The Patriots

The counter-protesters at an event in Austin, TX yesterday just took the vile rhetoric we've seen on display this August one extra step:

"the protesters had Larry Kilgore, a “Christian activist” and candidate for governor who has endorsed executions for homosexuals; Debra Medina, a Ron Paul Republican and a slightly-less long-shot candidate for governor; and Melissa Pehle-Hill, yet another fringe candidate and a member of a self-appointed “citizens grand jury” investigating Barack Hussein Obama, aka Barry Soetoro."

Kilgore captured the sentiment of the mob. (video here)

“I hate that flag up there,” Kilgore said pointing to the American flag flying over the Capitol. “I hate the United States government. … They’re an evil, corrupt government. They need to go. Sovereignty is not good enough. Secession is what we need!”

“We hate the United States!"

Just a lone nut, I guess. Except the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, flirted with the secessionists a few months ago. He didn't attend this protest, which I guess is a positive step.

But this has increasingly become the Republican base. A group of people who feel completely justified in chanting "We hate the United States!" I seem to remember being told that I hated America and I was "on the other side" and "in league with the terrorists" because I didn't agree with an unnecessary, illegal and ultimately disastrous war. I don't have tape of myself from every day in that time, but you can trust me that I never chanted "We hate the United States" in front of a state capitol building.

Note, too, the lady who used the phrase, "the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots," a quote from Thomas Jefferson, often misappropriated by extremists and the Patriot movement. Timothy McVeigh was wearing a T-shirt that bore this inscription when he was arrested for murdering 168 people in Oklahoma City.

What the report reflects is a reality that law enforcement trying to deal with domestic terrorism in America must confront: Their subjects are thoroughly American; many of the people drawn into these movements are, if anything, "hyper-normal." Their version of "patriotism," for instance, is so extreme that they actually hate not just their government but their fellow citizens -- in essence, their country: because, you see, it has been "perverted" from its original purposes.

The hyper-normality is a kind of intentional camouflage. The Patriot movement, and militias in particular, were a very specific and intentional strategy adopted in the 1990s by the white supremacists and radical tax protesters of the American far right -- and the whole purpose of the strategy was to mainstream their belief systems and their agendas. The tactic was to adopt the appearance of normal, "red-blooded" Americanism as a way of pushing out the idea that their radical beliefs are "normal" too.

In the process, they often adopted time-worn "patriotic" sayings and symbols, such as the "Don't Tread On Me" flag Beck wears, as their own -- though with a much more menacing meaning. If you've seen that flag at an Aryan Nations compound, as I have, you never quite look at it the same.

This is why the meaning of Thomas Jefferson's quote above is quite different for them than it is for you and me. To all outward appearances, it is just an expression of avid patriotism. But to a Patriot movement follower, it means something potentially deadly.

Patriots who use the symbols of American history while claiming overtly to hate America. This would be something good to ask Dave Neiwert about tomorrow.

Just Some Admirable Grassroots Passion

A protester on Chris Dodd, just diagnosed with prostate cancer:

"Barack Obama clearly said, all you should do is take a painkiller. How come we just don't give Chris Dodd painkillers?" shouted one man. "Like a handful of them at a time! He can wash it down with Ted Kennedy's whiskey -- oh excuse me, scotch!"

Miserable little people.

The Violence Of The Right

I had another appearance on NPR's Tell Me More with Michel Martin this morning. Could have went better (sorry, GONE better). I didn't get out that my opponent on the program, Vin Weber, is a lobbyist for the health care industry, though I did mention that his group Empower America was bought out by Freedom Works, who is orchestrating a lot of the teabagging protests you're seeing at town halls around the country. I got him to admit that the "Kill Grandma" euthanasia conspiracy theory is a complete falsehood, which was good.

Before my segment, Rep. Lloyd Doggett appeared on the show, and talked about the hooligans who descended on his town hall in Austin, Texas last weekend. He said that their extended sloganeering and disruption "symbolizes what the conservative movement is all about," and while there are also efforts ongoing in favor of health care reform, the "commercial media handmaidens" refuse to give them an equal amount of attention. And that's certainly true to an extent. I got an email from Organizing for America yesterday that touted 1 million people participating in some of their health care actions and discussed 5 concrete actions taken by people that were noteworthy:

• The newspaper in Exeter, NH is reporting that local supporters are canvassing everywhere to build support for reform: door-to-door, at farmers' markets, and at state fairs. The article quotes volunteer Dave Munsey as saying that 2008 "was probably the most important election of my lifetime. This is just an extension of that."

