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Wednesday, March 31. 2010But For God's Sake, Let's Not Talk About Gun Control
Peter Leboon was concerned because his brother, who he said began showing signs of mental instability three years ago, had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Remember that obviously mentally ill man who was recently arrested for threatening Eric Cantor online? The guy who’s apparently been posting similar threats against a range of public figures, including President Obama and the pope? He had a concealed weapons permit. Just sayin’… Tuesday, March 30. 2010The Elephant in the Room
Bob Shrum: Imagine if after that had happened (the Rodney King riots), Michelle Bachmann, the Republican congresswoman has said she wants people in Minnesota “armed and dangerous,” imagine if Jesse Jackson had said that, or imagine if Maxine Waters had said that. I think what gives this its power and currency is the apparent ratification of it by a lot of Republican members of congress, people standing out there… Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy The elephant in the room – the proliferation of guns in the US, coupled with incendiary rhetoric on all levels of the right, from obscure bloggers to Republican senators – is briefly touched upon at the end of this discussion on Morning Joe. Before that, you have Bob Shrum making a salient point about Republican lawmakers egging on the fringe elements in the Tea Party movement, and Pat Buchanan making the astounding assertion that the right didn’t “go off the rails” after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (which Bob Shrum thoughtfully reminds us Pat Buchanan opposed.) Pat Buchanan: He mentioned the Civil Rights Act of 1964… For the record, no, the “Goldwater people” did not riot or otherwise resort to violence. They were, however, quite happy to exploit those elements of the right wing who did, the white supremacist southern Democrats outraged by the Democratic party’s support for black Civil rights. Remember? The thugs who were not only shrieking threats and obscenities at schoolchildren walking to integrated schools, but were in some cases firebombing black churches, beating up black civil rights demonstrators, and occasionally murdering civil rights activists? As for right wingers showing up at public venues packing heat, no, it was not “just one” demonstrator, as these panelists hasten to reassure each other. In addition to the guy at the rally last summer who was carrying a loaded gun and that sign about the tree of liberty being watered, there was the fellow in Minnesota, a convicted felon, who was hanging around with a couple of loaded guns outside a venue where President Obama was speaking. And let’s not forget that Tea Party sign that seemed to sum up the implicit message behind the repeated invocation of gun imagery by the right:  Another extremist who flunked logic
Missouri hatemonger runs racist radio ads... to get elected to U.S. Senate
New York Daily News A Missouri man is counting on write-in votes - and racist radio ads - to catapult him into the United States Senate.Hmmmm... Jews control the media, yet he was able to get this ad run. Seems to me like an Elder of Zion is falling down on the job. Teabaggers in a very ignorant nutshell
Thousands gather for 'Tea Party Express' event in Harry Reid's hometown
Las Vegas Journal "We're Republican by registration, but I'd even vote for a communist right now if they would start to change the way we're running the country," Halfpenny said, adding he thinks Democrats in power are leading the nation toward socialism, a Tea Party lament. "We need to get our Constitution back."Perhaps all this "difference of opinion" might be solved if we came up with a federal program to buy everyone a dictionary, so that people can understand the words they are using. Dude, let me restate what you just said in a manner which might make the absurdity of what you said a bit easier to understand. "I would vote for a Soviet commissar before I would vote for a British Member of Parliament." Monday, March 29. 2010Sarah Advocates the Harry Weisiger Approach![These [fill in the blank] are crazy!](/s9/uploads/category/obelix.jpg "These [fill in the blank] are crazy!: It just isn't the Romans who are nuts")
