Jeez, what a week. What a weekEND. I take one hour off — one! — to have a wholesome swim, and emerge to learn that a man has driven through the wall of an LDS church, jumped out of his pickup firing, then set the whole church on fire. It is now a smoking ruin. Two people are dead, three if you count the shooter, picked off by the police, more in the hospital and likely still more under the collapsed roof of the church. Little is known beyond that, although if the photos from the scene in legit newspapers are to be believed, the pickup had bed-mounted American flags of considerable size, two of them.
Police say they’re searching for a motive, should one exist.
The church looks to be a total loss. You can see the shooter’s pickup at the bottom of the photo that is leading the story as I write this at roughly 5:30 p.m. Might change in a while, might not.
Now they’re saying there were IEDs in the truck. The killer’s said to be 40. Maybe an Iraq vet, who knows. It’s folly to try to speculate on these things. As always: More will be revealed.
Edit: The shooter was indeed an Iraq vet. Thomas Jacob Sanford of Burton, Mich. He looks exactly like about a zillion other guys his age running around the state. And yes, more will still be revealed.
So hey, that’s the weekend! Just another mass shooting that will be forgotten by Wednesday.
Brandon said on September 28, 2025 at 8:04 pm
that will be forgotten by Wednesday
Not by the family and friends of the victims.
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Suzanne said on September 28, 2025 at 8:16 pm
In all likelihood, the American terrorist who attacked the Mormon church doesn’t seem to be trans or Muslim or any of those scary things that MAGA fears so greatly. Trump claims that it “appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America” unaware that most Evangelicals do not consider the LDS church to be Christian.
So here we are again
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
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Heather said on September 28, 2025 at 9:51 pm
By my count we’re at four mass shootings today: MI, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas.
Everything is going great.
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Suzanne said on September 28, 2025 at 10:53 pm
At least two of the shootings today were done by men who had served in the military. Maybe the current administration needs to consider the military a problem instead of antifa.
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Sherri said on September 29, 2025 at 2:23 am
A gift link to the transcript of Ezra Klein’s interview of Ta-Nehisi Coates:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ta-nehisi-coates.html?unlocked_article_code=1.pk8.pLlB.5XZgPmPUq8nA&smid=url-share
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David C said on September 29, 2025 at 6:10 am
Medbeds. JFC.
https://balloon-juice.com/2025/09/28/and-now-for-something-completely-different-open-thread-president-medbeds/
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alex said on September 29, 2025 at 6:39 am
I read the transcript of the Ezra Klein/Ta-Nehisi Coates interview yesterday and I don’t think Klein acquitted himself particularly well regarding his praise of Charlie Kirk’s political acumen. It was an interesting discussion all the same.
I seriously need to tear myself away from media or it’s just going to drive me bonkers. I retired to get myself out of a sedentary job so I could get physically active, and now I find myself spending more time in a chair in front of a screen than I did when I was working.
I find myself in a perpetual state of hypervigilance and panic and utter paralysis when it comes to enjoying normal everyday life. I’m not going to spend the rest of my days this way.
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Jeff Borden said on September 29, 2025 at 9:48 am
Theater of the absurd continues in Chicago. For the past few days, Border Patrol boats have been cruising up and down the river, faces masked and long guns at the ready. Yesterday –a gorgeous, sunny, beautiful day– they sent ICE agents loose downtown in full battle-gear mode. These mopes walked up and down Michigan Avenue, the Riverwalk, Wacker Drive, etc. In an interview with the NPR station, the Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino said quite clearly they were looking at skin color, accents and language when determining who to stop. They claim to have made some arrests. The funniest image is a half dozen of these came-clad agents chasing a food delivery kid on a bicycle down the street. He easily evaded them and remains at large, LOL.
I can’t deny a near constant knot in my stomach. This corrupt “administration” and its lackeys in Congress and SCOTUS are doing everything possible to provoke, anger, intimidate all of us. Sooner or later, this is going to blow up and we’re going to be looking at martial law.
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Jason T. said on September 29, 2025 at 10:46 am
I came here to say the same thing as Suzanne. I see a lot of reporters today who are confused: Why would a Trump-supporting Christian blow up a church and shoot parishioners?
