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Showing posts from January, 2011

The Violence Continues

Just to keep the record complete, although I am sick of these stories, TPM reports: "Roger Stockham, a 63-year-old Army veteran from California who was reportedly angry at the U.S. government, was arrested by police in Michigan and charged with allegedly threatening to blow up a Mosque in Dearborn." Of course, the right wingers, who will scream bloody murder if you suggest that an army veteran who was going to blow up a mosque might be a conservative, are already blaring away that he is a Bush-hating liberal. And here, I thought liberals were all in cahoots with the Muslims.

It Can't Happen Here...

This great new s from the New York Times: "KABUL, Afghanistan — Fraud and mismanagement at Afghanistan’s largest bank have resulted in potential losses of as much as $900 million — three times previous estimates — heightening concerns that the bank could collapse and trigger a broad financial panic...The extent of these losses make it clear that keeping the bank afloat — something the government has said it is determined to do — would require large infusions of cash from an already strained budget. Banking specialists, businessmen and government officials now fear that word of Kabul Bank’s troubles could prompt a run on solvent banks, destroying the country’s nascent banking system" Man, aren't you glad that we'd never have an administration that would let something like that happen here- the President and Vice President would have to be really corrupt to sit there and let people rip off the whole banking system, right?  And, I mean, American voters would never f

Another Welcome Viewpoint on Egypt

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From the King Dictator of Saudi Arabia: "No Arab and Muslim human being can bear that some infiltrators, in the name of freedom of expression, have infiltrated into the brotherly people of Egypt, to destabilise its security and stability and they have been exploited to spew out their hatred in destruction, intimidation, burning, looting and inciting a malicious sedition." Loyalty is such a noble trait.  It is always a heart-warming thing to see the world's dictators stand by each other in their time of need.  Doesn't it  remind you of these guys: Okay, enough of the nostalgia.  In further news from the Middle East, The New York Times reports this: "KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan is expected to sign a formal agreement with the United Nations on Sunday to...ban the common practice of boys being used as sex slaves by military commanders" I'm so happy that this situation is being rectified. Such behavior is grossly unfair.  There are so few

Wingnut Wrapup

It's really been fascinating to watch right wingers writhing like a bucket of worms trying to find some narrative that blames what's happening in Egypt on Obama. They're really in a quandary, because they love them some dictator, so they want to blame Obama for not supporting Mubarak, but at the same time they hate them some Arab, so they really want to blame Obama for not doing everything he can to contribute to the chaos there, which would have the advantage of providing them with so much more material in the coming weeks for their hate-filled rants.  More on that in a few days, when they decide on whatever bogus narrative they are going to run with. In the meantime, here's the garbage that's on my plate today, which I am delighted to scrape onto your laps: Suzanne Fields, Town Hall:  "Rep. Michele Bachmann, founder of the tea party caucus in the new Congress, gave more than a response to President Obama's State of the Union speech Tuesday night. We g

This is Democracy?

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News from Egypt:  Hosni Mubarak has for the first time appointed a vice president, thus apparently ending his plans to have his son succeed him. Since when does the leader of a supposedly Democratic country get to have his son take over? Oh, yeah: I almost forgot.

Whither the Egyptian Military?

A lot of people seem to think that the outcome of the situation in Egypt depends on what role the Egyptian military takes, and who they back.  Here is an interesting article about this issue, from Al Jazeera. To be honest, I don't even know enough about this to have an opinion (how unusual) but I thought it was a good read. Update:   No good deed goes unpunished, of course: " Egypt Shuts Down Al Jazeera Cairo bureau ."

Egypt?

Good or bad?  Who can tell at this point? I see that protests have now spread to the normally peaceful Jordan, a country with its own share of congenital problems. The next few weeks promise to be interesting.

New Black Panthers- Another Republican Hoax?

Some of you may remember the story of the "New Black Panther Party."  This involves an allegation of voter intimidation from the 2008 election, when two members of this alleged group (which seemed to have a total membership of eight) showed up outside a Philadelphia polling place, one of them carrying a billy club, and were filmed by a videographer and then used as a Republican propaganda to claim that Democrats were engaged in voter suppression. These "New Black Panthers" were not prosecuted, because the Justice department could not find a single voter that felt intimidated by them, sort of undermining the whole narrative.  This decision was taken by the Bush Justice department before Obama became President, but it has become the subject of endless attacks on Obama, claiming that it was his decision, and that it proves that he is an anti-white racist.  These attacks continue to this day, frequently citing this incident as legitimate grounds to impeach Obama and A

Stories Too Unimportant For the Mainstream Media

A Republican Supreme Court Justice knowingly swindled the Federal government out of several hundred thousand dollars. When is someone going to care about that?  Apparently, never.

