In this social-media age, disturbed threat-makers and hostage-takers post their own running Facebook updates on their ongoing police standoffs. Now it's happened three times within a month. Thursday, it was a 23-year-old man updating his Facebook friends on the progress of his heavily armed freak-out, and on Sept. 21, a guy about the same age was explaining how he "cant take it no more im done bro" as he held a businessman hostage in a Pittsburgh office building.
ON SEPT. 8 in Denver, one holed-up Facebook gunman even posted pictures of himself and his alleged partner in crime during the standoff.
Of course, then there was the Utah one in June and some others last year. To put this recent phenomenon in sociological terms . . . WTF, dude? I'm afraid to check how many folks have live tweeted their tactical staredowns with the men from SWAT. The latest standoff, the Washington meltdown with an firepower at hand, is reputed to have a shameless hussy at its root. Of course. And Levi Matthew Tucker (use of the middle name here is gratuitous -- if he had killed someone, it would be mandatory) apparently is a big fan of both guns and the tea party.
A 29-year-old man killed in a confrontation with Omaha police officers early Sunday near 30th and Pratt Streets was on a 48-hour furlough from the Community Corrections Center of Lincoln.
Jermaine Lucas of Omaha began serving five to eight years in the Nebraska Department of Corrections on Dec. 7, 2010, for being a felon in possession of a gun. Robert Houston, the director of the Nebraska Department of Corrections, said Lucas started his 11th furlough on Friday.
Houston said it's a rare occurrence for an inmate to run into trouble with the law while on an unsupervised release.
(snip)
Lucas was no stranger to police and had a long arrest record. Police have said in the past that they believed him to be a member of the 29th Street Bloods gang.
In 2006, Lucas and another suspected 29th Street Bloods member, Jimmy Levering, were charged in connection with the fatal shooting of Kenny Miller, 24, outside a convenience store at 24th Street and Redick Avenue.
Levering was charged as the shooter, and Lucas was accused of driving Levering from the scene.
Prosecutors said charges against both men were dropped after witnesses, fearing retaliation, refused to testify.
In 2010, Levering was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for being a felon in possession of ammunition after police found him with two .45-caliber bullets during a Jan. 29 traffic stop. He died in May 2011 after being shot in the head outside the Club Seville at 30th and Pratt Streets.
JUSTICE doesn't always happen as we expect, or by ordinary legal means, but it usually occurs. One way or another. On earth or in the great beyond.
So . . . do you think this might be a case where politically correct types, in a frenzy to wipe out "hate" -- I'm sorry, H8 -- have fostered hate against the "haters" in the name of "love," only to encourage a hate crime?
If that indeed is the case with the shooting today at what some regard as H8 Central, otherwise known as the Family Research Council in Washington, it would be the most unsurprising thing in the world. When you begin to dehumanize the "haters" in the service of what you hold as a righteous crusade of liberation, you not only have just made yourself indistinguishable from your enemy but you also have unleashed a darkness unlimited by ideology.
The darkness doesn't know "rights."
It could care less about "justice." Diversity? Homogeneity? It's all the same to the abyss.
I WOULD IMAGINE the extent of one's outrage over the events reported by The Associated Press today is largely determined by which side of the culture war you're fighting for. We're Americans, and that's what Americans do these days.
An armed man walked into the Washington headquarters of a conservative Christian lobbying group Wednesday morning and was confronted by a security guard, whom he shot in the arm before the guard and others wrestled him to the ground, authorities said.
The man was taken into custody by the FBI and was being interviewed. Authorities did not identify the man or disclose where he was being interviewed. The guard was taken to a hospital in stable condition.
FBI spokeswoman Jacqueline Maguire said the man got into an altercation with the guard. However, police and FBI officials said it's too early to know the circumstances of the shooting, which occurred around 10:45 a.m. at the headquarters of the Family Research Council, or whether it was connected to the group's activities.
"We don't know enough yet about him ... or mentally what he's thinking," said James McJunkin, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office.
The Family Research Council confirmed in a statement that the security guard was employed by the group.
"Our first concern is with our colleague who was shot today," the group's president, Tony Perkins, said in a statement.
The Family Research Council advocates conservative positions on social issues and strongly opposes gay marriage and abortion.
DID I MENTION that FRC head Tony Perkins had been strongly supportive of Chick Fil-A and the stance of its president, Dan Cathy, against same-sex marriage?
I wonder what the Buchanan Obama Administration will have to say about ginning up the hate -- sorry again . . . H8 -- to the point where some start to think the final solution is some version of a Final Solution?
