Same shit Jesse Helms threatened when Bill Clinton came to down to North Carolina.

Fuckers.

"If Barack Obama really were a fascist, really were a Nazi, really did plan death panels to kill the old and infirm, really did contemplate overthrowing the American constitutional republic -- if he were those things, somebody should shoot him. But he is not."

If he were any of those things

a) he'd be in the milita movement, or

b) he'd already have got them all shot.

Let's preempt one Radical Right talking point: we really don't care what your hyper-technical Tom Clancy definition of "assault rife" is, and no, the "exact definition" per your technical requirements DOESN'T matter.

Cranky

The level of hatred and violence these clowns are stoking is getting extreme, but they don't care. I'm sure nothing would make people like Coburn, Rush, and Beck happier than a bunch of right-wing goons shooting up a town hall, killing a Democratic congressman or two, and maybe even taking out the president.

Is it just me or does it seem like a violation of the civil rights of those not carrying firearms when someone carrying firearms shows up at a political event ? It amounts to intimidation and coercion, and most should certainly be banned.

How many people actually own guns in this country ? And I don't mean some gun that their grandfather gave them and is sitting in the closet. I mean a gun that they have ammunition for and know how to use. Out of that group, how many would even consider carrying around such a firearm in public, especially at a public political event. It is most certainly a minority of the population.

This, in turn, leads me to believe that we have a situation where a minority of the population is determined to use the threat of gun violence to cause the majority to back off from political advances that they favor.

So, how does that not equate to these gun owners violating the civil rights of others ? Isn't this the KKK and lynchings all over again ?

While David Frum seems to caution against the explicit violence in the comments of Limbaugh etal, the very fact that he says violence would be justified if Obama were a Nazi is equally provocative. To leave even the possibility that Obama is a Nazi is self-serving. For two years we had a chance to look at this man and is there any likelihood that we would have missed any fascist tendency in him? Would any self-declared Nazi stand a chance of being elected in the US? Moreover, we change the people who hold power in this country by election. This is our government, therefore, not some alien oppressor. That none of the Republican punditry is counseling their base to think about winning elections shows that their allegiance to American democracy is strongly qualified by how polarized their ideology has become. They don't want to work with the other side in any way. They'd rather resort to guns. Pretty scary!

Domage they may enjoy it for the moment, but they've obviously not thought it through.

A president beloved by at least half the American population and most of the planet? Nothing would piss me off more.

i'd suggest a read or a re-read of mrs. robinson's insightful views on rising fascism in this country -- and ob defeating the hoodlum mob that coburn seeks to inspire... (found on the orcinus blog site)

It is most certainly a minority of the population.

An armed society isn't a polite society, it is a cowed society -- and that's the point.

That Frum finds the expression of any political position, however odious, grounds for being shot tells you just how far to the side of craziness the Republican party has moved. My God, he's the reasonable one in the bunch.

Afghani society has been armed to the teeth for three thousand years.

Surely that is the forefront of civilization.

Serious question here folks: Why isn't anyone in Congress initiating some kind of censure process or ethics violations charge against the members of Congress who are saying this crazy shit?

Patriotic American --parody or frootcake?

How to tell?

"An armed society isn't a polite society, it is a cowed society -- and that's the point."

The Nazis had an "armed society", at least amongst the "elite".

OK, Here we go again, lets drag the Democrats into our self fufilling prophecy about Obama wanting to take our guns away.

Send a few guys to follow what very narrowly defined open carry laws that are left. The far left will go batshit crazy and scream for more laws that criminals will never follow. We can then say we are right and the terrified hunters and sportsman will fill our coffers with cash.

Way to stay focused.

"Well, I'm troubled any time when we stop having confidence in our government, but we've earned it."

Yes, "we" have. Courtesy of decades of deception, abuse of power, and outright violations of domestic and international law committed by every Republican administration since Hoover's.

Even Reagan, with his faculties intact, would find these people contemptible.

Facts and sensory-based reality mean nothing in the world of the hysterical paranoid psychopath. Delusional fantasy rules.

Even Frum's remarks are beyond the pale--we have constitutional means of removing a president who violates the law and his oath of office. These hints at violence are repulsive.

Alas, Patriotic American, vanished into the empyrean, the stars, the stripes, the bullet holes, lost in the mist, lost forever.

