A thing to remember regarding the Orlando shootings

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This act of hate has saddened our family with grief, and no amount of profound condolences can be expressed enough to the victims & their families.

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John Oliver constantly impresses me. Hit the nail on the head.

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Spot on. And when it’s John Oliver calling him a terrorist, I actually feel torn. On the one hand, it sickens me when the paternalistic, militant element of the government froths up more support in their “war with terror”(would you like freedom fries with that?) Calling him a murderer, calling him a gunman, those seem less inflammatory.

OTOH, he explicitly includes these soft targets as a central feature of this America, so it does serve to justify his use of the term.

I just wish, when deranged gunmen shoot up abortion clinics, that would also meet the criteria of attacking a core American value for fringe political reasons. I just hate how the news story has got to be about what makes the killer tick, and not about all the encouragement and incitement that goes on to create these incidents.

It also -conveniently- serves to distract everyone from a historic lawsuit in California that could well put Bernie Sanders in office instead of Hillary Clinton. Sure, a lot of people don’t like Bernie’s position on gun control, but I trust him a lot more than Donald or Hillary, to address the deeper reasons for these kind of attacks. You know this won’t be the last, and it probably won’t even be the worst.

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Street art in Bergen, Norway:

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John Oliver and his ilk consistently instill in me a greater sense of national pride than anything else I encounter in politics or the media.

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For Oliver I know it must have been tough to ask himself, “Is it okay to go ahead with this show tonight?” even though it had been prerecorded. And I think the difficulty of that came through in how emotional this statement is.

He sounds as though he feels it’s petty or perhaps even inappropriate to make fun of the news so soon after something so horrible, but for many I’m sure it was a comfort to be able to laugh, or at least try.

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There should be a supercut video of all these kinds of late night preludes, not just the John Stewart empire. I’ll bet it would be pretty sobering.

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50 people are dead, and you think it’s inconvenient?

Check yourself, dude.

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I’ve actually been avoiding more than a fairly minimum of the coverage and commentary about this event – really mostly reading the articles here on BB and reading the first few comments until I just couldn’t continue. Yeah, I’m queer, even if I don’t go to night clubs, while I do have friends that do, but fuck if it matters if I’m part of the targeted community or not. This is just one of those events beyond comprehension and one that really makes me want to see my close friends and sweeties and just hold them tightly to me.

I read the description of what happened and I was somewhat numb. This video … this video made me start crying and I’m having a tough time typing right now … What started it was the scene with hundreds of people lined up to donate blood. I don’t even know why.

It does make me love John Oliver all the more, though.

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It’s not 50 people. It’s 998 people (just since Sandy Hook). There’s nothing convenient about any of that.

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John Oliver is a national treasure - for all nations!

UK (International?) friendly link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS8cm3kmyWs

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