Some of the language here is NSFW. But Dad is just reading what his 15-year-old wrote about him on Facebook.
This is the best reason I've ever seen for not enacting stringent gun control.
Personally, though, I would have gone for either buckshot or slugs in a 12-gauge shotgun. At least three shells' worth, maybe more. Sometimes, you need to kick a little ass -- or blow up a laptop -- to stem the rising tide of entitled barbarianism.
Oh . . . save the .45 and the hollow-points for the little princess' smart phone. That would be AWESOME.
Violent Marxist Revolution Now Guy, meet Andrew Breitbart and the Water the Tree of Liberty People. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right . . . here I am, stuck in the middle with you. Who knew Gerry Rafferty was a prophet?
Ultimately, all of life is a big version of a college Free Speech Alley. Of course, this is no debating society or bitch session in the sheltered world of the American university. No, this s*** done got real.
This is the America of soaring unemployment and political warfare. This is the America where dreams go to die and outrage comes to live.
In this Era of Ill Will, where massive consumerist appetites and burgeoning corporate greed face off with minuscule wallets and fading hope for the future, something's gotta give. We don't know just yet what that will be.
But something will.
And some freak show on the fringes -- either one -- is just waiting to throw a lit match into a pile of oily rags.
CONTRARY to the propaganda on the right, the Occupy Wall Street people aren't just a collection of angry Marxists, anarchists and free spirits looking for an excuse to take off their clothes. From what I can see, there are a lot of "normal" people out there, too -- folks who tried to play by the rules and got burned by a system with an ace up its sleeve.
Their dignity is under assault, their checking accounts are depleted, and their options are few amid the Great Recession. It is them I feel for. I feel for the eccentrics, too -- just more in a "That's just Junior. Don't hurt him -- he's odd, but he's harmless" kind of way.
Now here's what I fear.
Some Angry Marxist Guy -- or maybe some Breitbart vigilante, some self-appointed defender of capitalism and Americanism -- is going to do something stupid. And then some cop is going to do something stupid.
And then some ordinary Joe -- peacefully taking it to the streets because the street is all that's left for the redress of grievances -- is going to be the one killed by the cop's stupidity.
I remember the '60s and how cities burned after just such a scenario. Think of what could happen in this tinderbox of a country we've built for ourselves, where those at the top have everything to lose and too many down below have nothing left to lose.
DO YOU think that a country in which "terminating" defenseless fetuses is a constitutional right and "Let him die!" passes for somebody's health-care policy isn't much up for an ideology-driven bloodbath between the able-bodied? You'd better think again. It's in our DNA, both as Americans and members of a woefully fallen human race.
All it takes is 1 percent to start a fire that consumes the other 99.
Two years ago, the tea-party meme was "Barack Hussein Obama is a socialist." And a "Muslin."
Protesters walked around with handguns on their hips and assault rifles slung over their shoulders. Amid the "Don't Tread on Me" flags was an occasional "It is time to water the tree of liberty" sign. Right-thinking Americans were to "water the tree," as it were, "with the blood of patriots and tyrants," according to the original Thomas Jefferson quote.
A year and a half ago, the tea-party meme was "Barack Hussein Obama is a socialist, Marxist Nazi who, with his liberal henchmen, wants to fundamentally subvert constitutional rule."
And "ObamaCare" was as Marxist as it got. Or as Nazi as it gets, what with all the "death panels." Even though it was modeled on a Massachusetts plan championed by a Republican governor.
SINCE, we've had Republicans in the U.S. House hold the government hostage with the threat of default. We've had Republican presidential candidates hyperventilating about "government injections." We've had another GOP presidential candidate speculatively accusing the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of "almost treason" and suggesting Ben Bernanke's reception in Texas, were he so unwise as to venture there, would get "ugly."
The United States has lived through other eras as divided, rancorous and nasty as the present one. A century and a half ago, one such era ended with the deaths of between 600,000 and 700,000 Americans. A third of the country lay in ruins.
Having been to the abyss once and fallen in, Americans since have been gun shy when it comes to civil war. No more, not in this present Era of Bat-S*** Crazy.
Today, it's a death match between right-thinking, right-wing Americans of the tea-party persuasion and the evil liberals, whose communist plot has succeeded in subverting our culture. That's what conservative Internet mogul Andrew Breitbart told a Boston-area tea-party gathering Friday, adding that in his less-clear moments he thinks "Fire the first shot. Bring it on."
"We outnumber them, and we have the guns."
