I am shocked by the number of my right-wing friends who over the past couple of days have mumbled darkly about “liberty or death”, noting the historical timing of the health care bill, starting another revolution, with oblique references to violence.
It is frightening how many people, when reflecting on the American Revolution, draw no distinction between the outrage of losing an election vs. the outrage of having no elections at all. Democracy means sometimes you lose. It isn’t like Obama was declared president by a Supreme Court ruling or anything. Not that I’m advocating Bush-era triumphalism by any means, but seriously, living in a civil society means that when you lose an election you love it or leave it, not foment an armed revolution.
Leave it? Where would the wing-nuts go? Where is the nation that is further right than the USA and also has Happy-Meals, NASCAR, Fox News, and country music?
Alright, I’m not trying to mock people here, I’m just alluding to the fact that in the Bush years many of us threatened to leave, whereas here we’ve got people apparently trying to goad each other into growing the balls to start the second American Revolution.
Just two days ago a GOP Congressman yelled “Baby Killer!” on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
For many years now, right-wingers have defended right-wing lies and malice on the grounds that “the other side does it too.” Anyone still making such a claim is too far out-of-touch for words.
My post was indeed meant to be tongue in cheek. I was pointing out that some conservatives are making claims that are not only ridiculous in themselves but contradict other claims made by the same people.
There are no secret Democrat plans to kill old people. I think everyone knows that - even Sarah Palin. The question then is why does she say it?
Because she has contempt for conservatives, and is secure in her belief that they are too stupid to see that. I think better of the American public and think that they will soon grow tired of all the Chicken Littleism.
Death Panels referred to a provision of the original bill that authorized doctors to charge insurance companies for counseling patients on how to specify, in advance, how they want end-of-life care to be handled. Everything about it was a lie: it was not a panel and it had nothing to do with how care would be allocated. Not only that, it was the same wording as was found in earlier Republican backed legislation.
Using the term now to refer to how decisions will be made on what sorts of things are covered, obscures the fact that it was all lies. Let me repeat, all lies. Complete bullshit made up by the candidate for Vice President of a once major party. One of the most reprehensible and cynical things I have ever seen in politics. No one who repeated this lie should ever again be taken seriuosly in any debate or be re-elected to political office.
That is my view. Isolated incidents of violence and intimidation, but nothing organized that truly destabalizes the government. However like BrainGlutton said, if we have another and bigger economic meltdown, I don’t know what could happen.
Tea party moron Max Troxel tries to post the home address of Rep Tom Perriello with the hopes that his neighbors would drop by and say hi and thank him for his vote for healthcare. Troxel fails at teh internet though because he screws up and posts the home address of Periello’s brother, Bo, who lives there with his wife and four young children.
At some point today, a vandal cut the hose from the propane tank to grill. The FBI is looking into it. They say there’s no immediate danger. (I say - well, there isn’t anymore.) I hope the feds get the creep and can make something stick. cite
1a. Bonus lulz: When told about his mistake, Troxel initially insisted he had the right address:
Cite
2. Ten congress persons have been granted increased security because of the threats they’ve received in the last couple days. The FBI is involved in this too. It’s mentioned in the cite above but here’s more it, and the assorted brick throwings today: Cite
Ever tone-deaf, Palin’s SarahPAC released a map on Facebook today of the US with gun-sights over the districts of Democrats who voted for the bill. cite, with a screen-grab of the map
Just some data points.
I don’t think there will be a successful coup d’etat but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the right wing conservatives committed a few assassinations.
I suppose that depends on what you mean by attacks. The Turner Diaries envisaged a series of individually relatively minor acts of terrorism - bombings, bank robberies, and so on - leading up to a guerilla war.
Do I think that’s going to happen? Hardly, but the recent rash of vandalism attempts against Democratic Party offices could be seen as the start of the same sort of campaign.
It’s certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that a lone nut (or a couple of nuts) could do a lot of damage. It’shappened before.
It could also be seen as the normal turning of the political cycle. A few years ago, partisan Republicans werecomplaining abut the rash of violence against Republican offices, and about such things as a liberal newspaper publishing the home addresses of Republican activists.
This guy (again, obviously a partisan) collected a list of protest signs calling for Bush’s death, burnings in effigy, “Kill Bush” t-shirts, etc.
It’s numbskulls like this that give me faith that teabaggers have neither the balls nor the intellectual prowess to pull off a coup. Shit, I’d be surprised if any of these morons could find their own asses with two hands, a flashlight and a roadmap.
FBI & capitol police are investigating, and, I hope, increasingly pissed off.
The bill is going back to the House on the order of the Senate Parliamentarian regarding a couple small errors the Republicans found. Hopefully the Dems will stand up to these ongoing attempts at Republican intimidation. cite
More interesting is that with the bill going back anyway, the Senate could add amendments, like, oh I don’t know, a public option, and only need 50 votes to pass it. Not going to happen, but interesting.
I’m in favor of the bill, but your wording here is misleading. Sending the bill back because of mistakes in the reconciliation rules is not intimidation, it’s politics. This has nothing to do with the whack jobs making threats to the Democrats.