• Supporters in Florida held simultaneous press conferences outside of nine local Senate offices with doctors, small-business owners, and others, all telling their personal health care stories about why reform is so important to them.

• After a huge event in Wisconsin, hundreds of the participants headed to a nearby town hall event hosted by Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner to share their stories and urge him to stand with voters in support of reform.

• A host in Minnesota organized a barbeque for supporters to hear from speakers and write letters to their members of Congress. 1200 people joined in!

• Volunteer community organizers have participated in trainings in more than 13 states -- and 17 more are scheduled for the upcoming weeks.

Needless to say, none of these five events appeared on Hardball because nobody was shouting while wearing a bumper sticker on their head. And even people on the left wonder "Where is OFA? Where is HCAN?" Now, I think those groups should ditch the outside events and just work these same town halls, but the fact of the matter is that Republicans have always been, and for the near future always will be, skillful in getting their crap spun through the right-wing puke funnel and inserted into the media. We are good at responding most of the time - and finding smoking guns showing this to be lobbyist-coordinated astroturfing will help - but cable news producers will cover the conflict every time. Ultimately, nothing will stop Chris Matthews from airing a bunch of knuckleheads bused into a town hall meeting yelling while holding pitchforks, or whatever, and going on at length about how "it's like Tehran" and how this shows the passion on the right. And that perception will drive reality.

And so you have Michel Martin, after hearing Rep. Doggett talk about the corporate lobbyist-directed groups coming in and disrupting his town hall meetings, saying that they are "tapping into an ongoing anxiety" in the country. You have the New York Times, writing about these events, mentioning Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity without mentioning their founders (Congressman turned lobbyist Dick Armey, for example) and funders.

However, these may be organized attempts, but there's substantial opportunity for them to go way off the reservation. Doggett reports:

“If you look at the YouTube video, you can barely see in the edge of that a beautiful marble tombstone with my name on it,” Doggett) said. “People that worked so hard to get their signs in full-color did not come to dialogue. They came to be destructive.” Video of protesters confronting Mr. Specter and Ms. Sebelius in Philadelphia was also quickly posted to YouTube.

In this YouTube video of the Doggett riot you can see a sign with Nazi-style "SS" lettering on it.

It's ridiculous to suggest that this is some new-found passion on the right just bursting to the fore in reaction to a piece of legislation. These are the same people who crawled out from rocks and into Sarah Palin rallies last year, screaming that Obama was a terrorist and a Muslim. They are the Ron Paul supporters who chased Sean Hannity down the street when their candidate wasn't allowed in Fox News debates. They are the young conservatives who yelled "Hey hey, ho ho, Social Security's got to go" back in 2005. They are that same set of anti-government, anti-social, anti-Obama types who have struck out with fury and not a little bit of menacing implied violence. They hung a Democratic congressman in effigy last week. They harass Republican representatives about the President's birth certificate. They are angry extremists, and it's fair to ask Republican leaders whether they support hanging Democrats, imagery of tombstones, birther fantasies, and the rest. This is not about policy. It's about incitement to violence.

A Lou Point In American History

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I wish Dave Neiwert wasn't on vacation from Crooks and Liars this week, because I'm sure he'd have a lot to say about the mainstreaming of the ginned-up Birther controversy, particularly by one of his favorite whipping boys, Lou Dobbs. In the interim we'll have to settle for Eric Boehlert:

If James von Brunn weren't in a locked security ward at Southeast General Hospital in Washington, D.C., and awaiting trial for the murder of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the 88-year-old racist and neo-Nazi might have taken comfort from listening to Lou Dobbs' syndicated radio show or watching Dobbs on CNN in recent days. Von Brunn would have likely felt some sense of affirmation from Dobbs, as the host began belatedly championing the cause of so-called "birthers," the angry band of right-wing conspiracy theorists who claim President Obama has not released a valid birth certificate and, in some cases, flat-out assert that he was not born in America and therefore is ineligible to be president of the United States. (Here's a good birther primer; here's the official right-wing defense of birthers.)

