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This piece reveals the coming Carnage Carmageddon> ­ ­

JJ n' TJ 1969 on yer teevee:

Opiate of the Mass Delusional

A video treatise on religion, via @petertweeter:

Religion - watch more funny videos

Fair and Equitable

While Governors and state legislators across the country are conspiring to rip from its carcass the meager remaining flesh that holds the middle class together...firing and pauperizing police, firefighters, nurses, teachers, any and all public service employees...while simultaneously cannibalizing public education from pre-K through graduate schools, slashing funding for sewage treatment, water supplies, roads, bridges and etc, etc, etc...there does exist a very special and favored sector of our once thriving economic machine that is not only exempt from these draconian, suicidal slashes, but that has actually profited at the expense of the rest of us:

The Great and Powerful Multi-national Corporation!

This press release from the only remaining Senator with a conscience,
Bernie Sanders (I-VT), pretty much says it all. Please go read it.
Here's a bitter, projectile vomit-inducing taste:

Congress returned to Capitol Hill on Monday to debate steep spending cuts. Sen. Bernie Sanders said it is grossly unfair for congressional Republicans to propose major cuts to Head Start, Pell Grants, the Social Security Administration, nutrition grants for pregnant low-income women and the Environmental Protection Agency while ignoring the reality that some of the most profitable corporations pay nothing or almost nothing in federal income taxes. Sanders compiled a list of some of some of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders.

 “We have a deficit problem. It has to be addressed,” Sanders said, “but it cannot be addressed on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the poor, young people, the most vulnerable in this country.  The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We’ve got to talk about shared sacrifice.”

Here are the top three corporate sociopathic welfare queens:

1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009.  Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.  

2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.

3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.

 But, of course new taxes have fallen off the legislative table into a black memory hole, so I guess it's us that has ta pay pay pay, while the wealthy and powerful play and play.

Have you had an abortion? Did you keep your receipt?

The Conservative assault on Women's rights has escalated yet again.
Talk about a nanny state!

From Mother Jones:

Under a GOP-backed bill expected to sail through the House of Representatives, the Internal Revenue Service would be forced to police how Americans have paid for their abortions. To ensure that taxpayers complied with the law, IRS agents would have to investigate whether certain terminated pregnancies were the result of rape or incest.

Thomas Barthold, the chief of staff of the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee, confirmed that one consequence of the Republicans' "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" would be to turn IRS agents into abortion cops—that is, during an audit, they'd have to detemine, from evidence provided by the taxpayer, whether any tax benefit had been inappropriately used to pay for an abortion.

 OK, let's review the Conservative policy punch list:

• Destroy the middle class, check
• Eviscerate safety net for the poor, sick and elderly, check
• Attack and defund ACORN, Planned Parenthood, Public Education, NPR and any and all arts, cultural and educational institutions favored by anyone who is not a white, radical right winger, check.
• Return women to the status of herd animals, check
• Further enrich obscenely wealthy campaign donors and voracious corporations, check
• Create jobs and maintain critical infrastructure...well you can't do everything!

Waterboarding for Bon Vivants

Ted Rall sez it all:

The Message

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, posting at Daily Kos, says what every Democrat should be repeating fifty times a day, to the exclusion of any comment on any other topic.

[Caveat Emptor: the likelihood of more than a handful of Dems uniting behind this message has a probability approaching negative infinity. Ah well...we all have our dreams.....]

Kill the GOP Plan to Kill Jobs

by Senator Jeff Merkley

Millions of Americans remain unemployed and countless families are losing their homes to foreclosure. So why are House Republican leaders proposing to torpedo the economy?

We all agree that reducing our deficits is essential for long-run economic health, preparing the path for growth and prosperity.  But instead of recognizing deficit reduction as one piece of a strategy to get our economy on track, Republican leaders are using the deficits – which largely derive from the Republican policies that supported unfunded wars, unfunded subsidies for the richest Americans, and an economic disaster driven by the deregulation of Wall Street – to wage a war on working Americans.  Far from helping hard-working, middle class Americans who have borne the brunt of the Great Recession, the House Republican budget targets those very same Americans.

The extremist House budget will kill jobs and slash funding for education, job training programs, student loans, and health care services for women and their families, among many other things.  According to Mark Zandi, who advised John McCain’s presidential campaign and who now works at the non-partisan Moody’s Analytics, the GOP’s proposed budget cuts will destroy 700,000 American jobs. That is worth repeating: The GOP budget plan will destroy 700,000 jobs.  The last thing our nation can afford right now is further job losses. We need to be creating jobs, not destroying jobs.

There are common-sense budget cuts that could reduce our deficits without wrecking the economy or attacking working families.  We can start by cutting back on the bonus tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires that Republican leaders insisted on just ten weeks ago.  We could end tax subsidies for oil companies and save tens of billions of dollars in the process.
Republican House Speaker John Boehner summarized his perspective on the Republican budget as follows: if people might lose their jobs, “so be it.” You might think the House Republican leaders would show some humility after their failed agenda turned record surpluses into massive deficits in 2001, or after their policies reduced the wages of working Americans during the modest expansion in the middle of the decade, or after they burned down the economy with unregulated derivatives and predatory mortgage securities in 2008.