March For Life Draws the Usual Billions of Participants

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Since the teabaggers' demonstrations aren't being financed by the likes of the Koch Brothers any more, Green Eagle hasn't had much opportunity to exercise his protest-reporting skills, so I thought I would take a look at media coverage of the 2011 March For Life in Washington D.C.- the big day of the year for anti-abortion fanatics.  If you google "2011 March For Life," you will find dozens and dozens of Catholic parishes and other organizations, religious and right wing secular, promoting this event.  Looking for information about how many people showed up, I saw estimates at these sites ranging from 200,000 to 500,000 people. Well, I like to look at pictures of the marches themselves.  Here are a couple of photos.  I want to remind my readers that I follow a strict policy of only showing images that have the largest number of people in them, in an effort to be fair to march organizers. If you'd like to look at a few more pictures, I suggest you l

Egypt- Green Eagle Talks About Something He Knows Nothing About

How unusual, huh?  Well, what do you expect from a parrot? I have to say that, at this point, I can't figure out what's going on in Egypt.  But it can still provide me with some innocent amusement.  First, this comment, from the BBC: "Finally, it would pose painful dilemmas for Western policy-makers who have long favoured gradual political reform in the region, fearful that the alternative could be the breakdown of stability and the rise of extremism." I think it's fair to translate the phrase "gradual politcal reform" as "staying in the hands of the same dictator for decades, so it's much easier to bribe him to do whatever we damned want."  Anyone think that's not an accurate interpretation? And this amusing comment from TPM: "From an account of a May speech by former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince: "Prince beamed with pride when he said that Blackwater continues to train 'security personnel' from countries like

Palin Claims Obama's Wrong, USSR Won The Space Race

Well, she should know.  She can see space from her front porch.

A Tidbit from the Shawna Forde Right Wing Terrorist Trial

What the right is bringing to our country , from the Shawna Forde trial: "(Her only surviving victim) testified about people posing as law enforcement officers coming into her home and shooting and killing her husband, Raul "Junior" Flores, shooting and wounding her, then turning the gun on their 9-year old daughter Brisenia. "He's all out of bullets by then because he's used them on me and Junior. So he stands there and he loads the gun right in front of her (Brisenia)," Gonzalez says.Prosecutor Kellie Johnson asks, "And is this something you can see happening?"Gonzalez answers, "I can hear it happening. I can hear her telling him to 'please don't shoot me.'" The child is then shot and killed. This is the face of evil.  The only difference between these people and Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe is the scale of their depredations.  And believe me, as long as the nation is willing to avert its face from the connect

Crazy- That's Rich Talk for Crooked

An amusing reminder of the world of American finance over the last couple of decades: "Texas billionaire Allen Stanford, who allegedly defrauded investors of millions of dollars in a vast offshore Ponzi scheme, isn't currently competent to stand trial, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. "In light of the testimony presented and the reports submitted by the three psychiatrists - including the Government's own expert, Dr. Rosenblatt - the Court has no viable alternative but to find that Stanford does not have the present mental capacity to effectively assist his attorneys in preparing his defense," writes (Federal Judge David) Hittner." Here's a suggestion:  I think someone might keep an eye on Dr. Rosenblatt.  I wouldn't be surprised to see him driving around in a very nice Ferrari or relaxing poolside at his new vacation home in Barbados.

Wingnut Wrapup Followup

You may remember (or likely you have blotted it out- can't say that I blame you) that, a few weeks ago, I featured in Wingnut Wrapup a number of right wing comments calling for the jailing, and trial for murder of union leaders in New York for supposedly calling for a slowdown of cleanup efforts after recent snowstorms in which a couple of people died.  That was preposterous enough, but now (of course) we learn this: "The story rocketed around New York City when streets went uncleared after the Dec. 26 blizzard: Sanitation workers, angry about job reductions, had deliberately staged a work slowdown.  And it occurred because one man, Councilman Daniel J. Halloran, Republican of Queens, said five city workers had come to his office during the storm and told him they had been explicitly ordered to take part in a slowdown to embarrass Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. "...investigators had hoped that extensive publicity would bring out others with knowledge of the purpor

No, He Was Just a Lone Nut

Politico reports today: "In the days leading up to his attempt to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), alleged shooter Jared Lee Loughner researched political assassins and punishments he could face for murder, an examination of his computer has found." So Loughner saw his act as a political assassination of a Democrat.  But of course, the wingnuts know better- he couldn't be one of them. Are you surprised?  No, I didn't think so.

