boycotted themselves.

    As I have said two or three times now, the “woke” do not believe in censorship – they believe in purges or cancellation. If you said something wrong, or “wrong” you are a bad person.

    Of course this doesn’t completely purge anyone but it could lead to people in the United States being divided into different tribes and getting their information from different sources, with one tribe regarding itself as elite. Not to mention people being subjected to blackmail.

    Governor Cuomo tried to do a little bit of blackmail but at least with regard to more or less real things.

    Donald Trump looked for anything anyone had ever said about anyone – like Joe Scarborough. But his Twitter attacks had no effect.

    Well, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffenperger got death threats, but they’ve stopped. And, for a day, some people wanted to hang Mike Pence. I don’t know if anybody lost their job because of Donald Trump – except those who supported him.

    Sammy Finkelman (03c829)

  86. The Biden Administration is making all of the appropriate noises about attacks on Asian-Americans, saying how horrible that they are being targeted, but, within two weeks of the inauguration, the Social Justice Department dropped its lawsuit against Yale University for discriminating against Asian applicants.

    The Dana in Kentucky (fa23a0)

  87. #85

    Alexander Vindman begs to differ.

    Appalled (1a17de)

  88. Our Windy City barrister wrote:

    We need to teach our homicidal sexual perverts to only kill people of their own sex and race.

    Yup, ’cause the left do not really care about murders unless they are politically useful.

    As of 11:59 PM on Thursday, March 18th, the good citizens of the City of Brotherly Love had sent 96 of their fellows to their eternal rewards in an untimely fashion, but the left, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, don’t even notice, not unless the victim is a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl.

    In a city that’s 41.5% black, 87% of the murder victims in Philadelphia were black, and the vast majority of the black Philadelphians killed were killed by other black citizens. Chicago gets the bad rap — deservedly — for its homicides, but Philly’s 2020 homicide rate of 31.60 per 100,000 population was higher than the Windy City’s 28.38.

    The Dana in Kentucky (fa23a0)

  89. It makes people who are not Asian women feel safer from random, unfathomable evil, I suppose, Dana in Kentucky.

    Is that charitable or uncharitable?

    nk (1d9030)


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