Had von Brunn been listening, Dobbs would likely have "spoken" to him. Just a few months before opening fire at the museum, von Brunn, apparently a proud birther himself, had done his best to spread the word online about Obama's illegitimate rule: "What is going on??? WHERE ARE THE GOOD PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY - ARE YOU OUT THERE???" [...]

Dobbs has certainly taken some heat for his recent birther turn. (He's "effectively destroying his career with this stuff," birther expert David Weigel wrote at The Washington Independent.) But there's more to this story than Dobbs. And the phenomenon in play isn't just about a birth certificate. And it's also not isolated or accidental.

Because, yes, viewed in a vacuum, the movement seems like the nutty fringe. But viewed in a larger historical context, birthers share obvious ties to traditional right-wing assaults on previous Democrats, and birthers have all the marks of a GOP Noise Machine creation. The movement is about a larger, more sinister attempt to paint Obama as illegitimate, foreign, and suspect (i.e. not like you and me). To portray him as "a gratuitous interloper," as radio host G. Gordon Liddy put it. As someone who isn't who he says he is. As -- let's face it -- the Manchurian Candidate, with all the evil connotations that come with it. ("WHO SENT YOU???" von Brunn demanded to know of Obama.)

And it's about the disturbing role media figures like Dobbs play when they act as the bridge -- as the transmitter -- between the radical and the mainstream. When they legitimize the craziness, if only in the eyes of the crazies themselves. As MSNBC's Rachel Maddow noted this week, "The home run for conspiracists of any stripe is when their ideas can leave the lunatic fringe and enter the mainstream."

There's really only one degree of separation between Dobbs mainstreaming the Birther movement and pictures of Obama as an African witch doctor. The media, in large part, has condemned this nonsense - Chris Matthews shaming that old fool Gordon Liddy today was painful to watch - but those who give it succor it sustain an extremist fringe who want to alienate the President as "the other," as illegitimate, as illegal. It plays to the beliefs of anti-government types and militia members and a dangerous element in American society.

As for Dobbs, who James Rainey picks apart here, CNN has a choice to make. Its own hosts have debunked this myth over and over. The network purports to call itself "the most trusted name in news." They can prove it.

For all the network's efforts to characterize itself as the real, unbiased cable news outlet, it continues to give Lou Dobbs a high-profile platform for obvious, unsupported madness. It makes Dobbs look like a loon, but more important, it's a painful embarrassment to CNN.

A network spokesperson distanced CNN from Dobbs' crazed radio show, and told Rainey, "On CNN, Lou is an independent reporter who covers stories that people are talking about, and often showcases issues that aren't being covered by the mainstream media."

For a network that keeps giving very large paychecks to a television personality who is misleading its audience with transparent craziness, this explanation needs some work.

Leaving A Trail

It is difficult in a free society to stop a pre-meditated crime. But I think the FBI missed Scott Roeder, when a lot of warning signs were there:

It looks like Scott Roeder, the suspect on the murder of George Tiller, was targeting other abortion providers in the days before Tiller's slaying Sunday.

A worker at a clinic in Kansas City, Kansas at which Roeder regularly demonstrated told CNN that early Saturday morning, he "actually chased after" Roeder after catching him trying to pour epoxy into the facility's locks two weekends in a row.

In other words, it sounds like Roeder was planning to break in to the clinic at a later time.

But could the Feds have used Saturday's incident to try to stop Sunday's? Another worker told CNN he managed to catch the would-be vandal's license plate, and reported it to federal authorities, who told him nothing could be done with the information until a federal grand jury convened. When Roeder was arrested Sunday after allegedly killing Tiller, he was driving a car with that same license number.

And today we learn that an Operation Rescue advisor helped track Tiller for Roeder.

We have criminal justice laws that have served us well for many years. But this guy was practically screaming that he was about to do something violent. And law enforcement failed to pick up on the signs, even when it had the clues. Obviously hindsight is 20/20. And the FBI has a lot on its plate, but abortion provider violence is growing, especially with a pro-choice President in office, and they need to prioritize.