JUST IN CASE you think you heard him wrong, Breitbart makes it perfectly clear.
"I'm talking about if they want to take it to the point of a civil war and it goes to the streets, we're the guys that have the guns," he said. "The people in the military, who are not supposed to be political -- when push comes to shove, they're going to be on our side. That's what I'm talking about."
What was just a nasty political undercurrent (and ill-tempered words on misspelled protest signs) now has come out into the open. A conservative media entrepreneur and provocateur now has named That Which Must Not Be Named, and he did so in the context of:
* "Bring it on."
*"We outnumber them, and we have the guns."
* "The people in the military who are not supposed to be political -- when push comes to shove, they're going to be on our side."
CONSIDER, TOO, what is obvious but unsaid by Breitbart. Who is the present-day leader of the "liberal subversion" of all that was right and good about America? Who is at the top of the "subversive" food chain?
It can be none other than Barack Hussein Obama -- President Obama.
What Breitbart rhapsodizes about is a civil war that, given who now sits as its chief executive, would result in the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. And he suggests that it would occur with the backing of the military -- a coup. (See Title 18, United States Code, Section 2385.)
Tea-party "patriots" and those who egg them on, like Breitbart, think it's cute to wink and nod at the violent end of the United States as we've known it since the last attempt at bringing about the violent end of the United States. They think they're being conservative and culturally responsible by seeing the evil of the "subversives" (and in some specific cases, they're correct about cultural trends) . . . and then raising it.
Likewise, they think they're being "constitutional" -- law-abiding -- by walking to the edge of what could earn them up to 20 years in federal prison, toeing at that legal line in the sand and then running off to hide behind the First Amendment.
They do all this so cavalierly, so glibly. So enthusiastically.
THIS IS HOW most people condemn themselves to hell, thinking the whole time that God is on their side. This is how a small cadre of nuts, louts and fools can cast entire peoples into hell on earth. Gavrilo Princip, after all, was just trying to free Bosnia from the shackles of Austro-Hungarian tyranny, right?
He was a patriot. And as a result of his patriotic -- and successful -- double-assassination attempt, "trees of liberty" all over the world got watered with the blood of some 17 million dead and 20 million wounded.
Self-styled "patriots" usually cast us all into an earthly "lake of fire" with years of murderous rhetoric that culminate with a single stupid individual doing a single stupid -- and deadly -- thing. Then comes a harsh reaction. And an even more violent counterreaction.
Then a yet harsher counter-counterreaction . . . a whole self-perpetuating vortex of hate and violence sucking whole societies down into the netherworld.
WE LIVE, in our tenderbox society, during what the Chinese curse would refer to as "interesting times." It is here that tea-party "patriots" strike their matches and wantonly discard lit cigarettes. And it is here that "conservative" radicals such as Andrew Breitbart throw bombs at "the enemy within."
If sanity does not reassert itself -- and soon -- the bombs Americans throw won't be rhetorical ones. And the "tree of liberty" just might drown amid a crimson tide.
For a brief moment, one woman lifts Capitol Hill from the muck, and humanity reasserts itself. Now I'm going to have to go and read twice as many political comment threads to regain equilibrium.
I don't care if you don't got no crawfish lef', cher!
If da man come in and say he want da crawfish, you go and get da man some crawfish, y'unnerstand? You go an' get da man his mudbugs, Cap.
It is always better for da customer to be suckin' da heads rather than lickin' the toads. Especially when he packin' da heat.
THIS CAUTIONARY TALE about what happens to those who come between a political extremist and his crawfish comes to us via the Pensacola News Journal. Read it and heed it:
A manic shooter peppered a busy Ensley retail strip with assault rifle fire Sunday evening because a local seafood market ran out of crawfish, investigators said.
Larry Wayne Kelly, 42, of Pensacola is in county jail on $575,000 bond facing a slew of felony charges.
Kelly's lead-filled rampage erupted about 7 p.m. when Escambia County deputies received a flood of calls reporting a man speeding through Ensley, blasting an AK-47 assault rifle from the window of a pickup truck.
At one point, Kelly got out of the vehicle and fired numerous shots at the storefront of L&T Seafood Market on Pensacola Boulevard, about two blocks south of Wal-Mart, witnesses said.
Two hours earlier, Kelly allegedly called the seafood market to order crawfish and became "incredibly irate" when an employee said the store didn't have any, according to a Sheriff's Office report.
(snip)
Kelly claimed to be a "sovereign citizen," telling deputies he does not have to follow the law or obey law enforcement officers, deputies said. Also found in the truck was the book "The Sociopath Next Door."