NO ONE SHOULD SHOOT ANYONE, no matter what they may or may not be, wit the exception of shooting someone in self defense. So the quote as well as the thought, that
"If Barack Obama really were a fascist, really were a Nazi, really did plan death panels to kill the old and infirm, really did contemplate overthrowing the American constitutional republic -- if he were those things, somebody should shoot him. But he is not." is out of line. If he were any or all of those things everyone should have voted against him. They have another chance to do so in four years. If that is too long to wait, try impeachment!

How much longer will it be until someone recognizes that the desperate, out-of-power right-wingers are attempting to regain power by yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater? After the stampede, they'll blame theater management.

Frank Rich is right. Guns and politics do not mix well. What they do is intimidate the political opponents and require an increased police reaction - a police reaction that can be blamed on a government the right-wingers want to replace.

Intimidation is inherently anti-democratic. It's easier to intimidate your opponents than it is to get them to vote taxes designed to swell the intimadator's bank accounts at the expense of the taxpayers, although lies, propaganda and other voting suppression techniques work well also. It's all part of the anti-democratic package.

"ned pepper, I knew tom coburn; tom coburn was and is dumbest senator in the whole senate clown car. and ned, you're no tom coburn."

but you come pretty goddam close...

In Israel during the weeks and months before the assassination of Rabin, violence was part of the media atmosphere. We're on that same road.

Murdoch of Mordor

A federal law enforcement agent told the center that he hadn't seen growth this steep among such groups in 10 to 12 years. "All it's lacking is a spark," he said.

They don't need a spark.
We are way past that...
Spark or no spark they ARE going to blow up buildings and shoot people.
That is inevitable.

And here is the thing:

Fox News and its Aussie owner are the ones to blame. That network is guilty of inciting treason. Fox has gleefully told horrible lies about the Federal Government that naturally causes people to wish to destroy that government. That's treason. Someone in this administration needs to read the existing anti-sedition laws very carefully.

Because:

Fox needs to be cuffed and silenced.
Murdoch needs to be frogmarched...
Coburn needs a visit from the F.B.I.
Limbaugh needs a frightening visit from a spook.
And the Patriot Act needs to be fully leveraged to stamp out the tiniest hint of violence against the State.

Go to war against these criminals.
Don't tiptoe around them or mollycoddle them.
The US Govt needs to hit them with every statute and every tool they got.

"Well, I'm troubled any time when we stop having confidence in our government, but we've earned it."

Yeah, I suppose 30 years of Republicans running down the government at every opportunity has had NO impact, Senator. From Reagan's "Government IS the problem" up to Bush building his monster house of cronies while disparaging the very institution he headed, I just can't see why anyone would stop having confidence in the government.

Frum's statement doesn't count for half of what it might appear at first glance. He declares that shooting Obama were OK if Obama were a fascist, or a Nazi, or if he were to implement death panels, but since neither of these three criteria apply, a shooting is not justified.

But that these three criteria do not apply, is merely Frum's opinion, isn't it, and plenty of people on the extreme right vehemently disagree with Frum on this.

So, by Frum's impeccable logic, why shouldn't these people feel that since in their opinion one or several of the three criteria are fulfilled, they are justified to shoot the president?

What is advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government? One word: TREASON. Arrest them and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. Period.

Neil, You and some Democrats keep shooting yourselves in the foot which explains why you don't like guns. I don't blame arson on matches, why would I blame a shooting on guns? Going batshit about guns right now will only increase the roles of those "Teabaggers"

The Democrats have Health care on the table, maybe with a SUPER MAJORITY in congress and a Democrat as president they might be able to actually do something for the working class and not big corporations, or maybe they will talk about assault weapons bans and lose those independents that put them there.

No but Neil you go ahead and scream for more laws on the Dem's most all time losing issue.

Tom Coburn is one of the fundy religious super-right-wingers who want to replace democracy with a fundamentalist theocracy. Read Chris Hedges' "American Fascists;" and check to see who is staying at the C-Street residence hall.

The fundamentalists are organizing through their churches to elect politicians, particularly Senators, to further their anti-democratic aims. They work hard to get them elected, so when the crazies almost inevitably succumb to the fact that some women are sexually attracted to powerful men, they want to keep those men in office. That explains the advice to Ensign to pay off his mistress and her husband.

They worked hard to leverage the political strength of fundamentalists in small, mostly rural states in which religion is a major political force. Once one of their men is an incumbent, the inherent powers of incumbency can keep him there. They don't want to lose them.

