Jesus Harold Hughes Christ, what a shit-tastic weekend here in the D.
First, Turning Point Action came to town, to hold a three-day convention at Huntington Place, formerly the TCF Center, formerly Cobo Center, aka the vote-counting venue that all these morons believe was the site of “the steal,” as in Stop The, etc. No, I don’t know why they came to a blue city in a purple state, but I suspect it was to rub the Dems’ noses in their recent alleged gains with young people and black people. Anyway, that’s how it turned out. They picked up endorsements from ex-mayor and federal prisoner Kwame Kilpatrick (given clemency by Trump in the final hours of his presidency), as well as a couple of rappers. They also held a “roundtable discussion” in a black church, although from the photos, there sure are a lot of very light-skinned black people in that church, if you know what I mean.
I’m watching Twitter reports from the final day now. Jack Posobiec brought out a special guest — Alex Jones. I know I may be offending a few of you when I describe Republicans as across-the-board bad people, but when a suppurating infection like Jones gets a big welcome anywhere, there is simply no other way to describe the people cheering. A man that every decent person, of any party, of any political persuasion, should want to see standing on a corner wearing a barrel and holding a sign reading WILL CLEAN TOILETS WITH MY TONGUE FOR FOOD getting a standing O? There’s no other word for people who would clap for him.
But it wasn’t all sweetness and unity downtown. Nick Fuentes, the racist antisemite and blah-blah-blah, tried to hold his own convention, at the Russell Industrial Center in the city’s North End. It…didn’t go well:
The leader of a controversial rightwing group canceled their conference in Detroit, alleging they were kicked out of the Russell Industrial Center in Detroit, where he said they had plans to hold events. The move comes after Detroit police had responded to a dispute involving the group on Friday.
Nicholas Fuentes of the America First Political Action Conference said Saturday on social media that, on Friday, the group was setting up the stage at the industrial center when people with the center told them they would not be allowed to proceed. Fuentes says they had a contract for the venue.
The story has no details on what might have happened, but my guess would be the venue realized too late who had booked their facility and pulled the plug. It’s not a convention center like Huntington/TCF/Cobo — more of a raw post-industrial factory-type vibe — but it is in Detroit, its main users are artists, etc., and if I were one of the paying tenants, I’d be dropping Molotov cocktails into that den of racists. Although it might have been fun to see it play out; a history blogger recently surfaced a quote from a long-dead but not forgotten Detroit city councilman, Ken Cockrel:
Now that would have made the weekend worth saving.
Fuentes went over to the other rats’ nest and did this before he was kicked out:
On Saturday evening, Fuentes was seen on a livestream with a megaphone addressing a crowd below him outside Huntington Place. Fuentes said “this is not a free country any more.” He railed against what he called the “Jewish mafia” and heaped praise on Henry Ford, calling him a visionary who was attacked for his antisemitic views. He again slammed Israel as the crowd chanted “Christ is King” and “Down with Israel.”
OK, then. What could make this worse? Well, Trump showed up, but for once didn’t make much news, because then we had…a mass shooting. At a fucking splash pad.
Nine people were hit. One 8-year-old boy, shot in the face, is fighting for his life, and his mother, 29 weeks pregnant at the time, was hit in the abdomen. The fetus died. Another couple was there with their two children, 2 and 7 months, and both parents were hit. It was a terrible, terrible scene in Rochester Hills, an Oakland County suburb, where people move to get away from the violence in the city. No chance in these United States, sorry about that.
The gunman? Dead, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the trailer where he lived with his mother, who was not home at the time. Paywalled, but the gist:
Shelby Township — The semiautomatic rifle found on the kitchen table of the alleged gunman who shot nine people at a Rochester Hills splash pad Saturday was weighing on the minds of residents in the Dequindre Estates mobile home park as they wondered Sunday if they could have been potentially his next victims.
The gunman was Michael William Nash, 42, Oakland County Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Huber said Sunday.
Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said at a late Saturday night press conference that the gunman was a Shelby Township resident who lived in a mobile home park and had a history of mental health issues, but he didn’t identify the suspect. The gunman was found dead by law enforcement with a self-inflicted gunshot less than two miles away from the splash pad, Bouchard said, and had an “AR platform” semiautomatic rifle on the table.
You know this story: “Mental-health challenges,” etc.:
“His mom was super friendly and nice and talkative and kind to everyone she saw,” Roser said. “We never really saw him. He never came out of the house. And when he did, he didn’t even say hi back to us when we would acknowledge him. … We’re a very friendly community. He was just to himself. He was very quiet and didn’t want to be a part of our community.”
But it’s OK. The head of the state GOP said he was praying for everyone involved. I’m sure that will help.
Now we’re looking at a solid week of above-90-degree temperatures. It’s just gonna get better!