According to a 2010 FBI briefing paper: "Sovereign citizens are anti-government extremists who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or 'sovereign' from the United States. As a result, they believe they don't have to answer to any government authority, including courts, taxing entities, motor vehicle departments or law enforcement."
REMEMBER, ladies and germs, while the tree of liberty must from time to time be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants, it also must be regularly fertilized with the remains of boiled crawfish.
“Expanding the context of the attack to blame and to infringeupon the people’s Constitutional liberties is both dangerous and ignorant,” she added. “The irresponsible assignment of blame to me, Sarah Palin or the TEA Party movement by commentators and elected officials puts all who gather to redress grievances in danger.” “Especially within hoursLimbaugh railed against the left’s attempts to “massage” the shooting “for their political benefit,” saying Democrats were just waiting for an excuse to “regulate out of business their political opponents. . . . I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody in the Obama administration or some FCC bureaucrat or some Democrat congressman has it already written up, such legislation, sitting in a desk drawer somewhere just waiting for the right event for a clampdown. . . . They have been trying this ever since the Oklahoma City bombing.” And David Brock, CEO of the liberal watchdog Media Matters, wrote an open letter to Rupert Murdoch calling on him to fire or rein in Beck and Palin for their use of violent rhetoric on Fox News. “Beck and Palin are two of Fox’s most recognizable figures,” Brock wrote. “Before this heartbreaking tragedy in Arizona, you were either unwilling or unable to rein in their violent rhetoric. But now, in the wake of the killings, your network must take a stand.” “I’m not playing politics,” Beck said on his radio show Tuesday. He said he had “softened” his rhetoric over the past two years. “Nobody wants to recognize this. Why? Because it hurts their dialogue.” "There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those “calm days” when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols? In an ideal world all discourse would be civil and all disagreements cordial. But our Founding Fathers knew they weren’t designing a system for perfect men and women. If men and women were angels, there would be no need for government." While it would be impossible to top the self-centered offensiveness of today's Sarah Palin video -- where she used the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords to peddle her message of victimhood -- Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) gave it his best shot, but could only manage a trifecta of stupidity. of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.” Should we have expected anything else? Four days after the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords that left six dead and fourteen wounded, and on the day that Congress and the President will honor the victims of this tragedy, Sarah Palin just happens to choose today to assure America that she is among the victims. In a carefully orchestrated video, complete with a large American flag that apparently flutters next to her fireplace, Palin quickly gets her sympathy for the victims and their families out of the way so she can get to the real reason for her message -- to attack the debate that has arisen about the role violent rhetoric so commonly used among elected Republicans, their media surrogates, and of course Palin herself, may have played in last Saturday's tragedy. A California man was arrested on Wednesday morning for threatening to kill Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington State, as the shootings in Tucson sparked impassioned conversation about Congressional security on Capitol Hill. Charles Habermann, 32, of Palm Springs, Calif., was arrested for phone calls he made in December to Mr. McDermott’s office in which he threatened to kill Mr. McDermott, as well as the congressman’ss friends and family, and to put the congressman “in the trash.”
"What we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other."
Surveying the west Omaha landscape on a snowy Sunday night, one could contemplate the quiet, feel the biting January chill and mistake the world for one at peace. One might imagine his fellow Americans -- all of them -- gazing at the powdery comforter pulled over a manicured suburban scene, grateful for the beauty of it all.
One might get lost in the nature-imposed tranquility of such a night and imagine that an anger-crazed teenager hadn't, just a few days ago, shot and killed his assistant principal.
Hadn't shot and wounded his principal.
Hadn't shot at and missed a custodian as he fled the scene of the crime -- a high school just miles away from this peaceful sight.
Lost in a gentle snowfall, engulfed in the soft glow of a leaden January sky, one's thoughts have difficulty embracing the notion of an anger so intense, so soul-deadening, so hope-destroying it would demand that a young man jam a Glock up against his own head, then pull the trigger in a bid for oneness with the abyss.
TAKING IN this wintry vista, one struggles with the vision of a paranoiac snapping an ammo clip into another handgun, in another American city far away, then taking aim at a congresswoman, then pulling the trigger, authorities say. Pulling it again, and again, and again, we hear -- like some sort of self-appointed destroyer of entire worlds.
Appearances can deceive. We are tempted to think the falling snow might somehow forever bury -- mystically obliterate -- the blight upon our land. That the ugliness within us might not survive the beauty without.
Eventually, though, the snow clouds exhaust themselves. Eventually, the light shines upon the illusion and melts it away.