Is David Vitter of Louisiana one of them? How about DeMint and Sessions? Louisiana governor Jindel certainly is. Clearly Mark Sanford is one of them. They really do live in a very different universe from the rest of us and they are not open to arguments based on facts and rational thought.

Advocating the violent overthrow of the US government is Sedition.

What is advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government? One word: TREASON. Arrest them and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. Period.

Christ on a bike, it's not 'treason', it's 'sedition', and you'd never get a conviction without an overt act. The 'full extent of the law' is compassed by Brandenburg v. Ohio is still good law, thank God, or the preceding administration would have locked half of us up.

I fear that in creating an American Taliban the right is repeating a far more sinister history of the "Islamic Terrorist Movement".

Let the Secret Service-or some other legitimate law enforcement organization- kill one of these maniacs, and there will be three new birthers created to pick up the fallen weapon. . .

America is in the middle of a second civil war, but it doesn't yet realize it. The right will never accept a black president. Their goal is to find someone to kill Obama. Their goal is to break the backbone of what reason and liberal thinking in America is.

They already have a major part of the media on their side, either out of agreement or out of cowardice.

You're at war - and you better realize and fight back.

Or you'll loose.

Their goal is to find someone to kill Obama.

Not if 'they' have an ounce of sense. How much of what they're revolting against -- starting with the Civil Rights Act and Medicare -- passed Congress in its guilt-stricken year of 1964?

How much of Goldwater's complete electoral obliteration was based on a national rejection of extremism?

They were playing with fire last fall. this is not news.

The white power, neo-nazi element was beginning to sniff around the edges of those Sarah Palin rallies. Ironically they are accusing the Democrats and Obama of nazism when ifact that's the very element they're actively courting.

Much blame goes to the media. One idiot shows up with a gun and the media breathlessly covers it for a week straight, giving him tv time, endlessly showing the footage. Before you know it, a dozen nuts turn up with guns.

The Republicans AND the media have been playing with fire...and someone is going to get burned. There's no other end to this. Innocent people will be harmed, you can count on that.

Ned, you arsonist/matches analogy doesn't work unless you admit that there is a growing number of firebugs walking around with a shitload of lit matches.

"How much of Goldwater's complete electoral obliteration was based on a national rejection of extremism?"

If they had a habbit of learning from history - would they be right-wing in the first place?

well actually people have been hurt already. Sometime last year a Glenn Beck fan shot up a Unitarian church in Tennessee because he hated liberals.

If they had a habit of learning from history - would they be right-wing in the first place?

Probably not. History's their enemy, and it stands between wherever they are now, and wherever back there the Golden Age -- Eisenhower, McKinley, Marius and Sulla -- they want to go.

Steve,

Your inclusion of the Frum quote is very disturbing and part of the problem. You don't shoot a democratically elected leader, even if he is guilty of any of those things. You impeach him or elect someone else the next available time. Frum's statement was irresponsible, as was your quoting it.

Well, it is not only history they lack (they can't even remember a few years back) it is also reason that is absent in a conservative's world view.
These tea-baggers apparently forgot the Bush era, where executive 'town halls' amounted to having a ticket and a vetted ideology to gain access...everyone else was positioned behind chain-link and barricades. The the few that did breech their screen, were arrested just for pulling up anti-Bush signs, let alone a loaded weapon. It has gotten beyond the pale.

Ned Pepper, uh... nobody is screamin' about gun control except, uh, you. i didn't say one goddam word about it.

that's the problem with gun goobers such as yourself...

it's not guns that kill people, it is generally enraged, out of control goobers who kill people.

unfortunately, they generally are all devoted members of the 1st church of guns and ammo.

here's a little quote for ya ned... finish up yer ged and see if you can understand it, from the book of Schlesinger, chapter 1969:

“We are today the most frightening people on this planet. The ghastly things we do to our own people, the ghastly things we do to other people, these must at least compel us to look searchingly at ourselves and our society before hatred and violence rushes on to more evil, and finally tear our nation apart. . . . we cannot blame the epidemic of murder at home on deranged and solitary individuals, separate from the rest of us. For these individuals are plainly weak and suggestible men stamped by our society with a birth rite of hatred and a compulsion toward violence. We must recognize, I believe that the evil is in us, that it springs from some dark intolerable tension in our history and our institutions. It is almost as though some primal curse had been fixed on our nation. We are a violent people with a violent history, and the instinct for violence has seeped into the bloodstream of our national life.”