“….that bumper sticker that maybe you’ll see on the next Subaru drivin’ by, an Obama bumper sticker, you should stop the driver and say, ‘So how is that hopey changey think workin’ out for ya?’” Sarah Palin Speech, Searchlight Nevada, at the 2.58 mark Exactly how her fans are supposed to “stop the driver” is, of course, left up to them. “ Maybe Sarah was inspired by the recent case of Harry Weisiger, that guy in Nashville who rammed his SUV into a Toyota Camry with an Obama sticker and pushed it onto the sidewalk. Instead of leaving the scene of the accident, I guess Weisiger could have run up to the drivers’ side to ask about how the hopey changey thing was going, but I have a feeling Mark Duren, the Toyota’s driver, wanted to talk about something else. Which is likely to be a problem faced by any Sarah Palin fan who tries this, even in less violent ways, like planting themselves in front of cars and waving their arms, or getting the Obama supporter to pull over by following closely behind it in their truck and honking and pointing at a rear wheel as if there were something wrong, or just pursuing them into a cul-de-sac and cutting off any avenue of escape. The primary thing in the mind of the Subaru driver is going to be, either “what’s wrong?” or “For God’s sake, who are you people and what do you want,” which is not exactly conducive to a meaningful political discussion. Still, a tea-partier who does the cul-de-sac thing a few times, especially if the tea partier in question has a gun rack in his truck, and prefaces his questioning of the driver with assurances that “I’m not a violent man,” will probably report back with a gratifyingly high level of panicked agreement from drivers confronted in this manner. “Yes, yes, things are going terribly, and I’ll take the Obama sticker off right now! (scrabbles desperately at bumper sticker with fingernails) Just let me and kids go, okay?” It’s nice to see, along with her assurances that she’s not advocating violence, that Palin is doing her part to lessen political divisiveness in this country. Sunday, March 28. 2010Erick Erickson Insists He’s Developed Lungs, Is Occasionally Emerging On to Beaches To Spawn
I have definitely evolved over time…Erick Erickson Explaining to Howard Kurtz Why he Regrets, Among Other Things, Publicly Calling retiring Justice Souter a “Goat-F*cking Child Molester” Erick Erickson says he’s evolved. Honest he has! He learned his lesson after that Tweet he posted last May – twice – about Justice Souter. Yeah, really, it was about the dumbest thing I’ve done. You now, counter-intuitively, I guess, some good came out of it, the very first time I’ve realized, Howard, how what I do for a living affects my family as well. Uhhh, having my three year old heckled and booed in the front yard by a neighbor, having my wife be berated at her office… Yes, in the course of less than a year, Erickson has learned his lesson -- which is that Erick Erickson posting grossly irresponsible tweets accusing a public figure of bestiality and pedophilia is wrong because it adversely affects Erick Erickson and the people Erick Erickson loves. Justice Souter’s family possibly getting heckled and berated? No biggie. It’s all about Erick Erickson, whose greatest crime in the past, really, if you listen to Erick Erickson, was being too darned modest about anyone paying attention to little ol’ him. As he blushingly confesses, “Up until that moment I always considered I was just a guy chatting with friends even on Twitter, and realized I’ve actually reached a point where people listen to what I say and care about what I say.” Because in addition to being modest, he’s passionate! Back in 2008, when Erickson wrote a piece entitled “Is Obama Shagging Hookers Behind the Media’s Back” and concluded that “Obama’s Marxist harpy wife would go Lorena Bobbit on him should he even think about it,” he was just being “very passionate and aggressive in defending” his side. He wasn’t attacking! He was defending! And really, he’s just an ordinary concerned citizen like any other American driven into a state of insensate rage after reading the ingredients on his box of Calgon. When Erickson wrote “At what point do people march down to their state legislator’s house, pull them aside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot,” he was responding to the kind of provocation, the sort of “unwarranted government intrusion” that would drive any reasonable human being to react in that manner. “The case in that situation was Washington State banning phosphates from dishwasher detergent,” he explains. Friday, March 26. 2010Is She Kidding? You Decide.