We don’t know his motives, but anyone who spends time in evangelical circles know they don’t consider the LDS church “Christian.” (They also don’t much like Roman Catholics and they’re iffy on Episcopalians and some other Protestant denominations. I heard one pastor do several sermons on why he hated the Salvation Army.)
Most reporters don’t know much about religion and it shows when tragedies like this strike. That’s also allowed a lot of crazy stuff (like the New Apostolic Reform movement, which several high-ranking Trump officials are part of) to fester and grow in the United States, out of plain view.
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Deborah said on September 29, 2025 at 12:15 pm
Yep, ICE was on Michigan Ave yesterday, and Wacker too. It was obviously for photo ops. Some of the safest areas in the city and probably the fewest undocumented people live in this area. What a joke. And with all of their hot gear on (it was 80º)carrying weapons among all the shoppers and tourists. All performative. Stupid.
We just got back to Chicago yesterday afternoon and promptly went to the bank on Michigan to get cash grocery shopping at Trader Joes on Ontario 2 blocks west of Michigan. We missed the hoopla, I’m sure we would have shouted something unseemly had we seen them.
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Heather said on September 29, 2025 at 2:47 pm
I’m spitting mad about ICE in Chicago. If I see any, I will definitely be asking if being in the Gestapo was a lifelong goal or a more recent one.
Also, there is a great video of a delivery guy on a bike taunting them and then getting away. One of the ICE guys is heard to say “Git ‘im!” which is just chilling. https://www.tiktok.com/@trumpisnotmypotus/video/7555337381893704962
RE: the Michigan shooting, I saw a theory from someone on Bluesky who suggested that right-wingers think Mormons are lying about/covering up the truth about the shooting and that’s why they targeted that church.
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Deborah said on September 29, 2025 at 3:09 pm
I just got back from walking down Michigan Ave to the loop area to do some errands and didn’t see any ICE action, there were 2 TV trucks outside of the Wrigley building down by the river and 2 guys with cameras on tripods on the sidewalk, but I have no idea what that might have been about. ICE probably won’t be out again today, they picked Sunday to make a scene because they knew there would be shoppers and tourists about, so they could get attention, Monday, not so much. It’s all so obvious, it’s ridiculous.
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Jakash said on September 29, 2025 at 4:50 pm
Well, Jeff B. mentioned him and Heather provided the original video, but Chicago’s new folk hero — the guy on the bike evading the Keystone Kops — really benefits from some background music. The internet provides, of course, and Yakety Sax does nicely:
https://bsky.app/profile/marmel.bsky.social/post/3lzwzwshe7s2n
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Jakash said on September 29, 2025 at 4:52 pm
Two more links, so a separate comment… Meanwhile, Portlanders respond to the Fuhrer calling their fair city “War ravaged Portland.”
https://bsky.app/profile/oligarchopoly.bsky.social/post/3lztjnvaprc2l
https://bsky.app/profile/celesteheadlee.bsky.social/post/3lztdmvt5y22j
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Sherri said on September 29, 2025 at 4:54 pm
In my experience, conservative white evangelicals are pretty suspicious of the Christianity of anyone not just like them. Catholics worship Mary, not Christian, Mormons aren’t Christian, and judging by how my parents felt about the Episcopal church I attended, they’re pretty suspect.
The evangelicals aligned with the conservative Catholics on abortion out of convenience in achieving power, and as some of them became more prominent, they converted to Catholicism because it has a more intellectual sheen and get them invited to more cocktail parties.
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ROGirl said on September 29, 2025 at 5:08 pm
Shooter told local political candidate that Mormons are “the anti-Christ.”
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/09/29/thomas-jacob-sanford-michigan-shooting-suspect-anti-lds-tirade/86415139007/
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Sherri said on September 29, 2025 at 6:37 pm
Ezra Klein comes across in the interview as someone who has never experienced having anyone question his right to participate in anything, and doesn’t get that it regularly happens to other people. Not all of us are welcome in the marketplace of ideas.
Klein is more concerned with how to connect with the people wanting to exclude people than he is with the people excluded. I think he thinks he can persuade them with his brilliance or something. I don’t think it’s possible to persuade them to willingly stop excluding people. I think you work to create a world that doesn’t exclude people, and they’ll learn to live in it.
