Roger Stockham, would be terrorist

Here's a VFW page supposedly made by Roger Stockham, who was just arrested with a trunk full of fireworks after threatening to blow up a mosque in Michigan. He allegedly has a history of anti-government sentiment.

in reference to:

"Born in Pasadena,CA; raised in Palos Verdes at a little community called Portuguese Bend Club; PV class of 65; typical surfer, did a lot of snow and water skiing, sailing, go cart racing; dad an architect, mom a decorator; joined the army in Dec 65, Engineer OCS, helicopter flight school, got married at 19, went to Nam March of 68, based in Pleiku, flew Huey slicks with an assault helicopter company, saw a lot of action, got a lot of air medals, but not much else"
- roger stockham - VFW Post 5477 (view on Google Sidewiki)

Energy as a Security Issue

Observe the microcosm within the military: alternative energy systems reduce our troops' reliance on fossil fuels and supply lines.

in reference to:

"Military brass see energy as a security issue. Shipping fuel to troops on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan is not only an expensive and dangerous logistical feat; it is also a strategic vulnerability."
- Energy, Environment Opportunities Grow Despite DOD Belt-Tightening - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

More fun with Glenn Beck quotes

Via KingOneEye, here's another Beck quote that cannot be explained away as a metaphor. This is a call to arms:

"Tea parties believe in small government. We believe in returning to the principles of our Founding Fathers. We respect them. We revere them. Shoot me in the head before I stop talking about the Founders. Shoot me in the head if you try to change our government.

I will stand against you and so will millions of others. We believe in something. You in the media and most in Washington don't. The radicals that you and Washington have co-opted and brought in wearing sheep's clothing — change the pose. You will get the ends.

You've been using them? They believe in communism. They believe and have called for a revolution. You're going to have to shoot them in the head. But warning, they may shoot you.

They are dangerous because they believe. Karl Marx is their George Washington. You will never change their mind."

Got that, teabaggers?  You're going to have to shoot the commies in the head. And before you Beck apologists say to yourself, well, no one has ever taken Beck up on this proposition, here's Byron Williams, who got into a shoot-out with cops in California while on his way to kill commies.

"Beck is gonna deny everything about violent approach and deny everything about conspiracies, but he'll give you every reason to believe it. He's protecting himself, and you can't blame him for that. So, I understand what he's doing."

I'm sure plenty of other people with guns and ammo know exactly what Beck is doing, too. How many of them are out there now, cleaning their weapons, getting ready to shoot some commie in the head?

And this guy's not the only one who was inspired to commit violence by Beck.

Indeed, in each of the three examples Brock cited -- Gregory Giusti, Charles Wilson, and Byron Williams -- the incendiary and often violent rhetoric spewed by the Fox News host and elsewhere on the network was said to be a motivating factor, if not the inspiring factor, in the men's actions.

I don't think Fox will fire Beck, not as long as he gets big ratings. And what better way to get violent fucks to watch your show than to have other violent fucks out there targeting liberals and crediting him for it? There are a lot of militia types out there, and eventually another Timothy McVeigh is going to listen to Beck say some shit like this, and that will be all it takes to put him over the edge.

Mix all this in with some crazy religious bullshit, like the Rapture, and these people will really think they have nothing to lose.

Somebody check Cheney's heart pump

I don't think Dangerous Dick is getting enough blood to his head. All these things in the following quote worked to get Bush re-elected.

in reference to:

"Said Cheney: "His overall approach to expanding the size of government, expanding the deficit, and giving more and more authority and power to the government over the private sector. Those are all weaknesses, as I look at Barack Obama. And I think he'll be a one term President.""
- Cheney Says Obama is a One-Termer (view on Google Sidewiki)

The Coming Deluge of Dominionist Delusions

In 2008, the McCain campaign ran an ad that called Obama the Anti-Christ. Sarah Palin has stated that she is the victim of a Blood Libel. These two events did not happen by accident. Christian Dominionists, who believe that we should all be subjected to a Christian version of Sharia Law, pay close attention to these dog whistles. Palin in particular has mastered the art of making people think she's just stupid when she's really riling up her evangelical base with Left Behind bullshit. From the Time:

In the Left Behind books, Carpathia is a junior Senator who speaks several languages, is beloved by people around the world and fawned over by a press corps that cannot see his evil nature, and rises to absurd prominence after delivering just one major speech. Hmmh. But serious Antichrist theorists don't stop there. Everything from Obama's left-handedness to his positive rhetoric to his appearance on the cover of this magazine has been cited as evidence of his true identity. One chain e-mail claims that the Antichrist was prophesied to be "A man in his 40s of MUSLIM descent," which would indeed sound ominous if not for the fact that the Book of Revelation was written at least 400 years before the birth of Islam.

Facts don't matter to these people. They say whatever gets their side going, and nothing gets them going like thinking Obama is the Anti-Christ. They get to play up their White Victomology, their hatred for other religions (they say they don't hate others, but what are we to make of a religion that says you will burn in hell forever if you don't believe like they do), and their other reactionary demagoguary for a fired up base that will churn out violent threats toward anyone not like them.