A Small Point

When violence from terrorism killed worshippers at a mosque inside Iran, Robert Gibbs released a statement. When violence from terrorism killed George Tiller in Kansas, the President himself made the statement. It's symbolic, but also important in terms of him using his bully pulpit.

I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.

Meanwhile, a Muslim convert acting alone killed a soldier in a recruiting center in Arkansas. The President should release a statement on that as well.

At some point in the future, a President will release a statement on these killings tying them to easy access to firearms, one hopes.

The Work Goes On

Bill O'Reilly spent an entire hour last night assuming that the murder of George Tiller was actually an attack on him. He brushed past his rote one-line expression of sorrow, claimed that everything he ever said about Tiller was true and based on facts, and then played the "who's attacking me now" game for the rest of the program. It looked to me like his only regret at Tiller's murder was that he wasn't on vacation at the time.

O'Reilly hosted a couple far-right lawyers who have been active in trying to get Tiller's perfectly legal clinic shut down, using some of those "facts" that are actually vicious lies that show their bias. But Scott Roeder and the fascist movement also dedicated to this goal did not succeed. The clinic will stay open.

The slaying Sunday of one of the nation's most prominent abortion providers has left a local colleague outraged but with a renewed resolve. Dr. LeRoy Carhart of Bellevue is preparing to temporarily take the helm at his slain friend's clinic in Wichita, Kan.

"Harm one of us, it won't do anything to harm the movement," said Carhart, head of the Abortion and Contraception Clinic of Nebraska.

Carhart described himself as a close friend of Dr. George Tiller's. Tiller was shot and killed Sunday morning in the lobby of the Lutheran church he attends in Wichita, Kan. He was serving as an usher [...]

After Sunday's fatal shooting, Tiller's chief nurse called Carhart. Carhart made arrangements to keep his Bellevue clinic open while he is gone. When contacted Sunday, he said he was en route to Wichita to run Tiller's clinic for at least the next week.

That's key. Intimidation and extremism have helped deny access to women's health services across the country. But brave men and women are stepping up, and refusing to be cowed.

By the way, it's important to understand what Tiller provided, legal services that have been demonized by the right.

I know most of my readers are pro-choice but I still think it worth considering what it means to ask a woman to carry a pregnancy to term when she knows that the baby will have one of the following conditions:
Anencephaly
Trisomy 13
Trisomy 18
Trisomy 21
Polycystic kidney disease
Spina bifida
Hydrocephalus
Potter's syndrome
Lethal dwarfism
Holoprosencephaly
Anterior and posterior encephalocele
Non-immune hydrops

The cached version of Dr. Tiller's admission criteria shows the following:

Admission Criteria
In order to offer you an appointment, we require that a physician refer you to our center. In addition, we need your genetic counselor or doctor to provide us with gestational and diagnostic information regarding your pregnancy. Over the past twenty-five years, we have had experience with pregnancy terminations in such situations as anencephaly, Trisomy 13, 18, and 21, polycystic kidney disease, spina bifida, hydrocephalus, Potter's syndrome, lethal dwarfism, holoprosencephaly, anterior and posterior encephalocele, non-immune hydrops, and a variety of other very significant abnormalities.

Amanda Marcotte has a great video about this as well.

RH Reality Check: Late Term Abortions from RH Reality Check on Vimeo.

Where Was The FBI?

Scott Roeder, the suspect in the murder of George Tiller, overtly supported killing abortion providers.

"I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. "I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn."

Why did Regina Dinwiddie keep silent as this man espoused a belief in killing doctors providing legal practices? If someone had prior knowledge of a serial killer's intent and said nothing, I mean, isn't there something close to an accessory statute here? We already had knowledge of Roeder's involvement in the "Freemen" movement, which "claimed sovereignty from government jurisdiction and operated under their own legal system." We didn't have perfect knowledge on this guy, but seemingly enough to put together a conspiracy charge. Roeder openly affiliated with two organizations cited in the DHS rightwing extremism report, for example. Presumably DHS didn't write that report simply as an after-the-violence reference guide.