Apparently not.  Their proposals are exactly the same: give massive tax cuts to the wealthiest, shred the safety net, and eliminate investments that would help restore American economic leadership.

Budgets are nothing if not statements of priorities.  A budget should be judged by whether it creates a foundation for the success of American working families striving to buy a house, or to send their kids to college, or to save a little for retirement and, if they’re lucky, a vacation.  The budget promoted by the Republican leadership fails this test and must be defeated.

Amen to that Senator.

And speaking of The Message....Almost thirty years ago, Grandmaster Flash gave us a preview of the Dystopia awaiting us if the Republicans manage to enact their evil, inhuman budget.

Bucky is Pissed!

Bucky the Badger is the embodiment of the tough but egalitarian sensibility of the good citizens of Wisconsin, who have been duped into electing this wacko schmuck as their governor:

Meet Scott Walker; union-busting, worker-hating, double-dealing tool of the plutocrats. 

Here is his plan for dealing with a deficit he created in only 6 weeks on the job
(From TPM): (Emphasis is mine)

Scott Walker proposed stripping nearly all government workers of their collective bargaining rights. And as a warning shot across the bow, he told Wisconsin reporters Friday that he's alerted the National Guard ahead of any unrest, or in the event that state services are interrupted. Under his plan, which he'll include in his forthcoming budget proposal, most state workers would no longer be able to negotiate for better pensions or health benefits or anything other than higher salaries, which couldn't rise at a quicker pace than the Consumer Price Index.

Why would he propose such a radical, anti-labor move??

According to TPM:

Wisconsin's new Republican governor has framed his assault on public worker's collective bargaining rights as a needed measure of fiscal austerity during tough times.

 Only it turns out that this lying sack of skunk gizzards has a much more diabolical plan to return the workers of Wisconsin to the golden age of the 19th century, when the barons of industry routinely abused the working class:

The reality is radically different. Unlike true austerity measures -- service rollbacks, furloughs, and other temporary measures that cause pain but save money -- rolling back worker's bargaining rights by itself saves almost nothing on its own. But Walker's doing it anyhow, to knock down a barrier and allow him to cut state employee benefits immediately.

 But wait...There's more:

Furthermore, this broadside comes less than a month after the state's fiscal bureau -- the Wisconsin equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office -- concluded that Wisconsin isn't even in need of austerity measures, and could conclude the fiscal year with a surplus. In fact, they say that the current budget shortfall is a direct result of tax cut policies Walker enacted in his first days in office.

From the Capitol Times of Madison:

In its Jan. 31 memo to legislators on the condition of the state’s budget, the Fiscal Bureau determined that the state will end the year with a balance of $121.4 million.
To the extent that there is an imbalance -- Walker claims there is a $137 million deficit -- it is not because of a drop in revenues or increases in the cost of state employee contracts, benefits or pensions. It is because Walker and his allies pushed through $140 million in new spending for special-interest groups in January. If the Legislature were simply to rescind Walker’s new spending schemes -- or delay their implementation until they are offset by fresh revenues -- the “crisis” would not exist.

And Gov. Shitstain's crusade could really cost the State millions. 
From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Wisconsin communities could lose $70 million or more in federal aid for transit systems under a bill quickly moving through the state Legislature, opponents of the bill are warning.The measure by Gov. Scott Walker would strip most union rights away from most public employees. That could put in danger federal aid for buses because U.S. law requires that collective bargaining rights remain in place to get federal funds, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

And lo and behold, at long last, the workers and sane citizens of Wisconsin are mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore!


Perhaps inspired by the great awakening of the Egyptian people, or maybe even the attention given the Tea Party rave-ups, the people of Wisconsin have risen up in protest of this egregious affront to the already battered and reeling middle class:

Bucky would be proud. Workers in other states had best take a cue from the Badgers, because the Republican onslaught (in grovelling service to their wealthy and powerful corporate overlords) to pauperize the working folk is on a goosestepping march across the nation (TPM):

Add Tennessee to the list of states primed for a fight over public sector worker rights.

The Senate Education Committee voted along party lines Wednesday to abolish collective bargaining between teachers unions and school boards across the state.

The vote was 6-3, with all Republicans on the panel voting for the bill and all Democrats against.

Sponsor Sen. Jack Johnson said passage of the bill -- SB113 -- will remove 'an albatross from around the neck of our school boards across the state' and remove a roadblock to education reform.

A similar panel in Ohio is considering legislation to end collective bargaining rights for public sector workers. And the trend is set to spread quickly from Wisconsin to many other states.

 Vigilance citizens, vigilance!

And The Crowd Goes Wild!