I take issue with Frum's comment that If Barack Obama really were a fascist, really were a Nazi, really did plan death panels to kill the old and infirm, really did contemplate overthrowing the American constitutional republic -- if he were those things, somebody should shoot him. But he is not." I mean I am glad that a conservative is willing to point out the obvious, but I am appalled at the idea that if Obama WERE all those things, then it would be okay for "someone" to shoot him. Jeepers, this is considered reasonable?

When did America become a nation in which the conventional wisdom thinks it is somehow tough, smart, powerful, heh, to talk about shooting people as if we were a nation of vigilantes, not a nation of law? Is that just another legacy of the Bush years?

Why can we not enforce sedition laws or laws for libel? We say we are a nation of law, but we keep running away from enforcing the laws that we have. Bush & Cheney should be charged with war crimes. Fox news, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann--why can't they all be charged with libel & or sedition, depending on the offense? Tom Coburn should just be required to put on the dunce's hat and sent to sit in the corner.

The ranters are right -- this is starting to look a lot like Germany during the Weimar Republic -- say Munich, around the time of the "Beer Hall Putsch."
"...You can see that what motivates us is neither self-conceit or self-interest, but only a burning desire to join the battle in this grave eleventh hour for our German Fatherland ...." A. Hitler

Fox news, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann--why can't they all be charged with libel & or sedition, depending on the offense?

Times v. Sullivan, or Brandenburg v. Ohio, depending on the offense.

Saying he "should be shot," if he were carrying out those actions is appalling...disgusting.....unconscionable, irresponsible....and a few dozen other descriptions.

If he is doing those things, you vote him out of office.....to suggest he ought to be shot in such circumstances is just joining the chorus because frankly, Mr. Frum, all those things you are saying "If he did," the wingnutters fervently believe he IS doing, evidence completely to the contrary and you are essentially telling them that it is OK to go ahead and fire away.

"Ned Pepper, uh... nobody is screamin' about gun control except, uh, you. i didn't say one goddam word about it.

that's the problem with gun goobers such as yourself...

it's not guns that kill people, it is generally enraged, out of control goobers who kill people.

unfortunately, they generally are all devoted members of the 1st church of guns and ammo.

here's a little quote for ya ned... finish up yer ged and see if you can understand it, from the book of Schlesinger, chapter 1969:"

I find it ironic that you try to belittle me by suggesting I get a G.E.D., when you can't form a grammatically correct sentence. You must have some serious shortcomings to feel that you have to belittle others you disagree with.

Talk about playing with fire, what an incredibly stupid thing to write,"------somebody should shoot him. But he is not".

The wingnuts out there will ignore the If part, and the But he's not part. Anyone of them could read it and think they're taking your advice.

Shame. You should know better.

We don't allow guns in government buildings, so why allow them at town hall meetings? Even saloon owners in the Old West asked patrons to check their guns at the door.

Gunfights are just as bad for political rallies as they are for court rooms and drinking establishments. Since the GOP can't articulate a rational response to the health care debate they think resorting to physical intimidation is the next best step.

As if Democrats were Taliban prisoners at a secret prison or something.

Talk about playing with fire, what an incredibly stupid thing to write,"------somebody should shoot him. But he is not".

The wingnuts out there will ignore the If part, and the But he's not part. Anyone of them could read it and think they're taking your advice.

Shame. You should know better.

America, your death panel is convening.

As others have pointed out, Frum is completely wrong to say "someone should shoot him", and is committing the very offense he complains about. There are people who BELIEVE he is all those things, and he just gave them permission to pull the trigger.

But in a civil society, even if Obama WERE all those things NO ONE should shoot him. We have laws and procedures and ways of dealing with such problems short of vigilante violence. What the hell is Frum thinking?

Americans are supposed to believe in the ballot, not the bullet. And if they can't wait until the next election, isn't impeachment good enough for the right anymore?

I'm happy Frum doesn't believe that Obama is all those things, but I'd be happier if he believed in traditional American values.

Frum talking out of both sides of his mouth there.