Now, scumbags like Tucker Carlson prefer to continue to demonize the late Tiller and compare him to a Nazi or a member of Al Qaeda. But I'm looking at the demonstrable reality of anti-abortion movement violence over close to 20 years, and seeing these players in that movement, and wondering why law enforcement personnel cannot protect citizens providing legal services.

I guess they were too busy spying on vegans.

...I'm going to back off of this slightly. I recognize that in a free society, we have to walk a fine line and cannot use the instruments of the law in a punitive way to take anyone's civil liberties. I reject preventive detention or prosecuting thought crimes. We don't want a totalitarian police state. I think that these right-wing movements with a history of violence bear monitoring, but there is a limit to what we can do.

Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines

Not hard to picture the reaction of an unbalanced person to this daily drumbeat.



Apparently, Billo will "address" the subject on his program tonight. But only tonight, I suspect. Then he'll find another enemy to demonize. And then feign shock when that person gets gunned down, too.

Domestic Terrorism That Works

I dashed off a short post about George Tiller's murder yesterday, but it's too important to just shake your head about and move on. As one of the only other doctors who performs the kind of abortions that Tiller provided said yesterday, Tiller's murder was an act of intimidation, meant not only for him but the entire medical community.

“I’m profoundly sad and I’m furious and I think the American people need to understand that we have a fascist movement in this country,” Dr. Warren Hern told The Colorado Independent on Sunday. “We don’t have to invade Iraq to find terrorists. They’re right here killing abortion doctors.”

“Every doctor that does abortions has been under an assassination threat for decades,” Hern said. “The anti-abortion movement message is, ‘Do what we tell you to do or we will kill you,’ and they do. This is a fascist movement.”

Hern laid blame for Tiller’s death at the feet of the anti-abortion movement’s encouragement of violence against abortion providers and the Republican Party’s “exploitation” of the extremist rhetoric.

“Dr. Tiller is dead by an anti-abortion assassin, and this is the absolutely inevitable consequence of 35 years of anti-abortion fanatic rhetoric and intimidation and assassination violence and exploitation by the Republican Party of this movement,” Hern told the Independent.

You can see simply from the sewage from the right wing in reaction to the murder that this killing will not be some sort of wake-up call for an extremist movement. In fact, what is more likely to happen is that the reactionaries recognize the success of their efforts. A substantial portion of the doctors willing to perform legal medical services for women died yesterday, and who, given the circumstance, will rise to take his place? Deciding to work at a women's health clinic means deciding to work at the most targeted sites for terrorism in America, and I cannot blame anyone for preferring a different line of work. Over the past ten years or so, access to abortion has plummeted, both through this kind of intimidation and chipping away by right-wing state and local governments. A legal right is not necessarily legal if you cannot find it.

Tiller's death is a wake-up call to the fact that our existing laws and regulatory bodies to protect against clinic violence aren't working as well as they should. As written, FACE (Freedom to Access at Clinic Entrances) provides a lot of protection for reproductive health providers. But we need an active task force -- or some other means of accountability -- to make sure the law is fully enforced. This is something Obama's Justice Department could commit to doing tomorrow, sending a strong signal that this type of domestic terrorism is not acceptable.

It's apparent that we need someone at the federal level who is paying attention. After all, Tiller's assassin was not acting in vacuum. Even if no national anti-choice group directly ordered him to fire that gun, he is a product of a culture that thrives on systematically threatening reproductive health care providers and women who seek abortions. Militant anti-choice groups like Operation Rescue -- which has endorsed intimidation tactics in the past -- released statements yesterday condemning Tiller's assassination.

But after years of sending the message to its avid base that Tiller was a sub-human monster, a press release expressing dismay at the killing does little good. On the sidebar of the Operation Rescue blog, near where the press release appeared, was a small image featuring Dr. Tiller's face, some very sinister-looking flames, and the words "America's Doctor of Death," linking to a detailed dossier about all of Tiller's offenses. Other groups keep databases of reproductive health providers' addresses and phone numbers, all but daring their members to conduct harassment campaigns.

Letting FACE go unenforced is not just bad for clinic staff. This pattern of intimidation can affect the quality of care women receive.