Wingnut Wrapup- Special "My Motherland" Edition

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Here's a classic example of the growth of a right wing smear.  A big issue on the right the last week or so centers on a song, entitled "My Motherland," played by a Chinese pianist at the recent White House dinner for the head of the Chinese government.  If you start searching around, you will find literally hundreds of web posts concerning this incident.  I'm only going to annoy you with a few of them: Rightpundits:   "So, we go from a president that has traveled the world to apologize for the U.S.A. and to bow to the ground before kings and other dictators to now having that same president allowing an anti-American propaganda song to be played at an official state dinner right here at home!...this fits with Obama’s agenda. Humiliating the U.S. among foreigners is his stock-in-trade." Nicholas Eberstadt, The American (publication of the American Enterprise Institute:)   "A State Insult with Chinese Characteristics...“My Motherland” is not a “Chines

Michelle Bachmann- A Case Study in Lying

I don't have much of an introduction to this- it's no more than we expect.  Here is a list of some of the lies Michelle Bachmann managed to fit into her six and a half minute nationally televised State of the Union address last night, courtesy of Media Matters: "Bachmann: "Failed Stimulus," And Unemployment "Spiked" Unemployment Didn't "Spike" — It Grew Steadily Under Bush-Era Policies... The tally, to date: Mr. Obama can be held accountable for the net loss of 41,000 jobs (671,000 - 630,000), while the Republicans should be held responsible for the net losses of 7,796,000 jobs. Bachmann Wrongly Blamed President Bush's Final Year Of Deficits On President Obama: " Bachmann Repeated "16,500" IRS Agents' Lie:  BACHMANN:  "What did we buy? Instead of a leaner, smarter government, we bought a bureaucracy that tells us which light bulbs to buy, and which will put 16,500 IRS agents in charge of policing Preside

Clarence Thomas, Crook

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Well, of course, all conservative justices are totally corrupt, but this guy is a crook on a personal level, pure and simple. Here's the story , from Politico: "Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has amended 13 years’ worth of disclosure reports to include details of wife Virginia Thomas’s sources of income, documents released on Monday show. The documents indicate that Thomas’s wife, who goes by Ginni, had worked for Hillsdale College in Michigan, the Heritage Foundation and the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, among other entities. Like all federal judges, Thomas must file annual disclosure reports on his personal finances, but he had omitted details of his wife’s earnings in what he wrote was a “misunderstanding of the filing instructions.” He also had checked a box marking no spousal income. Last week, watchdog group Common Cause reported that none of the nearly $690,000 the Heritage Foundation said it had paid Ginni Thomas between 2003 a

Who Caused the National Debt?

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Anonymous repeats once again one of the biggest of all Republican lies:  that Democrats are responsible for our nation's budget imbalances, and that Republicans are fiscally responsible. Well, from Wikipedia, here are the actual facts, which Anonymous or anyone else could have found within two minutes: As can be seen instantly, the vast bulk of our national debt was piled up in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes, the conservatives' champions of fiscal virtue.  This includes, by the way, the budget with a $1.7 trillion dollar deficit passed in October of 2008, during Bush's term, which conservatives consistently blame on Obama. In fact, Republicans have, since Nixon, adopted a policy of squandering the nation's money on the rich when they are in power, and then screaming  like banshees about the debt when Democrats are in charge, to prevent Dems from acting in any way that does not benefit multinational corporations and their owners.  That is

Cheap Laugh of the Day

"Rush Limbaugh on SOTU: “Who Wants To Sit There And Listen To Somebody Lie For An Hour And Fifteen Minutes?” Thanks to Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit for bringing this to our attention.  Jim is an internationally known expert on lying, as Green Eagle readers know so well.

Evil Bureaucrats or You?