Remember, even murderers can get into heaven as long as the repent before they die.

Add to this the stoking of fear (death panels, gun control, abortion doctors murdering babies, socialist tyrants) by the likes of Beck and Limbaugh and you get a bunch of fearful, angry religious fanatics willing to resort to violence to protect themselves. Sound familiar?

There was the guy in Oakland who got in a shoot-out with police while on his way to kill liberals:

OAKLAND, CA (KGO) -- There is new information about a man charged for a shoot-out with the highway patrol on 580 in Oakland in July. The man says he hoped to start a revolution by killing liberal activists...

Then there's Jim D Adkisson:

A man who shot and killed two parishioners during a children's play at a Tennessee church yesterday attacked the congregation because of its outspoken socially liberal and gay-friendly beliefs, police said.

 And, of course, Scott Roeder:

David Leach, publisher of Prayer & Action News, a magazine that opines that the killing of abortion providers would be justifiable homicide, told reporters that he and Roeder had met once in the late 1990s and that Roeder at that time had authored contributions to Leach's publication. Leach published the Army of God manual, which advocates the killing of the providers of abortion and contains bomb-making instructions...

An Army of God is exactly what Palin is inciting. Like most of her ilk, who use the psychology of victimology to incite violence, she doesn't even try to hide the dog whistles anymore. Palin, Beck, Limbaugh and the rest of them know damn well there are crazy people who listen to them, but they won't try to tone it down. Why should they? When one of their insane fans murders people, they know that they will be blamed, and that just makes them look more like victims to even crazier people.

This is just the beginning. As the 2012 election grinds into high gear, expect to see the dog whistles turned into sirens, Obama as the Anti-Christ, and liberals as some kind of zombie horde coming to tax your hard earned money and take your guns. I have a headache already.

That was one loud dog whistle

I don't know how the media could have missed such a loud dog whistle, but Matthew Cooper heard it too. Palin is aligning herself with the Jews-- poor persecuted Palin.

Some of us accuse Palin of using over the top political rhetoric (nothing compared to Glenn Beck's murder fantasies) and she claims she's being persecuted like the Jews.

Talk about chutzpah!

It's all about the Rapture, people.

in reference to:

"Here' s another theory of the case: The former Alaska governor was likely trying to send a signal to her evangelical Christian supporters who are, in fact, deeply pro-Israel (although many Jews are wary of their support for the Zionist state, seeing them as more interested in the Rapture than a healthy Jewish nation)."
- NationalJournal.com - Palin Knew What She Was Saying - Thursday, January 13, 2011 (view on Google Sidewiki)

Fun with Deadly Glenn Beck Quotes

Show me someone on the left with even half the soap box of Beck who has said anything close to this shit:

Every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames.

I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. ... No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out.

So, Speaker Pelosi, I just wanted to — you gonna drink your wine? Are you blind? Do those eyes not work? There you — I want you to drink it now. Drink it. Drink it. Drink it... By the way, I put poison in your...

I’ve been sitting here for the last few minutes trying to come up with a list of people I want to kill with a shovel. [more]

I want to kill Charlie Rangel with a shovel.

If you're feeling up to it, there's a whole list of Beck quotes here. It's almost as fun as my Bush quotes page. Of course I could do this with a whole host of other wing nuts, but why bother? The paranoia and murder imagery comes almost completely from the right and anyone who isn't as crazy as Beck knows it. When one of the right's most prominent voices is openly contemplating a list of people to kill with a shovel, there can be no comparison. There is no equivalence with the left on this. 


Since birds of a feather flock together, and since Beck is pretty damn crazy, it stands to reason that some pretty crazy people are listening to him. And he knows it. But if someone on his list winds up getting hurt or killed, he'll be the first one to call blood libel on anyone that calls him out for this shit.

Blood Libel and End Timers

When your religion clearly states that anyone who doesn't believe in Jesus is going to suffer through the great tribulation, then the term Blood Libel cannot mean anything other than it has for 2000 years. This isn't a dog whistle. It's a siren that can be heard around the world.

Representative Giffords is Jewish. Her aide, Mr. Zimmerman, was Jewish. Using the term Blood Libel is not a mistake here. It is an obvious call out to Sarah Palin's rapture-ready fans who anxiously await the return of Jesus, when anyone who doesn't accept Jesus as their savior (Jews) will be subjected to the great tribulation, a period of "...worldwide hardships, disasters, famine, war, pain and suffering, which will wipe out 75% of all life on the earth before part two of the Second Coming takes place." When your religion teaches crap like this, then violent imagery isn't just accepted, it's encouraged. It's religious.

This is also an attempt to portray herself as crucified by those who would use her political blood in their proverbial Matzos. She's dabbling in blood metaphors while she spouts off about American exceptionalism. This isn't code; it's all CAP LOCK all the time, a blatant shout out to the violent fans who share her violent religion.