Eventually, we must deal -- Might deal? Can we deal? -- with the muck and the grime.
Maybe.
Maybe we'll just close our eyes, trying not to notice the stink of that which molders around us. And we'll wait for the next snowfall . . . for the next blessed illusion.
"Everybody that used to know me I'm sry but Omaha changed me and (expletive) me up. and the school I attend is even worse ur gonna here about the evil (expletive) I did but that (expletive) school drove me to this. I wont u guys to remember me for who I was b4 this ik. I greatly affected the lives of the families ruined but I'm sorry. goodbye."
-- Robert Butler Jr., high-school gunman
Oh. Well, that explains it, then.
I'm sure Vicki Kaspar, the Millard South assistant principal gunned down by Butler this afternoon died tonight knowing it was for a damned good reason. Right?
"This time." That's a hell of a couple of words -- this time. They mean it's happened here before -- which it has. They mean it probably will happen again -- which I wouldn't doubt.
"This time." A hell of a thing, "this time." A hell of a thing that means I can just recycle what I wrote about last time, which is, in itself, a hell of a thing. This matter of history -- and youthful domestic terrorism -- repeating itself in my city. In Omaha.
Mayor Jim Suttle said this thing "descended on our city." No, things like this don't descend on a city, except in the sense that evil descends upon a place to wreak its havoc. Things like what 17-year-old Robert Butler Jr., unleashed don't descend so much as they're carefully constructed in the human heart.
Fitfully hatched in a demented mind.
Cynically incubated in a full-blown culture of death. That would be us, the world's new barbarians.
HERE'S WHAT I wrote three years ago, when youthful mayhem "descended" on Omaha in 2007 during the Von Maur massacre. Not a damned thing has changed except the name, the place and the extent of the carnage.
Just replace "Robert A. Hawkins" with "Robert Butler Jr.," "Christmas shoppers and salespeople" with "students and faculty." Call it good.
Or very, very bad.
Robert A. Hawkins was a terrorist just as much as is Osama bin Laden. Osama's a big leaguer; Robbie Hawkins was a rookie-league screwball pitcher. How do you like your newfound fame, kid?
I can appreciate that Hawkins was a sad, tormented and pathological young adult. I can. So were Hank Williams and Janis Joplin, but they still managed to leave behind much beauty in this world and killed no one but, ultimately, themselves.
And let's not forget Vincent van Gogh.
Robbie Hawkins' legacy is death, panic, mayhem, gore and heartbreak. Thousands of years of human tradition and theology tell us mayhem and death are the province of the Evil One, and modern psychology can offer no treatment -- no effective prophylactic -- for the demonic.
Robert A. Hawkins, age 20, was a sick young man. A sick young man who listened to the devil inside. A sick young man for whom self-murder just wasn't good enough.
No, he had to take eight others with him on his way out.
I grieve for the hell Robbie Hawkins' life became, just as I weep over the hell on earth he brought to innocent Christmas shoppers and salespeople. I will not, however, make excuses for what he did -- what he did to eight fellow humans, what he did to their families and friends, what he did to this city.
This city . . . Omaha. My home.
With great difficulty, I pray that God has more mercy on Robbie Hawkins' tormented soul than Robbie Hawkins had on a bunch of innocent people he knew not from Adam. But that doesn't change what Hawkins decided to become Wednesday afternoon -- a terrorist. Albeit one without a clue.
WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY that has fetishized sex, violence, death and materialism. None of the above can fill the void that haunts our being. None of the above can give adequate meaning to young lives like the one Robert A. Hawkins threw away in that Omaha shopping mall.
Americans are quick to mock those young, Islamic terrorists who embrace suicide, murder and carnage for the greater glory of Allah -- and the chance to screw themselves silly in Paradise with 72 hot virgins.
But at least they kill -- and die -- for something, no matter how warped.
For what did Robbie Hawkins -- and all his youthful predecessors like Harris, Klebold and Cho -- kill . . . and die?
This might be the sanest thing anyone in America has done in the last year, and look what it gets the guy. Besieged by the SWAT team.
Busted.
Written up in all the newspapers.
ALL BECAUSE of a completely sane, rational response to the politician who not only won't go away, but tells all her no-account kinfolk to come over, too. Here's what The Associated Pressput out on the wires, but you be the judge:
A rural Wisconsin man blasted his television set with a shotgun after watching Bristol Palin's "Dancing with the Stars" routine Monday night, saying he was fed up with politics and Palin wasn't a very good dancer, according to court documents.