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susan said on September 29, 2025 at 8:18 pm
ice fishing in Portland
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Deborah said on September 29, 2025 at 8:36 pm
Not always good stuff on the internet but the Yakety Sax Chicago biker and the Portland war stuff, not to mention the ICE fishing are some pretty exceptional examples. Thanks for that I needed a good laugh today.
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john (not mccain) said on September 29, 2025 at 10:33 pm
Mormons are Christians in exactly the same way Christians are Jews. In other words, not in the slightest. Either adding new scripture and wildly different theology to an existing religion creates a new religion, or it doesn’t.
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Deborah said on September 29, 2025 at 11:57 pm
I don’t know if anyone else here gifted this interview between Ta Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein on the NYT online, so here it is https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ta-nehisi-coates.html?unlocked_article_code=1.p08.DIVt.RJuEKUwGq860&smid=url-share
If you watch it I think you get more out of it than when you only read it, I read it first too. Ta Nehisi Coates’s facial expressions and intonations are telling, his body language conveys a lot that the words on the screen don’t give you. I wish Ezra Klein did less talking but it’s his show and he does that too often with people I really want to hear from. The interview is long but very worth it.
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Jeff Gill said on September 30, 2025 at 8:16 am
John (NMC), by that standard, Quakers aka the Society of Friends aren’t Christian. You could argue Methodists aren’t, given the way they use the sermons of John Wesley as an associate text. And my Latter-day Saint friends chuckle (on better days) about how some Christians fulminate about their “additions” to Scripture, but insist on the authority of the Apostles or Nicene Creed, the Book of Concord, or the Heidelberg Confessions (let alone Calvin’s Institutes).
People who say Jesus is the Christ and call for living with restraint and good order in their personal relations, intimate and social, are Christians by any reasonable definition. I’ve attended Sunday services three times in LDS chapels, and you would find it remarkably Protestant in a conservative vein, and with good congregational singing, too. (And yes, I’ve read the Book of Mormon, and am quite confident Joseph Smith, Jr. and Sidney Rigdon put it together themselves in 1829-30; I also have serious questions about the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, but don’t feel moved to toss all Anglicans out of the Christian fold, either.)
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Jeff Gill said on September 30, 2025 at 10:32 am
“I was with the king of Saudi Arabia, great guy…”
~ Pres. Donald J. Trump, 9.30.2025 at about 10:30 am EDT
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FDChief said on September 30, 2025 at 11:02 am
I’m not sure – the guy was whack, so… – but I’m reading that if you go deep in the internet weeds there’s a groyper/wingnut trope that the Kirk killer was part of a Mormon assassination scheme. So this attack might be connected to more online lunacy.
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john (not mccain) said on September 30, 2025 at 11:24 am
So apparently there’s nothing non-Christian about believing that one day I will be a god ruling over my very own planet. Interesting.
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Jeff Gill said on September 30, 2025 at 11:54 am
Not how I envision eternity playing out, but I grew up dating girls whose grandmothers didn’t think you got into heaven without speaking German, so…
In other Detroit area news: https://www.wxyz.com/news/michigan-dnr-confirms-credible-alligator-sighting-on-belle-isle-in-detroit
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Sherri said on September 30, 2025 at 1:06 pm
I care less about who gets to be called Christian than whether those who claim that title are sheep or goats (see Matthew 25:31-46).
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Deborah said on September 30, 2025 at 1:13 pm
Who gets to draw the line as Ta Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein say? Who gets to say who is Christian and who is not?
My background is Lutheranism and I always thought it was a little odd to name your denomination after the man that introduced the basic doctrines of it. We used to sing this song in Walther League (the name of the youth group, also named after a man) that went “Marty, Marty Luther, pop of the Lutheran church”. We celebrated Reformation Day every year, which was all about Martin Luther. Is that weird?
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Brandon said on September 30, 2025 at 2:40 pm
I heard one pastor do several sermons on why he hated the Salvation Army.
@Jason T., did you hear this man in person or was his sermon online? If so, where?
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Julie Robinson said on September 30, 2025 at 2:52 pm
Like Deborah, I grew up Lutheran, the stern LC-MS kind who, just one generation back, taught my mom that Catholics weren’t Christian. I ditched their exclusionism for the friendlier confines of the ELCA, where both women and gays are (mostly) welcomed to church leadership. And I haven’t had a theological discussion with any Mormons lately and haven’t even seen any out knocking on doors. Cue The Book of Mormon, singing about Orlando for Julie’s musical theater reference of the day.