I’ve never done anything like this, but we have to because the President’s a Communist! I liked Victoria Jackson when she was on Saturday Night Live, but at the time I thought her blonde ditz persona was an act. Apparently, it wasn’t. Or maybe it is, and she’s a crafty prankster, a sort of solo version of The Yes Men. Either way, the result is what looks like an SNL skit when Steve Doocy invites her onto Fox & Friends to reassure everyone that the Tea Partiers are not a bunch of comically ill-informed neo-McCarthyites who believe everything Glenn Beck says. Thursday, March 25. 2010Blaming the Victims
Cantor said a bullet was shot through the window of his Richmond, Va., campaign office this week, and that he's gotten threatening emails. A preliminary investigation shows that a bullet was fired into the air and struck the window in a downward direction, landing on the floor about a foot from the window. The round struck with enough force to break the windowpane but did not penetrate the window blinds. There was no other damage to the room, which is used occasionally for meetings by the congressman. From the Police Report on the Incident Cantor is referring to So Eric Cantor is trying to convince everyone that someone shooting a gun into the air in the vicinity of an unoccupied building where he has an office - the bullet fell, hitting a window pane but not breaking it* -- is the equivalent of a blog-directed attack in which people hurled bricks through the windows of several Democratic headquarters. Not to mention the relative of a Democrat pol whose home was rather dangerously vandalized after a couple of right-wing bloggers mistakenly posted it as the pol's address. It looks like he and others on the right are gearing up to blame the victims if and when more serious violence actually breaks out -- so long as the victims are Democrats. There are nutballs on either side of the political spectrum, and strong feelings can bring them out of the woodwork. If health reform had failed, I have no doubt that some Republican lawmakers would have gotten threats and obscene FAXes from supporters of reform. There might even have been some smashed windows. But there’s a difference, one that ratchets up the danger quotient here. It can be summed up in two words. “Guns” and “Influence.” Liberals did not react to the “election” of George W. Bush by running out and buying guns and ammo to the point where gun stores were running out of stock. They did not invite attendees at demonstrations to bring weapons, even in areas where carrying a gun in public is legal. They did not post numerous messages online citing armed insurrection as an option. Yes, there were liberals who said they were leaving the country if George Bush were re-elected, but, no prominent elected Democrat stood before a cheering crowd and invoked secession. Yes, there were left-wing bloggers who claimed George Bush was using FEMA to build and man concentration camps, and insisted that Bush had himself engineered the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11. There was, however, and there still is, no left wing equivalent to Glenn Beck coming on the air almost every night and spouting half-mad (or just plain mad) conspiracy theories to a national audience. Yes, there were rocks thrown and windows broken at some demonstrations, often in the heat of the moment. What we did not see was a coordinated effort, organized online, in which cowards planned and executed night-time vandalism on party headquarters – or released the home addresses of prominent Republicans (or their relatives) and invited their constituents to pay them a visit. When a well-known liberal blogger did once confront someone at their home, he got called out for it -- by Keith Olbermann on national TV. And that’s an important difference. Nobody is claiming that stupidity and irrationality are unique to the right wing. Unfortunately, leaders of the Republican party have, for the past twenty years, sought to use this irrationality as leverage in a manner the Democratic party has not. Under the circumstances, Cantor's recent effort at shushing Democrats comes across as pre-emptive damage control -- the nervousness of someone who realizes that the mob he and his friends have been inciting all these years just might not be as controllable as he thought they were. *correction: It did break the pane. Wednesday, March 24. 2010Another Lesson in Cause and Effect?
Danville and Lynchburg Tea Party activists mistakenly posted the address of Rep. Tom Perriello’s brother online Monday to invite others to “drop by” Perriello’s home in Charlottesville and “express their thanks” for his health care vote… Days after his address was posted online by a Virginia Tea Party activist, the FBI and local law enforcement officials are investigating a "suspicious incident" at the home of Rep. Tom Perriello's brother. Tuesday, March 23. 2010Violent Words. Violent Acts. It's Not Rocket Science.