Steven Cowan, 67, of the town of Vermont, about 15 miles west of Madison, then pointed the gun at his wife, 66-year-old Janice Cowan, who escaped and called police, authorities said. A SWAT team surrounded the couple's farmhouse, and officers were able to talk Cowan out Tuesday morning after an all-night standoff.
Cowan had been drinking before he sat down to watch "Dancing with the Stars" and suffers from bipolar disorder, his wife told officers. He was charged Tuesday with second-degree reckless endangerment, and could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Cowan was expected to make his initial court appearance Wednesday in Madison. Online court records show that the state public defender's office was appointed to represent him, however the office said it had no record of him as of Wednesday morning.
Dane County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Elise Schaffer said Cowan works as a landlord, but that she didn't know where he owned property. He has a clean criminal record, she said.
"It's kind of sad, actually," Schaffer said.
YEAH, IT'S SAD that y'all put the poor man in jail after his spontaneous fit of rationality. That's what's sad.
But that's just my opinion. Let me know if anybody's interested in starting up a defense fund for a true American patriot.
AFTER ALL, if the King can shoot a TV set -- and get away with it -- for less provocation than a Palin, there just ain't no justice for the common man.
A crazed gunman walked into an Omaha hospital today, hours after leading police on a high-speed chase when lawmen foiled his mad scheme to gun down his in-laws.
And death roamed the corridors.
In the dark Nebraska predawn, the gunman assaulted his terrified wife at a hunt club they owned near a small northeastern Nebraska town. Who did she want to die first? Cold blue steel was pressed to her head.
Who did she want to die first, her mother or her sister?
It's midday in Omaha. The scene: a busy medical center near downtown. Two police officers find the man -- gun in hand -- standing at a pay phone near the hospital cafeteria. THEY CONFRONT him. He answered with a fusillade of hot lead. The officers are hit, but fate has spared them grievous wounds.
They return fire, mortally wounding Jeffrey Layten.
He could have been alQaida in a pickup, if not for the bravery displayed by American police officers in the line of fire. And Lee Terry -- CONGRESSMAN Lee Terry -- thinks he was a great guy:
"I have known Jeff for years and hunted on his property many times. Jeff has always been an easy-going person," Terry whined to the Omaha press corps, "and today’s episode is very out of character for him."
WHAT IS the "character" of a crazed would-be killer, Congressman? And what is the character of a gun-happy Republican politician who "hunts" with domestic terrorists?
Call Lee Terry's office at (202) 225-4155 and tell the congressman you're sick of his tolerance for domestic terrorism. Tell Lee Terry he's too extreme for law-abiding Nebraskans, and that his criminal-coddling ways will come to an abrupt end this November.
Stop Lee Terry before more of his "easy-going" friends put their blue-steel barrels of terror to your head.
* * *
This message is paid for by the One Good Turn Foundation, and Lee Terry should approve of our methods. We're just taking a page out of his playbook, after all.
A Tea Party Airlines flight made a scheduled stop in Austin, Texas, today, destroying offices of the Internal Revenue Service.
It was a one-way trip. The pilot, disgruntled software engineer Joe Stack, punched his own ticket, according to The New York Times:
The authorities identified the pilot as Joseph A. Stack III, 53, and said his body had not yet been recovered from the building. The other person who was still unaccounted for was described by officials as a federal employee. A long, angry note posted on the Internet, on a Web site registered to Mr. Stack and signed “Joe Stack,” appeared to have been written by the pilot, though authorities had not confirmed the connection. By midafternoon, the company that hosted the site had taken the note down, saying it was acting at the request of the F.B.I.
The note related a long history of financial difficulties and frustrations with the nation’s tax and health care systems and with setbacks like the sharp decline of defense-related employment in southern California in the 1990s and the disruption of air travel after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001. It ended with passages strongly suggesting that its author expected to die on Thursday, including a reference to Feb. 18, 2010, as his date of death.
“I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different,” the note concluded. “I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”
The F.B.I., which set up a command post near the scene of the crash, has a small satellite office — part of the bureau’s San Antonio field office — in a different part of the office complex where the crash took place.
Bill Carter, an F.B.I. spokesman, said the criminal inquiry was in its early stages. “It’s a fluid situation that’s under investigation,” he said, which was echoed in a statement by Texas Gov. Perry. “There are a lot of indications but nothing definitive yet.”
As for Mr. Stack’s apparent suicide note, Mr. Carter said, “That’s being looked at by our San Antonio office, if that is a real note by this individual.”