I want to bring to your attention this article by Katie Gage at Town Hall, where she asks the oh-so-pertinent question: "Do Bureaucrats Know Better Than You? The NLRB Thinks So" Needless to say, Katie doesn't think so, and how could you help but agree with her?  Here are a few areas, for example, where Green Eagle knows far more than any bureaucrat: If the government decides to build a bridge or a dam, Green Eagle knows far better than government bureaucrats where that bridge or dam should be built, and what it should be made of. If a pharmaceutical company wants to sell a drug in the United States, Green Eagle is far more capable than any government bureaucrat of evaluating the thousands of pages of statistical evidence it has submitted alleging that the drug is safe. If our military wants to carry out any offensives in Afghanistan, Green Eagle is far more capable than any military officer (after all, what are military officers but government bureacrats?) of

I Stand Up for Bill Ayers

One of the inevitable responses of right wingers when we try to talk about their incessant provocation of violence is to talk about the Weatherman and the few other acts of violence that occurred during the Vietnam war era. Now first let me make a statement that I think virtually no other person online can make:  I stood up to Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and the Weathermen at the time.   I openly stood against the formation of the Weatherman as it was being created, not in some newspaper article or vapid essay, but at the meetings where the Weatherman was born, and in full view of Ayers, Dohrn and their followers.  I openly opposed their intent to resort to violence; and what became of them fully justified the position of those I stood with. Now on to one of the worst examples of false equivalence between left and right.  The Vietnam "war" was an unprovoked aggression by the United States against a foreign country in which, by all estimates, between two and four million

Wingnut Wrapup

Man, I've been having trouble facing these guys lately.  But you know what they say.  Someone's got to do it.  So, I did it.  And here's the results for today: First, a great big shout of thanks to the guys at Red State, for putting to rest once and for all any questions about whether Conservative spokesmen are deliberately inciting violence: "Here at RedState, we too have drawn a line.Those who wish to write on the front page of RedState must make the... pledge.  ...once before, our nation was forced to repudiate the Supreme Court with mass bloodshed. We remain steadfast in our belief that this will not be necessary again, but only if those committed to justice do not waiver or compromise, and send a clear and unmistakable signal to their elected officials of what must be necessary to earn our support." I see.  They won't resort to mass bloodshed as long as we do exactly what they want.  That's really comforting.  I've spoken before about my fea

Goodbye Keith

In all my reporting on the idiocies and lies of the wingnuts, here's one thing I found just too boring and stupid to follow: the fact that, virtually every day, there are stories about a supposed attempt by the left to silence right wing talk radio, and TV liars like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.  Despite the fact that there is not a shred of evidence for this claim, they go on with this nonsense endlessly, like the equally fictional war on Christmas. Well, here's the reality of press suppression in this country:  MSNBC just fired their top-rated broadcaster.  And make no mistake about the reason: it was solely because he dared to tell the truth in public.  And if you think Rachel, Ed Schultz, and that clown O'Donnell don't get the message, you really are fooling yourself.  If Keith is expendable they all are.  It is apparently tolerable for CNN to employ the right wing hatemonger and professional liar Erick Erickson.  But being a moderate liberal is too much for this

Ah, Louisiana

From a poll in Louisiana, reported at Daily Kos: "Reelect Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) 49 Prefer someone else 40" Or as Green Eagle would have stated the question: Reelect Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) 49 Not certifiably brain-dead 40 When I worked in Shreveport, I always used to get such a laugh driving across the bridge between Shreveport and Bossier City, and seeing the sign on it which still says "Huey Long, Governor."  Man, Huey must be spinning in his grave to think that this clown is sitting in his office.

Anonymous, Continued

In response to a totally unrelated article, Anonymous today posted a link to a site which claimed that George Soros is a drug dealer. Here is a sample of the reasoning in that article: "Soros has categorically denied receiving money from drug cartels or any form of criminal activity. The fact remains, however, that at least some of his financial operations have been based offshore, in banking and financial centers that are widely reported to be considered conducive to money-laundering." I.e.  they have no evidence on the face of the earth for this smear.  It is hardly surprising that Soros, who didn't grow up in the U. S. might have financial operations outside our boundaries, like, say, for example, Halliburton, which is a U. S. company which moved its headquarters to a country whose leaders have a long record of supporting Arab terrorism. Of course, there is a difference between these two examples (other than the fact that Halliburton's former CEO used hi

Terrorist Update for Today

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And yes, it is getting to be a daily thing.  Nice country we live in here.  Actually, there are two things to report today: First, someone doesn't like Jerry Brown: Terrorist threats to murder California Governor Jerry Brown are being taken very seriously by the police. "Cpl. Anthony Bertagna, spokesman for the Santa Ana Police Department, said one of the messages read, "we gonna kill Gov. Brown 2/14/11."  The other said "27 more days 4 Brown" and included a swastika." I'm sure we will be reading any day now at right wing blogs how this is the work of liberals too. And second, today is the start of the murder trial in Tucson of Shawna Forde.  Remember her? Don't mess with this mama. She is the white supremacist, anti-immigrant racist who led a minuteman group which attacked a house they believed to be inhabited by a Hispanic drug dealer.  Oops, wrong house...however they did succeed in murdering a totally innocent man and his nin

Fred Attacks Ozzie. Fred, You'd Better Hope Ozzie Doesn't Bite Back.