No, these are not fans at a Led Zeppelin reunion show as Page and Plant
take the stage.
It is the Egyptian humanity in Tahrir Square reacting to the news of Hosni's capitulation.
But my advice is the same for both scenarios...Turn it up!



And check in daily with Juan Cole and Robert Fisk for the most reliable, detailed and well-informed reporting on the continuing evolution of the Egyptian revolution.

Conservabot processes the Egyptian rebellion

From Tom Tomorrow

The Ronald Reagan 1980s

Toasted Roaster Pete Case passed this link along. (You can follow his bleats.. uh blurts..er..I mean tweets at twitter under the nom de fume petertweeter.)

Wonkette says of  this book by Paul Slansky, (from 1989 and now available in eBook formats for a Shatneresque "name your price" deal):

If there’s any possible antidote to the hundred-foot-long shit sandwich of Reagan Worship pummeling America this weekend, you’ll find it within the pages of this book.

...today’s idiot-beltway hero-worship dingbat crap factory truly began in 1980, when the Washington press corps was presented with a narrative by Reagan’s handlers: America wanted to “feel good again,” and the empty-eyed smiling face of Ronald Reagan was exactly the way to “bring fun back” to a nation crippled by recession, unemployment, lost wars and humiliation in the Middle East. (Hah, sound familiar?)

...this is one of those essential documents of the 1980s — a time of idiocy and fraud, and a time we can now see as the Birth of a Nation’s Stupidity.

And, if you can stomach a raw, gaping wound of honesty, go read
Greg Palast's scathing obituary, originally published in The London Observer on Reagan's death in 2004.

The title of the piece is  Reagan: Killer, Coward, Con-man. 'Nuf said.
  
First paragraph:

You're not going to like this. You shouldn't speak ill of the dead. But in this case, someone's got to.
On the 100th Anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth, as we suffer a week of Reagan-kitcheria and pukey peons, let us remember:
Reagan was a con-man. Reagan was a coward. Reagan was a killer.

Egypt, Egypt...Read All About It!

Only don't waste your time with the timid and corrupted mainstream corporate media. Any "journalistic" enterprise that recognizes Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann as legitimate political voices can't be trusted to present any but the most superficial analysis of the ongoing pan-Arab uprising. (Remember Tunisia? That's sooo last week!)

For reliable, detailed reporting, I can recommend two experienced and well-informed genuine journalists with vast on-the-street experience in the region. If you are interested in this story, turn to those who know intimately  the history, culture and people, are beholden to no corporate paymaster, and answer only to their own intellect and conscience.

Please click the links and read some of this. 

JUAN COLE, INFORMED COMMENT

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009) and he also recently authored Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He has been a regular guest on PBS’s Lehrer News Hour, and has also appeared on ABC Nightly News, Nightline, the Today Show, Charlie Rose, Anderson Cooper 360, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, the Colbert Report, Democracy Now! and many others. He has given many radio and press interviews. He has written widely about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. He has commented extensively on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the Iraq War, the politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Iranian domestic struggles and foreign affairs. He has a regular column at Truthdig. He continues to study and write about contemporary Islamic movements, whether mainstream or radical, whether Sunni and Salafi or Shi`ite. Cole commands Arabic, Persian and Urdu and reads some Turkish, knows both Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam. He lived in various parts of the Muslim world for nearly 10 years, and continues to travel widely there.

Some passages from recent posts about the events in Egypt:

It should be remembered that Egypt’s elite of multi-millionaires has benefited enormously from its set of corrupt bargains with the US and Israel and from the maintenance of a martial law regime that deflects labor demands and pesky human rights critiques. It is no wonder that to defend his billions and those of his cronies, Hosni Mubarak was perfectly willing to order thousands of his security thugs into the Tahrir Square to beat up and expel the demonstrators, leaving 7 dead and over 800 wounded, 200 of them just on Thursday morning.

Mubarak is taking his cues for impudence from the far rightwing government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, which began the Middle Eastern custom of humiliating President Barack Obama with impunity.

The outlines of Hosni Mubarak’s efforts to maintain regime stability and continuity have now become clear. In response to the mass demonstrations of the past week, he has done the following:
1. Late last week, he first tried to use the uniformed police and secret police to repress the crowds
2. This effort failed to quell the protests, and the police were then withdrawn altogether, leaving the country defenseless before gangs of burglars and other criminal elements
3. Mubarak appointed military intelligence ogre Omar Suleiman vice president.
4. Mubarak mobilized the army to keep a semblance of order, but failed to convince the regular army officers to intervene against the protesters
5. His refusal to step down immediately and his other maneuvers indicated his determination to maintain the military dictatorship in Egypt, but to attempt to placate the public with an offer to switch out one dictator for a new one (Omar Suleiman, likely).
6. When this pledge of transition to a new military dictator did not, predictably enough, placate the public either, Mubarak on Wednesday sent several thousand secret police and paid enforcers in civilian clothing into Tahrir Square to attack the protesters with stones, knouts, and molotov cocktails