Besides being sloppy politics, this is just a sickening extension of her violent imagery. Rather than cooling her blood lust, as her taking down of the target map suggested she might, she is ramping it up, this time to include anti-semitic slurs in her response to Jews being murdered and maimed. That takes a special kind of sick mind. To continue violent imagery after this tragedy is deranged, but it is not a mistake on her part. It is a blatant call to her End Timers: keep spewing forth the hate, keep ramping up the violent imagery, keep threatening those you disagree with, because Jesus will be back soon and as long as you believe in him you won't wind up in the great tribulation like the other non-believers. You can encourage violence and even commit it yourself as long as you repent and accept Jesus before it's too late. In fact, violence is down right God-like.

These people are truly sick. I think I'll go back to ignoring them.

The Indignity of Background Checks

This is a great article about Arizona from last July. After the Giffords shooting, I find this paragraph particularly telling of the kind of crazy that leads to the deadly crazy.

in reference to:

"Allen, who retained her seat in an election that fall, has since gained minor notoriety after calling for more uranium mining, saying in a speech that “this earth has been here 6,000 years, long before anybody had environmental laws, and somehow it hasn’t been done away with.” She also has complained that trees are “stealing Arizona’s water supply” and sponsored a new law that allows carriers of concealed weapons to forego safety training and the indignity of background checks."
- Tea party in the Sonora: For the future of G.O.P. governance, look to Arizona—By Ken Silverstein (Harper's Magazine) (view on Google Sidewiki)

Fun with Mental Health, Guns, and Quotes from the Right

Hearing the endless loop of whining from Republicans that their violent rhetoric had nothing to do with the shooting yesterday in Arizona has made me want to review some of the rhetoric for the record. Never mind Palin's gun sight map, which they argue wasn't really gunsights, just cross-hairs.

''I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. ... No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out.'' —Glenn Beck

"I hope that's not where we're going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out." —Sharon Angle

''Our nation was founded on violence. The option is on the table. I don't think that we should ever remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms.''—Tea Party Texas GOP congressional candidate Stephen Broden

I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us 'having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,' and the people -- we the people -- are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country." —Michele Backmann

"Don’t retreat. Instead — reload!" —Sarah Palin

Who knows how much these words had to do with the shooting, if any. But they're awfully close to yelling fire in a crowded theater. I don't care who the shooter was or what he thought, talk like this is dangerous and stupid. Anyone who wants to defend speech like that now is sick. It's indefensible.

Of course, combine Arizona's lax gun laws and cuts to mental health services and you get a real fun place to live:

Arizona has been considered a progressive state because it provides the vast majority of mental health services through cost-effective outpatient community programs. By slashing these programs, experts say the state will force more people to use emergency rooms or end up in the criminal justice system, which will cost the state more.

So, who knows what this particular shooter's mental state was. Who knows if he should have had a gun or not. Who knows if he watched Glen Beck. But you put all this together and it sounds pretty dangerous. Something is/was bound to go wrong.

Jared Laughner

Today's suspected Arizona shooter, Jared Laughner, has an interesting you tube page, which features the message "If you're literate in English grammar, then you comprehend English grammar." He goes on to say, "If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn't have happen."

Real bright bulb, this one.

"In conclusion, my ambition - is for informing literate dreamers about a new currency; in a few days, you know I'm conscience dreaming!"

Guess that makes if first degree murder.

in reference to: YouTube - Classitup10's Channel (view on Google Sidewiki)

Assassinated Like Dr. Tiller

Like Dr. Tiller, the Kansas abortion doctor who was murdered after being "targeted," these right wing assholes put targets on someone, and that someone winds up shot. What more do we need to know?

Sarah Palin and Giffords' opponent in 2010 targeted her and she got shot. End of story. Watching Palin, and every other Republican asshole who uses targets like this, try to walk it back is just sickening. They incited this violence, and they should apologize and stop doing it.

I once got in a fight with a guy who had a sticker of the Democratic donkey in crosshairs. He said it was a joke. I bet that fucker thinks it's pretty damn funny today, because that's how these assholes roll. They talk about "second amendment remedies" and then they claim to be shocked when someone takes them seriously.

in reference to:

"placed the crosshairs over their geographic districts and included a list of their names below."
- Flashback: Palin Used Crosshair Targets For Giffords's District, Other Dems | TPMDC (view on Google Sidewiki)

Declaration of Conscience

The Republicans took what was a warning and ran with it as a game plan.

in reference to:

"I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear."
- Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » The Four Horsemen Are Back in Town (view on Google Sidewiki)

Add this to the Citizen's United decision and you get:

Corporations want to pollute? Run as many ads as you can afford, and you buy a politician who will vote to allow pollution.

Corporations want to pay less than minimum wage? Buy a politician's vote, because dollars and free speech are the same thing.

Want to "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States"? Just get enough Scalia's on the bench and we can make the 14th mean whatever you want!

Scalia expands the constitution where he likes it and cuts away where he dislikes it. The 14th is a big problem to his ideology, so he wants to pepper it with bird shot.

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

in reference to:

"You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don't like the death penalty anymore, that's fine. You want a right to abortion? There's nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn't mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law."
- 44 - Scalia: Constitution does not protect women against discrimination (view on Google Sidewiki)