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Via TPM (sorry, guys, I couldn't resist,) the latest in the annals of  Fred Phelps and the clowns at the Westboro Baptist Church: I'm sure Ozzie is petrified with fear over Fred's disapproval.  I hope for Fred's sake that he gets a more respectful response than he did at Comicon last year:

Perhaps There's Some Hope

In this news: "New Washington Post/ABC Poll: Americans View Tea Party Less Favorably Than Russia, Socialism" The Tea Party scored about the same as Saudi Arabia.

The Violence Never Stops

Today's story - and yes, Poll P, it does seem to be becoming a daily occurrence: "Police in Arlington, MA this week seized a “large amount” of weapons and ammunition from local businessman Travis Corcoran after he wrote a blog post threatening U.S. lawmakers in the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). In a post on his blog (which has since been removed)...Corcoran applauded the shooting of Giffords and justified the assassination of lawmakers because he argued the federal government has grown far beyond its constitutional limits. “It is absolutely, absolutely unacceptable to shoot indiscriminately. Target only politicians and their staff and leave regular citizens alone,” he wrote in the post. ... Corcoran calls himself “an anarcho-capitalist” and while his blog has been taken down, based on his Twitter page, he appears to hold views similar to those of many in the anti-government libertarian wing of the conservative movement, like many tea party activist

Anonymous: A Case Study in Conservative Argument

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I've devoted a number of posts recently to the motivations behind the conservative fabrication of a totally alternate reality in which their racist, hate-filled, corrupt leaders are paragons of virtue, while those who care about the sick, the poor, the less fortunate are somehow the source of all evil.  I would like to draw on my own recent experience here at Green Eagle to provide a glimpse into how this works among rank and file right wingers, who don't have the likes of Frank Luntz to help them cloak their malignance in superficially acceptable imagery. I've had several right wingers who have commented with some regularity on my blog.  They have all followed a similar pattern.  The latest just refers to himself (or herself) as Anonymous.  Here are the contents of anonymous' replies to some of my posts over the last couple of weeks: I posted a piece about a person with strong right wing beliefs who was arrested for threatening to kill a Democratic congressman.  An

They Don't Have a Clue

Here's another case where liberals are whooping it up without, apparently, a clue in the world about what is really going on.  From a NBC/ Wall Street Journal poll: " WASHINGTON — What a difference a few weeks can make. Last month, Republicans were celebrating their midterm victories; Democrats were licking their electoral wounds; and President Barack Obama’s approval rating was stuck in the mid-'40s.  But after a five-week stretch that included bipartisan legislative achievements in the lame-duck session of Congress, mostly positive economic news and Obama’s well-received speech honoring the victims of the tragic shootings in Arizona, the political world has taken an abrupt turn in direction."  No it hasn't.  In national politics, there is exactly one day every two years when Republicans need to outpoll Democrats: the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, in national election years.  It costs the corporations that own the Republican party

A Comment on the Republican Health Care Vote

As low as my opinion of the mainstream press is, it still depresses me that not one of them seems to be willing to honestly discuss the purpose of the latest cynical Republican abuse of power, the meaningless vote in the House of Representatives today to repeal "Obamacare." Of course, the Democrats don't help things much.  I saw Dennis Kucinich yesterday on TV, along with one of the Republican' endless supply of interchangeable liars.When the liar kept referring to polls in which people were against Obamacare, Kucinich did not have the sense to point this out: they have the opinions they do because the health insurance companies and the for-profit hospitals spent over $600 million dollars to swindle them into buying a pack of vicious lies about the legislation.  When polled about the actual contents of the bill, the American people were strongly in favor of all of it. Convincing people to believe what is false is what Republican talk is about.  Of course they know

Why Do They Lie With Such Abandon?