Egypt is, unlike Iran, not primarily an oil state. Its sources of revenue are tourism, Suez Canal tolls, manufactured and agricultural exports, and strategic rent (the $1.5 bn. or so in aid from the US comes under this heading). Egypt depends on the rest of the world for grain imports. Were it to adopt a radical and defiant ideology like that of Iran, all its major sources of income would suddenly evaporate, and it might have trouble even just getting enough imported food. Moreover, the social forces making the revolution in Egypt have a significantly different profile and different dynamics than in Iran:
1. THE BAZAAR (business and artisan classes): To the extent that there is a bazaar (the Arabic would be suq) in Egypt, it is by now very heavily dependent on the tourist trade. Coptic Christians are well represented in it. The suq therefore tends to oppose social policies that would scare away Western tourists.
2. WHITE AND BLUE COLLAR WORKERS: These groups are among the primary instigators of the Egyptian uprising. The April 6 group of young labor activists first came to prominence when they supported strikes by textile factory workers in Mahalla al-Kubra and elsewhere for improved wages and work conditions. There have been more than 3,000 labor actions by Egyptian workers since 2004. The pro-labor youth activists have been among the major leaders of the uprising in the past week, and had pioneered the use of Facebook and Twitter for such purposes.
3. SECULAR FORCES. When I say ‘secular’ with regard to Egypt, I do not mean that these groups are made up of atheists and agnostics. Their members may go to mosque and pray and be personally pious. But such people can nevertheless vote for parties that are not primarily organized around religion
4. THE RELIGIOUS FORCES: Unlike in Iran, there are relatively few prominent dissident clergy.  The Egyptian state had for the most part nationalized mosques and controlled the clerical corps. Few Egyptian clergyman command the respect or obedience of the laity to the extent that Khomeini did in Iran. The major religious party is the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928. Although it developed a terrorist wing in the 1940s, it faced severe crackdowns in the 1950s and 1960s, and lost that capacity. By the 1970s the Brotherhood’s leaders were willing to make their peace with the government of Anwar El Sadat. He let them operate if they agreed not to resort to violence and not to try to overthrow the government. In the 1990s, the Brotherhood came to counter the radical movements, such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and so had a tacit partnership with the state. Egypt does not allow parties to be organized on the basis of religion, but even so Muslim Brother candidates have done well in some parliamentary elections (especially 2006), running under the rubric of other parties.

ROBERT FISK, THE INDEPENDENT

Bio from Wikipedia:
Robert Fisk (born 12 July 1946) is an English writer and journalist from Maidstone, Kent. Middle East correspondent of The Independent, he has primarily been based in Beirut for more than 30 years. He has published a number of books and has reported from the United States's attack on Afghanistan and the same country's 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Fisk holds more British and International Journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent.
The New York Times once described Robert Fisk as "probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain." He reported the Northern Ireland troubles in the 1970s, the Portuguese Revolution in 1974, the Lebanese Civil War, the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A vernacular Arabic speaker, he is one of few Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden, and did so three times between 1994 and 1997. His awards include being voted International Journalist of the Year seven times.

A taste of his reporting:

The Egyptian tanks, the delirious protesters sitting atop them, the flags, the 40,000 protesters weeping and crying and cheering in Freedom Square and praying around them, the Muslim Brotherhood official sitting amid the tank passengers...It was a wild, historical victory celebration, Mubarak's own tanks freeing his capital from his own dictatorship.

In the pantomime world of Mubarak himself – and of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Washington – the man who still claims to be president of Egypt swore in the most preposterous choice of vice-president in an attempt to soften the fury of the protesters – Omar Suleiman, Egypt's chief negotiator with Israel and his senior intelligence officer, a 75-year-old with years of visits to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and four heart attacks to his credit. How this elderly apparatchik might be expected to deal with the anger and joy of liberation of 80 million Egyptians is beyond imagination. When I told the demonstrators on the tank around me the news of Suleiman's appointment, they burst into laughter.

"President" Hosni Mubarak's counter-revolution smashed into his opponents yesterday in a barrage of stones, cudgels, iron bars and clubs, an all-day battle in the very centre of the capital he claims to rule between tens of thousands of young men, both – and here lies the most dangerous of all weapons – brandishing in each other's faces the banner of Egypt...The fighting around me in the square called Tahrir was so terrible that we could smell the blood. The men and women who are demanding the end of Mubarak's 30-year dictatorship – and I saw young women in scarves and long skirts on their knees, breaking up the paving stones as rocks fell around them – fought back with an immense courage which later turned into a kind of terrible cruelty.

From the House on the Corner, you could watch the arrogance and folly yesterday of those Egyptians who would rid themselves of their "President". It was painful – it always is when the "good guys" play into the hands of their enemies –
It was pathetic. The army needed 4,000 troops here to stop this battle. They had only two tank crews, one officer and four soldiers. And the forces of democracy – yes, we have to introduce a little cynicism here – cared nothing for the forbearance of the soldiers they have been trying to woo. They formed in phalanxes across the road outside the Egyptian Museum, each holding a shield of corrugated iron, many of them shouting "God is Great", a mockery of every Hollywood Roman legion, T-shirts instead of breastplates, clubs and the police night-sticks of Mubarak's hated cops instead of swords.