Goofball describes himself as 'a proud right-wing terrorist',

Republican Congressmen replies, 'Amen, God bless you. . .there is a great American.'

from,

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/22/gop-rep-right-wing-terrorist/

US House Representative Wally Herger, of California's 2nd congressional district, expressed "enthusiastic approval" of a town-hall attendee who described himself as a "proud right-wing terrorist," newspapers in northern California report.

According to the Redding Record Searchlight, an incident broke out at a town hall at Simpson University in Redding on Tuesday when Herger signaled encouragement to a 67-year-old town hall attendee, Bert Stead, who called himself a "proud right-wing terrorist."

"Amen, God bless you," Herger reportedly replied to the comment. "There is a great American."

Ask the family of Dr. Tiller if "no one's been hurt, yet."

we've earned it

Man, that Ward Churchill sure was an America-hater, wasn't he?

Oh, wait.

Their goal is to find someone to kill Obama.

Not if 'they' have an ounce of sense.
Posted by: Davis X. Machina on August 23, 2009 at 2:01 PM

find me a republican/conservative with an ounce of sense - just one would do.
.

The military and industrial elites thought they could control Hitler too. All this movement is missing is a leader. Sadly, as always, they will not be the only ones to reap what they sow.

Those not in the 'right', must not respond extra- legally to bullets or bombs, in kind. If the basic decency of the majority of Americans and enforcing the rule of law is not sufficient, then we are lost in any case.

This is certainly not a justification for backing down. Are you listening Obama? Don't give the right 'a heads they win, tails we lose' situation.

Open Left: It's the FASCISM, Stupid!

http://www.openleft.com/diary/14760/its-the-fascism-stupid

Is Obama America's Salvador Allende?

A quick Google search has failed me. Who said "We're always one generation away from barbarism" first?

I don't think it was Ceridwen Dovey "Blood Kin"

The thugs with guns are playing on a fear that, I suspect, comes from the trilogy of death in the 60s. I think it has haunted liberals ever since.

"If Barack Obama really were a fascist, really were a Nazi, really did plan death panels to kill the old and infirm, really did contemplate overthrowing the American constitutional republic..."
Thanks, David, you inciting moron. If he were all those things, you be in a dark dungeon by now, along with most of your friends.

I know it happened gradually, however, our politics has become so ugly, so completely and nauseatingly toxic-- something needs to turn around. Hopefully after his vacation Obama will come back with some new energy and perspective, hopefully the dems in congress will come back ready to fight with some serious discipline.

Their goal is to find someone to kill Obama.

Why? You think conservatives really want Biden in the Oval Office? Sure, the quotes would be funny and all, but he'd be like the captain of the Titanic: everything would be fine and dandy until the USS America hits an iceberg that he should have seen coming.

I thought Bush Derangement Syndrome was bad. Even though you guys run the government - you have the White House and solid majorities in both houses of Congress - you remain more paranoid than ever.

Now, the affliction is Teabagger Derangement Syndrome. It is the root of all problems:

Health care bill hit a snag? Teabaggers!

Larouche groupies portray Obama as Hitler? Teabaggers!

Cap-and-trade is getting bad press? Teabaggers!

And of course, those nasty teabaggers are arming themselves to the teeth and plotting to take out Obama. Even though all those armed teabaggers are being quite civil and not threatening a soul.

It's going to be a long four years for you progressives unless you sack up and realize you control the government right now. All failures lead to your doorstep, not the sinister teabaggers. So do the successes, but you seem to have forgotten that. You're too busy analyzing and freaking out those that oppose you rather than, you know, governing.

Chill out with the sedition talk, people. Otherwise, the liberals in the government will lock up all the conservative citizens, while at the same time, the conservatives in the government will lock up all the liberal citizens. When all the civilians are locked up, they'll meet in the middle, shake hands, and laugh at our incarcerated asses.

Perhaps this is what they wanted all along.

Putting the fix on Frum

If Russ Limbaugh really were a fascist, really were a Nazi, really did plan death panels to kill the old and infirm, really did contemplate overthrowing the American constitutional republic -- if he were those things, somebody should shoot him.

Preferably in the face at close range...

A theological scholar named Roland H. Bainton is credited with the quote, "Civilization is always only one generation away from barbarism". Author of "Here I Stand", Bainton is credited by some sources with having written the definitive history of Luther for Lutherans.

Like Thunderdome, only worse

"Civilization is always only one generation away from barbarism".