As I promised a couple of days ago, I am now going to attempt to account for a fact mentioned by Shaw Kenawee in a comment here: "Many of us, righties and lefties, have documented the deliberate lies and misrepresentations of right-wing bloggers and pundits, but the facts we present seem not to discourage conservative followers from their allegiance to their liars." Well, for good or ill, here goes my attempt to explain this: After decades of following right wing rhetoric and actions, I have come to the following conclusion:  American conservatism, at least as it has existed in the last half century, is about one thing and one thing only: greed. Cut my taxes.  That's it.  Nothing else underlies Conservatism.  All they care about in the whole world is keeping their government services but having their taxes cut so someone else picks up the tab.  Everything else is just window dressing.  Even racism is nothing to them but a way to justify taking things away from other

The Truth Recognized by Someone

I want to express my gratitude to E. J. Dionne at Politico for writing a piece which I am going to take the liberty of quoting from at some length: "...in the past week, the question of whether a carefully planned assassination attempt on a member of the United States Congress might have had anything to do with politics has been mocked into oblivion. Well, let’s see. The dominant theme of Loughner’s ravings was suspicion of the government. He apparently didn’t believe in paper money and thought only gold has value. He believed the government was responsible for Sept. 11. And so on. This is not a random collection of nutty opinions. There is a theme to it, and it is not simply that the guy was crazy. "... we live in a political atmosphere in which nutty views (President Obama isn’t a U.S. citizen.) and alarming rhetoric (“Second Amendment remedies” are the answer to disappointment at the ballot box.) are widespread and often go unrebutted. The suggestion, finally, is th

Incitement

Theodore Roosevelt: "they cannot, month in month out and year in and year out, make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal, violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it." Too bad we don't have any politicians today who are as honest as that.

GOOD RIDDANCE

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And don't come back.

But Of Course, It Means Nothing

This in the news today: " SPOKANE, Wash. — A backpack discovered along the route of the Martin Luther King Jr. march in Spokane contained a bomb "capable of inflicting multiple casualties," the FBI said Tuesday." Undoubtedly the work of a deranged left winger.

A Little Question For Gun Nuts

We are told constantly by conservatives that the reason they are allowed to own guns is so they can protect themselves against a tyrannical government.  When they take a loaded gun into a bar, or down to the mall, how, exactly, are they protecting themselves against the government?  Do they think the U. S. army is going to come marching in at any second and start a war with the people shopping at Wal-Mart? Do they think a meeting with their congressman is going to end in them all being rounded up and taken to concentration camps? If protecting themselves against the evil government is the real reason that they need their guns, why do they insist on belligerently strutting around with them in public, which would only make them more identifiable as government targets? In fact, if they are truthfully explaining their obsession with guns, would it not be the case that appearing with them in public identifies them immediately as being committed to the violent overthrow of the government

Interesting Ignorance

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In connection with Jared Lee Loughner, I have been talking about the Sovereign Citizen movement.  In a post, I mentioned something called the Nehemiah document, which is the "founding document" of this right wing movement, whose members have been responsible for a number of violent anti-government acts in recent years. Well, I have certainly never read any more than a couple of excerpts from the Nehemiah document.  I thought it would be interesting to read the entire thing, and did a Google search for it, under its full name, and a number of variants. I could not find the text of this document anywhere online, but I did find this: This is page one of my search for the Nehemiah document.  Now, as you can guess from the number of comments my posts get, hardly anyone reads my blog.  And yet, in a week, it managed to make it up to number three on Google.  This tells me something which I think is interesting:  Almost no one in the country cares to learn anything about this g

Sean Hannity Calls In the Debt

Sean Hannity today: "I say why isn’t Iraq paying us back with oil, and paying every American family and their soldiers that lost loved ones or have injured soldiers — and why didn’t they pay for their own liberation?" Sean, I shouldn't have to remind you of this, but we didn't "liberate" them.  We invaded their country in an unprovoked war of aggression, killed a million of them, destroyed their infrastructure and left them in the hands of a bunch of sectarian religious fanatics. How much do you think they owe us for that?

An Interesting Insight into Jared Loughner's Motivations

A very interesting post by wingnut expert David Niewert at Crooks and Liars brings up the apparent fact that Jared Lee Loughner was strongly influenced by a pseudo-documentary entitled Zeitgeist. Along with some religious nonsense and the obligatory 9-11 conspiracy theories, this film features the following (as described by Wikipedia. ) "Part III", entitled Don't Mind the Men Behind the Curtain, argues that three wars of the United States during the twentieth century were waged purely for economic gain by what the film refers to as "international bankers". The film alleges that certain events were engineered as excuses to enter into war including the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. According to the film, the US was forced by the Federal Reserve Bank to become embroiled in these wars, not with a view to win but to sustain the conflict, as this forces the US government to borrow money from the bank