A History Lesson from the T-Party

From the inestimable Tom Tomorrow

Merle Haggard - Rambling' Fever.

I love this version:



And my ears can sure stand to hear that same old song over and over. This cut features Merle offering comedy patter and he cuts the band way loose for the outro.
I can't embed this version so you need to click the link to watch it:
MERLE HAGGARD - Ramblin' Fever

Here's a gem with Tammy Wynette joining Merle for Today I Started Loving You Again:

Sticks and Stones Will Break My Bones...

But words may inspire someone to kill me...

Clay Bennett at The Chattanooga Times Free Press says it best:

We Can't Say We Weren't Warned

From The Chicago Sun Times editorial on the shooting in Tucson:

In what kind of country do people show up at presidential speeches with guns on their hips?

In what kind of a country do callers to radio shows routinely smear those with whom they disagree — beginning with our president — as “traitors” and “un-American,” while pandering hosts say only, “Thanks for the call.”

The safe observation for us to make now — you will hear it from others all week — is that the angry and irresponsible talk that might lead an unhinged person to pick up a gun is common across the political landscape, from right to left.

But that simply is not true.

Overwhelmingly today, the fear-mongering and demonizing flow from the right, aided and abetted by cable TV and talk-radio hosts. They may represent only the irresponsible fringe of conservatism in America, but they are drowning out the thoughtful voices of the vast majority of conservatives.

 And no, these are not active duty soldiers. They are civilian attendees at a Rand Paul campaign rally exercising their second amendment rights:

And I don't even know how to define this:

Weird and scary times my friends; weird and scary......

No Health Care For You!

When Congress repeals health care reform, congressmembers will still have taxpayer subsidized health coverage.

From Think Progress:

Members of Congress on average receive a $700 a month taxpayer subsidy for their private health insurance plan, which they can choose through a highly regulated exchange offered by the government. The federal system mirrors the reforms enacted by Democrats and President Obama, which end health insurance abuses by regulating coverage through an exchange, while offering subsidies to individuals and small businesses to make coverage more affordable.

Oh, and then there's this:

Aside from the fact that increasing access to health services will create thousands of jobs in the health care sector, Harvard economist David Cutler argues in new paper released this morning that repealing the health law would reverse these gains and could destroy 250,000 to 400,000 jobs annually over the next decade. Eliminating the law would increase health care costs and cause employers to reduce wages and cut jobs for those employees who already receive minimum wage or are in fixed contracts.

I usually delete mass emails, but this one seems reasonable to me:
  

Monday on Fox News they learned that the staffers of Congress family members are exempt from having to pay back student loans. This will get national attention if other news networks will broadcast it. When you add this to the below, just where will all of it stop?


For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform... in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop.
 
Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution: "Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States."

See if You Can Spot The "Left Wing" Violent Rhetoric

I sure can't. The mass shooting in Arizona directed at Rep. Giffords is another incident in a parade of senseless violence and rhetoric that has become a defining characteristic of mainstream conservative belief since the black guy was elected President.

Make no mistake; despite the baffling compulsion of our deluded corporate media to paint this ongoing drumbeat of hatred and violence as a left/right, he said/she said equivalence, there is none. This is an escalating phenomenon among right wing conservatives who have adopted the rhetoric of radical militias and racist anti-government hate crazies, and it is fed and funded by powerful  corporate "persons", unimaginably wealthy individuals and the conservative organizations they bankroll, along with the amplification of hate radio and the ever reliable Murdoch NewsCorp through Fox News.


From The Coalition To Stop Gun Violence

Go to this link to read how domestic terrorism has become acceptable behavior:
Insurrectionism Timeline

Some lowlights:

On June 26, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court embraced the National Rifle Association's contention that the Second Amendment provides individuals with the right to take violent action against our government should it become "tyrannical." The following timeline catalogues incidents of insurrectionist violence (or the promotion of such violence) that have occurred since that decision was issued:

July 27, 2008—Jim Adkisson shoots and kills two people at a progressive church in Knoxville, Tennessee, wounding two. Adkisson calls it “a symbolic killing” because he really “wanted to kill…every Democrat in the Senate & House

February 20, 2009—FOX commentator Glenn Beck hosts a program that games a 2014 civil war scenario called “The Bubba Effect.” It involves citizen militias in the South and West taking up arms against the U.S. government.

March 3, 2009— FOX commentator Glenn Beck interviews NRA celebrity spokesman Chuck Norris. During the interview, Beck states that, “Somebody asked me this morning, they said, ‘you really believe that there's going to be trouble in the future?’ And I said, ‘if this country starts to spiral out of control and, you know, and Mexico melts down or whatever, if it really starts to spiral out of control, before America allows a country to become a totalitarian country … Americans will, they just, they won't stand for it. There will be parts of the country that will rise up.’