OK, PERHAPSI'M being unfair with the Tea Party Airlines crack, though it's tough to pass up a line like that about such a confederacy of paranoid and angry dunces.
But on the other hand, while not all of Stack's rantings in his manifesto of a suicide note match up with what we take to be the "tea party position" (as amorphous a concept as that might be), enough of it sounded familiar enough to make an instant connection.
From Stack's website . . . before the Federal Bureau of Investigation ordered it taken down:
We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.
While very few working people would say they haven’t had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.
Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.
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I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.
I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of s*** at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.
I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.
THERE'S ENOUGH in Joe "Blow Your" Stack's dispatch from around the bend to have the "progressives" and the "patriots" arguing forever over who gets to claim him. Me, I lean toward the teabaggers because of one important thing.
They're the ones combining some nasty demagoguery with barely cloaked insurrectionist rhetoric. They're the ones trying to tell you that you're living under tyranny, and that President Obama is Joe Stalin in blackface.
They're the ones -- too many of them, at least -- getting into bed with the "patriot" movement as the far-right "militias" lurk in the shadows.
They're the ones painting any government big enough to deal with a 21st-century nation of 300 million as big enough to be an inherently wicked proposition.
They're the ones with the "Don't Tread on Me" flags from the American Revolution. They're the ones talking about a "new revolution." They're the ones prattling on about "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Yes, Thomas Jefferson was the first to say that -- in 1787. His slave and mistress, Sally Hemings, didn't know nothin' 'bout no tree of liberty, however -- she was the personal property of Mr. Freedom.
I'M JUST FINE with heaping blame on the tea-party crowd because they've not been particularly particular about the sort of nuts with whom they jump in bed. I mean, what's one more, right?
Maybe I'd feel differently if they were more uncomfortable with the loons. Or if they didn't think their being mad as hell was the basis for anything other than being mad as hell.
Or maybe it was just those "THANK YOU GLENN BECK" signs when they were marching on Washington. Then again, it could have been all those instances of teabaggers trying to see how close they could get to Barack Obama while carrying firearms.
Whatever.
It remains that the tea-party movement once again has mainstreamed the idea of open insurrection against the United States' constitutionally mandated government, and thus has given a homicidal fruitcake like Joe Stack reason to believe his kamikaze mission would somehow be ennobled.
My old man was not right! My old man was not right! My old man was not right! My old man was not right! My old man was not right! My old man was not right!
HE WAS talking crazy talk. My old man was not right!
D.C. police said they are searching for a gunman in a wheelchair who shot a woman in her right foot Monday, then fled before patrol cars arrived.
The attack occurred about 1 p.m., moments after the 47-year-old victim had stepped off a Metrobus in the 1200 block of H Street NE, said Capt. Mike Gottert.
The woman, whose wound was not life-threatening, told police that "she had some kind of verbal dispute with the guy two weeks ago," Gottert said. "She was riding the bus. She got off. He came up and shot her. Didn't say anything. Just shot her."
BUT IN CASE it does, please do what you can to placate our wheelchair-user population. Do kind things on their behalf. Help Jerry's Kids!
No, really. Help Jerry's Kids. The telethon's over, but so what?
Welcome to a little exhibit I'm curating. I call it Art by Nuts.
During this age of the Great Conservative Freakout -- after the nation has elected its first African-American president amid a historic economic meltdown and as Congress attempts reform of the nation's broken health-care system -- my exhibit covers some of the "popular" political art found in right-wing crevasses and cubby holes all across the Internet.
Vilifying our political opponents is an American tradition of long standing. Ask Alexander Hamilton, who got himself shot dead in a duel with Aaron Burr. Or Abraham Lincoln, gunned down by a Confederate sympathizer at the end of a four-year national bloodletting.
Thing is, we're not even the worst of the world's political animals. Ask your average Iraqi . . . between suicide bombings.
But we are fallen humans, predisposed to bad behavior. We also are masters, coming from tens of thousands of years of practice, at trumping up reasons to justify our bad behavior.
AND JUDGING by the reasons the American right is manufacturing at present -- reasons based on who conservatives presume President Obama to be as opposed to any real grievances they might have, being that the man scarcely has had time to "wrong" them yet -- I shudder to think of what bad behavior some unhinged zealots might find themselves capable.
Let me just put it out there: Given the extreme rhetoric being pumped out by the demagogic likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, the health-insurance profiteers industry, the "Birthers" and those behind the "tea party" movement, I fear for the president's safety.