It is a grotesque exaggeration of course.
A few dozen nuclear bombs, or a midsize meteor and we will have instantaneous barbarism.

As in:
David Brin's Postman
or Cormac McCarthy's The Road
or CBS's Jericho.

All those get a post-apocalyptic America right.

In fact I maintain America has got to be the absolute worst place to be after an apocalypse. Lots of right wing hillbillies with lots of guns. Vicious, ugly, and rapacious. A true tax-free wingnut nirvana...

Chill out with the sedition talk, people.

I don't think so Dr. Sardonicus.
I am outrageously pissed.

Until someone can explain to me how two people can get arrested for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts at a presidential event...

While someone can carry a loaded weapon of mass destruction to a presidential event and not get hauled into jail for questioning and a background check.

That's fucked.
Totally + totally fucked.

Whoa...usapatriot66 has read waaayyy too much science fiction.

The most uncontrollable people may be the new maccabees in the Palestinian lands they seek to gobble up . They are at least as susceptible the influence of reason as the North American and Middle Eastern Taliban

Vokoban has it figured. (nearly)

>"America is in the middle of a second civil war, but it doesn't yet realize it."

Not in the middle... but in the early stages.
Instead of Blue vs Gray this time it will be Blue vs Red. If red-staters get their hands on some nukes, likely via some right-wing bomber pilot eager to launch armageddon, things could get ugly in a hurry.

>"The right will never accept a black president."

I think this is correct. I know a number of Repubs who (privately) say they can never acknowledge a 'nigger president'.

>"Their goal is to find someone to kill Obama."

Probably have thousands already. Most dangerous threat is someone operating as a 'lone wolf'.

>"Their goal is to break the backbone of what reason and liberal thinking in America is."

Much like the Taliban, they want to return society to an imagined golden age. For the Taliban, the somewere lies in the 1600's... for the Teabaggers, 1855 or so would do nicely.

These people aren't going to be happy until we see another 11/22/63.

Pully Bulpit: "It's going to be a long four years for you progressives unless you sack up and realize you control the government right now."

That's right, we do.

And unlike you tantrum-prone white-wing beeyitches on the right - who first cheered as Bush and Cheney played with matches and set the house on fire, and now blame the fire department for the resultant mess - we're actually taking responsibility for trying to correct the many problems bequeathed to this country by Republicans.

Joe Biden on his worst day is still light years better than anything you whining bee-essin yahoos on the right currently have to offer.

You know, you fools really ought to consider yourselves damn lucky that your own insurance carriers don't list "stupid" and "ignorant" as pre-existing conditions. Oh, that's right, I forgot - most trailer trash are on Medicaid.

Now, speaking of trailers, you better run home to yours, lest I reach it first to haul your grandpa before one of our secret death panels, and seek its permission to shoot him down in Reno, just to watch him die.

A man in CA was just sentenced to 10 years in prison for sending an e-mail advocating murdering Obama. Why can't some of these other loonies be prosecuted? You can always get them on tax evasion instead of weapons charges. They are the new mafia. And I wish people would stop comparing the first amendment to the second. That is a false equivalency.

I would love to hear Bush and Cheney say that they would have endorsed citizens carrying loaded weapons at their Town Halls but I don't think they will—we already know they were threatened by t-shirts.

All this talk of lone gun nuts is pathetic. There's already a Freicorps in place called Blackwater/Xe, and it was built on contracts from Bush & Co.

Davis X,

Why did you list Marius with the other three? Wasn't he a liberal? Or do conservatives want to have Julius Caesar as a nephew?

Notice that those who support people showing up with guns are against health care reform, and particularly health care reform with a public option. That includes Chris Matthews.

By continually doing segments on his show about guns at townhalls, Matthews spreads the meme that it's dangerous for people to show up at townhalls because violence could break out at any moment.

The only proof that more people want public health care is when they show up at public forums. Online petitions, email, snail mail, telephonic townhalls don't give an accurate picture of just how strong the support for public healthcare is.

I hoped Stephanopolous would ask McCain yesterday if as President he would appreciate having liberals armed with assault rifles at his Town Halls. He would have said it is no big deal, I am sure.

@bully pulpit

You ridicule my post with a lot of crap thinking I'm some tree-hugging, whining US liberal.

I'm not.

I'm an observant from the outside (Germany, to be exact), and since the tactics from the US right-wingers are a close copy (ca 1.1:1) of the anti-republican tactics performed in the Weimar Republic I actually do know what I am talking about.