March 9, 2009—NRA celebrity spokesman Chuck Norris writes in an editorial published at WorldNetDaily: “How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history need to record a second American Revolution?”

March 11, 2009—NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre speaks at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference and announces that “Our Founding Fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules.”

March 21-22, 2009—Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) states that she wants residents of her state to be “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,’

April 7, 2009—The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis releases an assessment of right wing extremism in the United States. The Department notes that “the economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for right wing radicalization and recruitment.”


April 25, 2009—Joshua Cartwright, 28, a member of the Florida National Guard, shoots and kills two Okaloosa County sheriff's deputies attempting to arrest him on a domestic abuse charge. Cartwright is killed in an enusing gun battle with police. Cartwright's wife reports that he was "severely disturbed" that Barack Obama had been elected president.

May 2009—Data released by the U.S. Marshals Service indicates that threats to the nation's judges and prosecutors have more than doubled in the past six years, from 592 in 2003 to 1,278 in 2008.

June 3, 2009—Hal Turner, a New Jersey resident and white supremacist blogger/radio host, is arrested on charges of inciting injury after calling for the deaths of two Connecticut state legislators  “we at TRN (Turner Radio Network) believe that being decent to a group of tyrannical scumbags is the wrong approach. It's too soft. Thankfully, the Founding Fathers gave us the tools necessary to resolve tyranny: The Second Amendment. TRN advocates Catholics in Connecticut take up arms and put down this tyranny by force ... If any state attorney, police department or court thinks they're going to get uppity with us about this, I suspect we have enough bullets to put them down, too.”

June 24, 2009—Hal Turner, a New Jersey resident and white supremacist blogger/radio host, is arrested again after calling for the murder of three Republican-appointed jurists on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals who had issued a June 2 decision upholding handgun restrictions in Chicago. Writing on his blog, Turner says, “Let me be the first to say this plainly: these judges deserve to be killed,” and includes photographs, phone numbers, work addresses, and room numbers of the judges, as well as a map of Chicago’s federal courthouse which points out its “anti-truck bomb” pylons.

July 15, 2009—Katherine Crabill, a Republican candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates in the state’s 99th District makes headlines by calling on Americans to resist the course President Obama has set for the country. Appearing at a “Tea Party” rally, Crabill quotes a 1775 speech by Patrick Henry and then states, “We have a chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box.

July 31, 2009—On WWJB-AM in Hernando County, Florida, talk radio host Bob Haa takes a call from a listener who mentions ammunition, target practice, and Barack Obama. Haa tells him not to waste his ammunition on targets, to save it for the administration.

August 11, 2009—William Kostric is filmed openly carrying a handgun outside of President Obama's health care reform town hall meeting in New Hampshire. Kostric holds a sign that reads, "IT IS TIME TO WATER THE TREE OF LIBERTY!" a reference to the following Thomas Jefferson quote: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

August 25, 2009—During a GOP barbecue in Twin Falls, Idaho, an audience member asks Rex Rammell, a candidate in the 2010 Idaho Republican Primary, a question about "Obama tags" during a discussion about state-issued tags for wolf hunting. Rammell responds, "The Obama tags? We'd buy some of those." In a subsequent press release, he adds, "Anyone who understands the law knows I was just joking, because Idaho has no jurisdiction to issue hunting tags in Washington, D.C."

August 26, 2009—At a secessionist rally on the state capitol steps in Austin, Texas, gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina states that, "We are aware that stepping off into secession may in fact be a bloody war. We are aware. We understand that the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”

September 25-26, 2009—Kitty Werthmann, a speaker at the “How to Take Back America” Conference in St. Louis, tells her audience, “If we had our guns [during the time of the Nazis’ reign in Germany], we would have fought a bloody battle. So, keep your guns, and buy more guns, and buy ammunition. Take back America. Don’t let them take the country into Socialism. And I refer again, Hitler’s party was National Socialism. And that’s what we are having here right now, which is bordering on Marxism.”

September 29, 2009—An editorial at the Newsmax website calls for a military coup to oust President Obama.

September 30, 2009—The Michelangelo Signorile Show, a talk radio program on Sirus, takes a call from “Jim” from Oklahoma, who claims that he and 200 others are meeting weekly to stage a coup against President Obama. Jim says they want to restore their "a right to bear arms" and bring the country back to where it was 400 years ago, before slavery was abolished.

October 18-19, 2009—Reports emerge that the Secret Service has received an unprecedented number of death threats against President Obama. Ronald Kessler's account of presidential security, In the President's Secret Service, states that there has been a 400% increase in such threats in comparison with Obama’s predecessor.

November 2009—Billboard is erected on I-70 in Lafayette County, Missouri, that promotes "a citizens guide to REVOLUTION." It urges Missourians to "LIVE FREE OR DIE" and "PREPARE FOR WAR" with a corrupt government. The billboard is highlighted at the Lafayette County Republicans website.