Zealots and nuts are always looking for self-righteous excuses to act badly, and any number of people on the American right are dishing them out by the bushel.
See the yahoo to the left. He's outside an Obama town hall meeting in New Hampshire -- packing heat and carrying a sign referencing a Thomas Jefferson's quote from 1787:
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
THE PISTOL-PACKIN' PROTESTERdownloaded his sign, advertised as a "Tea Party Poster," from Restore the Republic.com. Nice . . . "I'm pissed about taxes, we elected a black guy president . . . let's throw a revolution!"
I wonder what Jefferson would have thought of the Civil War.
From 1861 to 1865, the tree of liberty got a good drenching from the blood of 620,000 Union and Confederate dead. Note that the Gatling gun wasn't invented until 1861 and saw only extremely limited use by the Union army in that conflict. Now we have tanks, roadside bombs, anthrax and ordinary "citizens" legally packing around their own miniaturized, high-tech "Gatling guns."
I bet if we tried nowadays, we could water a whole damned "Liberty forest."
All over higher taxes on the rich and "socialized medicine."
What we have here is not a failure to communicate, as Strother Martin famously said and some now suggest, but instead a significant segment of American conservatism communicating quite clearly that it has lost its f***ing mind.
All this over a Democrat president of color who scarcely has had enough time in office to good and piss them off. As I said, I shudder to think what some Rush Limbaugh fanatic or World Net Daily whack job might try when they are good and pissed off.
I shudder because the unhinged right has been anything but coy. Look at my gallery of political "art." Look at the picture of the well-armed New Hampshire protester.
About a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, milled among protesters outside the convention center where President Barack Obama was giving a speech Monday — the latest incident in which protesters have openly displayed firearms near the president.
Gun-rights advocates say they're exercising their constitutional right to bear arms and protest, while those who argue for more gun control say it could be a disaster waiting to happen.
Phoenix police said the gun-toters at Monday's event, including the man carrying an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, didn't need permits. No crimes were committed, and no one was arrested.
The man with the rifle declined to be identified but told The Arizona Republic that he was carrying the assault weapon because he could. "In Arizona, I still have some freedoms," he said.
Phoenix police Detective J. Oliver, who monitored the man at the downtown protest, said police also wanted to make sure no one decided to harm him.
"Just by his presence and people seeing the rifle and people knowing the president was in town, it sparked a lot of emotions," Oliver said. "We were keeping peace on both ends."
(snip)
Fred Solop, a Northern Arizona University political scientist, said the incidents in New Hampshire and Arizona could signal the beginning of a disturbing trend.
"When you start to bring guns to political rallies, it does layer on another level of concern and significance," Solop said. "It actually becomes quite scary for many people. It creates a chilling effect in the ability of our society to carry on honest communication."
He said he's never heard of someone bringing an assault weapon near a presidential event. "The larger the gun, the more menacing the situation," he said.
I CAN IMAGINE that more than a couple of these whack jobs of the überright, with no sense of irony, count among their carefully nurtured grievances the fact that the president is an "apostle of the culture of death." In other words, he's an active supporter of legalized abortion.
But what they fail to understand is they already have dehumanized -- in their hearts, in their minds and in their rhetoric -- the already-born Barack Obama just as much as the most ardent Planned Parenthood activist has dehumanized the tiniest human embryo.
To them, the president -- or all "liberals," for that matter -- aren't fellow human beings, much less fellow Americans or their figurative brothers and sisters. (Brothers and sisters? That's crazy commerniss talk!) They are "socialists" and "communists."
And we all remember from the Cold War days what we do with communists and socialists, don't we?
It's the stuff of vile dehumanization and objectification. It's just like an abortionist calling a fetus the "products of conception," because it's a lot easier to take a human life if you can plausibly deny its humanity.
ALREADY, too many conservative critics of the president have murdered him in their hearts and with their words. I think Jesus, Whom many of these folk claim to follow, may have had something to say about their tactics:
21 "You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, 'You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.' 22 But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, 'Raqa,' will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, 'You fool,' will be liable to fiery Gehenna. 23 Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, 24 leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. 26 Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny. 27 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' 28 But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna.
THE CHOICE LIES with conservatives during this uneasy stretch of American history.
They can stop the madness and withdraw from the abyss. Or, some particularly unbalanced few of them might decide to move from "murder in the heart" to something a bit more bold.
In that horrifying event, chances are we'll all find ourselves amid the hottest flames of Gehenna.
Of course, then there was the Utah one in June and some others last year. To put this recent phenomenon in sociological terms . . . WTF, dude?