If Obama would show up on a public place somewhere in the US South without his security units, he would be dead in a minute.

And most representatives of that state would hail the murderers.

The Republican party in most parts today is without any self-control, operates beyond any border of decency and has since long abandoned any thoughts about a functioning society with democtratic rules and a diversity of opinion. It is in its core an anti-democratic, totalitarian sect of religious faschists who have made their ideology of god their Führer.

I know you don't care for the opinion of the rest of the world, and even less for a Europen opinion, since we all are (on your planet at least) child-eating, devil-worshipping communists (strange that France and Germany already are out of recession). But their are more than 6 billion people outside the US. The EU alone has 450 million people (as opposed to 300 million in the USA). And yet you probably think God is an American Republican.

Poor old bugger.

If your side wins this civil war the USA will have become a 3rd world country by 2020.

". . . if he were those things, somebody should shoot him. But he is not."

What?? Has Mr. Frum overlooked the fact that in this country we don't shoot people who get out of line, or who we think get out of line --- that is what the courts are for!

"What?? Has Mr. Frum overlooked the fact that in this country we don't shoot people who get out of line, or who we think get out of line --- that is what the courts are for!"

Obviously not in the country he prefers to live in. Wake up, America!

Oy.

It would be a LOT more effective if we simply made fun of these guys.

Lighten up.

Sigh. You kidz are hopeless, yanno?

The murder of those cops in Pennsylvania, the abortion doctor guy, the Holocaust Museum guard and those wacky Unitarians could ALL HAVE BEEN PREVENTED if you idjits knew how to LAUGH.

It's simple, see? Only you self righteous prigs are so busy congratulating yourselves on never having shot anyone that you have no idea how the people who DO shoot folks THINK.

You'll never get it because you're too busy being anti-murder ELITISTS who don't understand the REGULAR JOES.

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Get all crazee serious on these people's buttskies and you'll have more murders.

You fools will never learn, will you?

Just read this comment on another blog:

"Democracy is, by its very nature, a culture war."

My first thought was: "Whoa..."

I particularly appreciate the way that courageous, maverick McCain has condemned the inflammatory talk.
I appreciate the way he has condemned his home-grown Viper Militias for attempting to intimidate the President with guns.

Even though all those armed teabaggers are being quite civil and not threatening a soul.

au contraire.

Hanging a Congressman in effigy is quite civil and not threatening? Signs saying "Death to Obama" are quite civil and not threatening?

Nice to see that this site's habitual stoopidity remains strong -- I'm not saying that anybody should laugh at the way the spectrum bleeds from knuckleheads showing up at town hall meetings with weapons, to the murder of doctors and security guards.

I AM saying that a deadly serious reaction to the clowns who define opposition to health care reform is a serious tactical and strategic error.

Remember the contrast between Dukakis and the first President Bush when Bernard Shaw of CNN asked Dukakis if he'd support an irrevocable death penalty for somebody who raped and murder Kitty D? Dukakis skipped the directly personal part of the question, and gave a boring answer about death penalty laws and procedures.

So Shaw asked Bush the same "what if it was your wife" question, but Bush interrupted him with a mock, shame-on-you admonishment: "Bernie!"

Guess who won?

There are three simple goals in dealing with these crackpots: first, to minimize the violence, second, to connect them, and any violence that does occur, with the Republican party, and third, to use their outrages to pass health care reform.

Pay ATTENTION, willya? Take criminals seriously -- but folks who show up with Hitler moustaches on Obama posters, who accuse gay Jews of supporting Nazi policies, and who have convinced themselves that they need semi-automatic protection when they meet a Congressman in public, are not criminals.

They're idiots. What's more, they're FUNNY.

So -- laugh at 'em. Orwell nailed what we're up against in the Lion and the Unicorn: "ugliness is part of its essence, for what it is saying is "Yes, I am ugly, and you daren't laugh at me", like the bully who makes faces at his victim…"

Thank you, Mark for the history. I'm sure that Mr. Bainton, Martin Luther and myself could agree about some aspects of the Catholic Church. And thank you, koreyel, for making the point of that quote for me.

Fuck me! I forgot to put the hokey anecdote into the totally formulaic reflexive arguing and adolescent cap locking! No one can beat the real thing for hysterical banality!