January 2, 2010—More than 300 people attend a rally in Alamogordo, New Mexico, organized by the local Otero Tea Party Patriots and Second Amendment Task Force. One attendee states that his handgun is a “very open threat” to the “socialist communists” in the Obama Administration. “The government fears the people, and a disarmed people are slaves,” he says. “Political power comes from the barrel of a gun ... They’re pushing us to our limits.”

February 13, 2010—An unidentified speaker at an event organized by the Lewis and Clark Tea Party Patriots in Asotin County, Washington, tells the audience, "How many of you have watched the movie "Lonesome Dove"? What happened to Jake when he ran with the wrong crowd? He got hung. And that's what I want to do with [Democratic U.S. Senator] Patty Murray."

February 2010—Pvt. 1st Class Lee Pary, an active duty soldier at Fort Drum and member of Oath Keepers, tells a reporter that he and five fellow service members at the Army base are preparing to take on the U.S. government when it declares martial law, and will turn their guns on their fellow soldiers should it become necessary. "I know their tactics," says Pray. "I know how they...work their convoys—if we attack this vehicle, what the others will do ... If the government continues to ignore us, and forces us to engage, I'm willing to fight to the death."

March 2010—The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) announces that 2009 saw a dramatic increase in the number of new anti-government "Patriot" groups in the United States. Specifically, the number of Patriot groups jumped from 149 (including 42 militias) to 512 (127 of them militias) in 2009—a 244% jump.

March 19-22, 2010—During consideration of health care reform legislation by the U.S. House of Representatives, vandals attack Democratic offices in Pleasant Ridge, Ohio; Wichita, Kansas; Tuscon, Arizona; Niagra Falls, New York; and Rochester, New York. Mike Vanderboegh, the former leader of f the Alabama Constitutional Militia, takes credit for the violence after posting a blog on March 19 that states, "If we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democratic party headquarters across this country, we might just make up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary." Several Democratic members receive death threats, including Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), who is told snipers will "kill the children of the members who voted YES"; Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), who receives a message saying, "You're dead; we know where you live; we'll get you"; and Rep. Betsy Markey (D-CO), whose staffer is told by a caller, "Better hope I don't run into you in a dark alley with a knife, a club or a gun." House Minority Leader John Boehner, speaking about Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH), says he "may be a dead man."

March 21, 2010—As the U.S. House of Representatives enters a final round of debate over a controversial health care reform bill, Conservative blogger Solomon "Solly" Forrell calls for the assassination of President Barack Obama on his Twitter account.

March 23, 2010—After Mike Troxel of the Lynchburg Tea Party and Nigel Coleman of the Danville Tea Party post the home address of the brother of Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) and urge supporters to "drop by," someone deliberately cuts a propane gas line at the house. Rep. Perriello is targeted by the Tea Party activists because of his vote in favor of health care reform. Perriello's brother and his wife have four children under the age of eight.

March 24, 2010—After voting for health care reform legislation, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) receive faxes with drawings of nooses.

March 25, 2010—Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who voted for health care reform legislation, receives a package containing white powder and an angry letter telling him to "drop dead ."

March 26, 2010—Rep. Vic Snyder (D-AR), who voted for health care reform legislation, receives a letter stating, "It is apparent that it will take a few assassinations to stop Obamacare. Militia central has selected you for assassination. If we cannot stalk and find you in Washington, D.C., we will get you in Little Rock."

March 26, 2010—NRA Board Member Ted Nugent makes the following comment on FOX News' "Your World" program: “I’m the expert on the health care bill because I kill pigs and a just shot a monster big pig here in Texas and seeing as how this is a pig bill created by pig bureaucrats to help out American pigs … We gotta’ kill the pig.”

April 1, 2010—CNN commentator Erick Erickson, questioning the legality of the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), makes the following comment on WMAC-AM radio: “We have become, or are becoming, enslaved by the government ... I dare ‘em to try to come throw me in jail. I dare ‘em to. [I’ll] pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. They’re not going on my property.”

April 6, 2010—Authorities charge Charles Alan Wilson of Selah, Washington, with threatening a federal official after Wilson makes several phone calls to the office of Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA).  He also told Murray, "Since you are going to put my life at risk, and some bureaucrat is going to determine my health care, your life is at risk, dear ... I hope somebody puts a...bullet between your...eyes."

April 7, 2010—Gregory Lee Giusti, 48, of San Francisco, California, is arrested for making threatening phone calls to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Giusti had a "history of mental health problems" and his mother indicated he was influenced by "Fox News

April 13, 2010—Reports surface that state Sen. Randy Brogdon (R-OK) and Rep. Charles Key (R-OK) have met with Oklahoma Tea Party groups to discuss the formation of a new "volunteer militia" to defend against what they see as improprer federal infringements on state sovereignty. Brogdon states that the Founding Fathers "were not referring to a turkey shoot or a quail hunt. They really weren't even talking about us having the ability to protect ourselves against each other. The Second Amendment deals directly with the right of an individual to keep and bear arms to protect themselves from an overreaching federal government." One Tea Party leader involved in these meetings, J.W. Berry of the Tulsa-based OKforTea group, has called for the Militia to "launch a thousand guerrilla attacks on the plans that these people have to ruin us and our country."