My theology begins and ends with this: God loves us all just as we were made, and we are equally beloved. So stop excluding women, gays and the entire rainbow including trans folks, people of color, people of neurological divergence, etc. If you come to me about how you’re such a good Christian but those people are not okay, then you’re not any kind of Christian at all.
So, I missed those fun speeches this morning because I was wrestling with accounts at church. Council authorized a volunteer to use the debit card for a gas card, but no one told me, and when the charge appeared on the bank account I was concerned the card had been stolen. No one turned in a receipt, or a request, or told me what danged account it was supposed to come from. We didn’t have one; it had to be added in the chart of accounts.
And suddenly I became that nit-picky, by-the-books finance person everyone hates, including me.
I did catch some tidbits of the Hegseth speech, and must pass along the comment of the day: This is what happens with a DUI hire. Ha!
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Dave said on September 30, 2025 at 2:59 pm
I don’t think anyone should ever use a debit card for gasoline, unlike credit cards, once it’s gone, it’s gone, if something should happen or a skimmer card reader steals the number. Julie, if you can put a stop to that, you should do so but I suspect I’m already preaching to the choir.
Every single day I wonder, is this the kind of country my representatives want?
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Julie Robinson said on September 30, 2025 at 3:09 pm
She bought a Wawa card at the Publix checkout, so I think we’re okay on that, but I completely agree. I was shocked when I found the card wasn’t in the safe. I never use my debit card to buy anything, because you don’t get the same protections as with a credit card. Of course, if you’re gonna run a balance, that’s a different matter.
Maxwell Alejandro Frost is our rep, and he just posted that Democrats are there, but the Republicans have gone on vacation. And whose fault will it be when the shutdown happens?
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Jason T. said on September 30, 2025 at 4:26 pm
Sherri at 27:
Sheep go to heaven and goats go to hell.
I learned that from the Book of Cake 3:7.
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Sherri said on September 30, 2025 at 4:27 pm
Whose fault will the shutdown be? The right wing noise machine will go into overdrive blaming the Democrats, and the legacy media will fall into line. It doesn’t matter that Republicans control all the levers of government, they’re never expected to make compromises to govern. Everything is always the Democrats’ fault, no matter who is president or who controls Congress.
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Jason T. said on September 30, 2025 at 4:38 pm
Brandon at 29: We’re talking 15 years ago, or more, when I worked for an AM radio station on Sundays, running religious and ethnic programming.
We had an independent Baptist pastor — “Pastor Steve” — who bought 15 minutes of morning drive-time every weekday and would preach on various subjects.
One week it was about the Salvation Army, and how Salvationists were going to hell. (Pastor Steve was very big on faith, not works; he felt Salvationists were weak in faith and that works would not get them into the kingdom of Heaven.)
Another week, he did five episodes on Mother Teresa, and why she was going to Hell. (Besides the fact that she was Catholic, she also had confessed to sometimes doubting in a higher power or questioning the ways of God. That meant she was weak of faith and unworthy of Heaven, according to Pastor Steve.)
Usually, Pastor Steve mailed in a cassette tape of sermons, but he came up to the station a few times. He was a nice enough guy in person, but on the radio — wow. Real “wrath of God” stuff.
He does not appear to have a web presence; I found a YouTube channel for him, but there’s nothing on it, and his Facebook hasn’t been updated since 2022.
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Sherri said on September 30, 2025 at 4:51 pm
I’m really surprised that Pete Hegseth hasn’t come up with a Secretary of War uniform with lots of flashy medals so he could cosplay warrior better.
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Deborah said on September 30, 2025 at 5:30 pm
Good point Sherri, that would be expected of Hegseth, surprising he hasn’t done it yet, but there’s still time I guess.
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Sherri said on September 30, 2025 at 9:46 pm
A couple of different reactions to the Klein-Coates discussion, from two newsletters I subscribe to.
https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/you-don-t-have-to-swallow-frogs?utm_source=degenerateart.beehiiv.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=you-don-t-have-to-swallow-frogs
https://open.substack.com/pub/anandwrites/p/essay-ezra-klein-and-ta-nehisi-coates?r=2h24&utm_medium=ios
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