Mike Vanderboegh, of Pinson, Ala., former head of the Alabama Constitutional Militia, put out a call on Friday for modern "Sons of Liberty" to break the windows of Democratic Party offices nationwide in opposition to health care reform. Since then, vandals have struck several offices, including the Sedgwick County Democratic Party headquarters in Wichita. 13 Wham.com The call from the right for liberals to “do what we say and you won’t get hurt” has been turned up just a notch. In reaction to the passage of health reform, a right wing blogger named Mike Vanderboegh called on his readers to break the windows of Democrats. Shortly afterwards, several Democratic Party offices in different cities were targeted with bricks flung through their windows. Mr. Vanderboegh seems positively exhilarated by the response to his message: "Wake up and understand what is happening in this country. You need to start listening to people who you think you didn't have to pay any attention to, because sooner or later they will get your attention.” Indeed. In fact, someone out there is so hungry for attention that someone phoned in to the office of Louise Slaughter threatening violence against the children of lawmakers who support healthcare reform. Imagine that. A blogger posts a call to vandalism on his blog – and vandalism takes place! It’s as if words typed into the ether actually have some sort of meaning and lead to action in the offline world! Vanderboegh, of course, insists that he’s not promoting “actual violence.” “How ambiguous is it if I say break windows? Am I saying kill people, absolutely not,” he insists. But you see, here’s the thing about blogging -- readers are able to see, not just the message of the blogger but, through the comments section, how that message is processed and interpreted. And looking through the comments posted on Mr. Vanderboegh’s blog does not indicate much reluctance about upping the ante if smashing windows doesn’t work. Here are a few of the comments posted by his fans in reaction to what he calls “the window war.” I should point out that the number of comments on his blog are not high, and these were not at all difficult to find: “Hmmm, no demopub office here, far as I know. I'll think of something...” But hey, this is all just a bunch of blog commenters right? It couldn’t possibly have an impact in the real world. It's all just posted to upset liberals. Right? Well, it has had an impact in the real world. Strange as it may seem to many people, those supposedly “meaningless” comments sections on a blog (and a small comments section at that) actually reflect the views of human beings who exist outside of the Internet and are capable of acting in the offline world. Literal people, not virtual people, who are capable of reading Mr. Vanderboegh's blog, literally hefting a literal brick, and literally hurling it through a literal window. Monday, March 22. 2010Godwin Fail
BECK (Pointing at picture of John Lewis, Nancy Pelosi, and John Larson walking arm in arm across the street into the U.S. Capitol): You know what this is? They locked arms, because they wanted to compare themselves to the civil rights activists! How dare you! Oh that John Lewis! He should be ashamed for getting called "nigger" and afterwards doing something kind of like what 1960s civil rights activists did, thus inviting comparisons to 1960s activists! Who does he think he is?  And a Little Bit Closer...
If anyone is wondering when the Republicans are going to say, “that’s enough” to their base, so far, it looks like the answer is, “never.”
"I think that when you use totalitarian tactics, people begin to act crazy…" Representative Devin Nunes on a recent incident where anti-Healthcare reform demonstrators yelled "Nigger" at Rep. John Lewis But yelling “nigger” at a civil rights activist who faced down racists in Alabama during the ‘60s is not the worst of it. As I expected, in the wake of the passage of healthcare reform, admiring references to the Chilean military’s “solution” to Salvador Allende (a military coup, followed by the mass torture and slaughter of liberals and leftists) has begun popping up on various right-wing blogs. (And no, I’m not going up these sites’ hit counts with links): The closest analogy that comes to mind is Salvador Allende the socialist senator turned president of Chile who defying Chile's constitution and will of its people rammed his leftist agenda down their throats believing it was good for them. Apollospeaks Is Obama the new Salvador Allende? Salvador Allende was a Communist piece of human trash who secured power in Chile and proceeded to destroy a functioning democracy… Finally in 1973, the Chilean military overthrew him in a coup. Since then, Chile has returned to functioning as a democratic republic that has become the most prosperous state in Latin America and a model for the world in general. Theforgottenstreet America must learn from history and realize that Barack Hussein Obama has placed us on the same unsustainable path that Allende did in Chile. ronbosoldier In other words, “Do what we say and you won’t get hurt.” It will be interesting to see when and if this emerges into the offline media. If so, my money is on Glenn Beck. We dedicate this next song to Senator Jim "Napoleon" DemintSaturday, March 20. 2010Adventures in Right Wing History
First, Georgia Republican Representative Paul Broun is still mad about the devaluation of Confederate currency:
If Obamacare passes, that free insurance card that’s in people’s pockets is going to be as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the war between the states…the great war of Yankee aggression. . Quite apart from his obvious nostalgia for the “lost cause” of the Confederacy (i.e, white supremacy) Broun’s statement fails even when it comes to current events. “Free insurance cards?” Who has those? I have an insurance card, but it definitely isn’t free. Second, Dick Armey has apparently been reading Conservapedia. Yet another bubble from the depths of the right-wing blogosphere has risen up to the offline world and popped greasily on the surface. "Jamestown colony, when it was first founded as a socialist venture, dang near failed with everybody dead and dying in the snow," Armey reported in his luncheon address. Washington Post 3/16/10 For the record, The Jamestown Colony was explicitly a capitalist venture. It existed to make a profit for the Virginia Company of London, and it almost failed, not because the colonists were a bunch of wild-eyed hippie socialists, but because they were contending with hostile Indians and disease. Friday, March 19. 2010A Word from the Parkinsons' Victim that Tea Partiers Were Deriding |
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