May 6, 2010—Dr. Christina Jeffrey, a Republican candidate in South Carolina's 4th Congressional District, posts a YouTube video where she holds an AK-47 assault rifle and tells viewers, "Why do we have the Second Amendment? The Second Amendment ensures all of our other rights ... The Second Amendment was placed in the Constitution, plainly, to ensure that our limited government stayed limited and that we would be able to enforce those limitations if need be ... We are a sovereign people. A sovereign people is an armed people."

May 15, 2010—At the National Rifle Association's annual meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, 2012 Republican presidential nominee hopeful Newt Gingrich tells the audience, "The Second Amendment is not in defense of hunting. It is not in defense of target shooting. It is not in defense of collecting. The Second Amendment is in defense of freedom from the State."

May 27, 2010—The Washington Times publishes an editorial claiming that a United Nations treaty seeking to curb the international, illicit trade in smalls arms "would necessarily lead to confication of personal firearms" in the United States. Governments are a bigger threat to most people than their neighbors."

May 30, 2010—Sharron Angle, a candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator in Nevada, tells the Reno Gazette-Journal that a recent increase in gun sales nationwide "tells me that the nation is arming. What are they arming for if it isn't that they are so distrustful of government? They're afraid they'll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways."  I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take [U.S. Senator from Nevada] Harry Reid out."

June 9, 2010—Addressing the Obama administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress, FOX commentator Glenn Beck says, "Shoot me in the head if you try to change our government—I will stand against you. And so will millions of others." Beck also compares American Progressives to Osama bin Laden and claims "they want to overthrow our entire system of government."

June 27, 2010—Rick Barber, a Tea Party candidate seeking the Republican nomination in Alabama's Second Congressional District, runs a campaign ad in which he compares taxation and "the tyrannical health care bill" to slavery and the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany. 

July 2, 2010—The Wyoming Department of Revenue suspends sales tax collections at the state's gun shows because of "increasing animosity" toward field tax agents.

July 3, 2010—Joyce Kaufman, a conservative radio hosts on WFTL in Florida, tells a crowd of supporters at a Fort Lauderdale Tea Party event, “I am convinced that the most important thing the Founding Fathers did to ensure me my First Amendments rights was they gave me a Second Amendment. And if ballots don’t work, bullets will.  I’m going to gather together men and women who understand that some things are worth fighting for and some things are worth dying for.”

Alaska paradeJuly 11, 2010—Supporters of Tea Party candidate Joe Miller openly carry assault rifles and handguns during a community parade in Eagle River and Chugiak, Alaska, while young children march alongside them.

July 18, 2010—California Highway Patrol officers arrest Byron Williams, 45, after a shootout on I-580..  he was on his way to San Francisco to "start a revolution" by killing employees of the ACLU and Tides Foundation. Williams' mother says her son was angry at "Left-wing politicians" and upset by "the way Congress was railroading through all these Left-wing agenda items."

August 14, 2010—Former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack—"My dear friends, I pray for the day that the first sheriff in this country is the one to fire the shot heard 'round the world and take out some IRS agents!"

September 30, 2010—Steve Kendley, a deputy sheriff running for sheriff in Lake County, Montana, threatens "a violent conflict" with federal agents if "they are doing something I believe is unconstitutional."

October 15, 2010—Conservative radio show host Glenn Beck ltells his audience that his response to the government would be "Meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson."

October 21, 2010—Pastor Stephen Broden, the Republican candidate for U.S. Representative in Texas' 30th Congressional District, tells WFAA-TV in Dallas that the violent overthrow of the government is an "option" that remains "on the table." 

November 4, 2010—On his radio show, conservative host Glenn Beck fantasizes about President Obama being decapitated during a trip to India,

November 4, 2010—Fox News host Bill O'Reilly fantasizes about killing a Washington Post reporter while on the air, saying, "Does sharia law say we can behead Dana Milbank?"

November 10, 2010—Public schools in Broward County, Florida, go into lockdown after an email threat is received by WFTL 850 AM. The email is sent to conservative radio host Joyce Kaufman in response to remarks she made at a Tea Party event in July ("If ballots don't work, bullets will"). The email expresses support for her view of the Second Amendment and says that to further "their cause...something big will happen at a government building in Broward County, maybe a post office maybe even a school."

November 29, 2010—U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, circulates a PowerPoint presentation to his colleagues in which he compares the Obama administration to the Nazi regime in Germany and likens himself to Gen. George Patton, bragging, "Put anything in my scope and I will shoot it."

January 8, 2011—Jared Lee Loughner, 22, shoots U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 others at a "Congress in Your Corner" event at a Safeway supermarket in Tuscon, Arizona.

And now for some realinews

My brother Rob sent me the link to this vid. He wishes it were real.