For his part, Attorney General Eric Holder has dispatched US Marshals to protect certain individuals and clinics. But the violence that has raged for over thirty years, and the movement of hate that fanned the flames in so-called "respectable" outlets, is sure to continue. Women don't have the same access to treatment that men do, simply put. And that's a problem for all of us.

...check out the profile of the suspect in custody in this case. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people willing to do this work.

...Greg Sargent makes the excellent point that the Department of Homeland Security's report on "right-wing extremism" looks pretty prescient right now.

Culture Of Life

George Tiller, abortion provider, murdered at his Wichita church this morning at the age of 67.

Secession Follies

This reference to secession by Texas Gov. Rick Perry has actually flipped the light switch on for some people as to the extreme nature of the rhetoric coming from the hard right. Let's be clear - for eight years, George Bush broke the economy, rang up massive debt, started unnecessary wars, wiretapped American citizens and committed torture in our name, and crickets from these folks. In under 100 days, Obama has inspired cries of secession. I guess the tax cut wasn't big enough.

PERRY: Oh, I think there’s a lot of different scenarios. Texas is a unique place. When we came into the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. My hope is that America, and Washington in particular, pays attention. We’ve got a great Union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what might come out of that.

Earlier, I remarked, tongue partially in cheek, that Texas ought to secede for the good of the nation. But let me acknowledge the fine Texas Democrats down there who pushed back on this today. Sen. Rodney Ellis slammed Perry pretty hard, and Rep. Jim Dunnam went further:

I love Texas.

I am fortunate that my great-grandparents moved to Texas over 100 years ago, and I am deeply proud of our state.

Every 2 years, my colleagues in the Legislature and I spend time away from our families trying to make Texas a better place. I am honored and privileged to do so.

However, I am also an American. And I am proud to be an American. There is even a song I like that says that - you probably know it.

Every Texas elected official takes an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. I take oaths seriously, and that one most of all. And every day during the legislative session we pledge "allegiance" to the flag of the United States.

We even require every public school child to recite the pledge -- every day. That is "one nation, under God, indivisible."

"Indivisible."

Yesterday, our Governor had the opportunity to disavow anti-American rhetoric of secession. He chose not to, and instead he chose affirm those who believe and actually contemplate that our nation is divisible.

What do I say to my youngest daughter when she asks "why do I recite the pledge every day at school, if our Governor doesn't believe it?"

Perry has since tried to walk this back, but not many people are buying it. But if a Republican said it and it's divisive, you can be sure there are enough party leaders willing to defend him. Rush Limbaugh dug it. And Tom DeLay made up a bunch of gobbledygook to try and defend this.

Q: You can’t secede from the Union!

DeLAY: Texas was a republic. It joined the Union by treaty. There’s a process in the treaty by which Texas could divide into five states. If we invoke that, and the last time it was voted on was 1985, the United States Senate would kick us out and nullify the treaty because they’re not going to allow 10 new Texas senators into the Senate. That’s how you secede.

Chris Matthews kept asking DeLay, who's under indictment, what the hell Perry was doing inflaming the public with this kind of rhetoric, the kind that killed 600,000 people in the Civil War, and DeLay fell back on a bunch of talk about the 10th Amendment (which is not germane), and he really couldn't wriggle out of it.

By the way, this is spreading. The Georgia State Senate has threatened to secede as well.

Republicans have seriously gone around the bend. John Aravosis has this right:

The Republican party has a serious problem with extremists, not just in its midst, but among its leadership and its key allies in the faux media (FOX News) and its grassroots (Limbaugh, the blogs, and the religious right). The GOP is quite literally pushing their most extreme followers to violence. And now that they're calling on the government to ignore known terrorist threats, it's only a matter of time before something violent happens, and then the Republican party will find itself out of power permanently.

At the Heart, Hate

Actually, I would say that 250,000 Americans showing up to teabag events across the country is a pretty big number. This talk from liberals minimizing the amount of people sounds an awful lot to me like conservatives talking about anti-war protests. So I won't deride the raw numbers. Clearly there is anger and frustration, mainly from the bailout, that has been pushed together into a ball and shaped into some kind of anti-spending, anti-tax rallying cry. The real question is not the presence of that grievance, but the recommendations for how to best handle this economic downturn. And when you see the disturbing amount of anti-government sentiment, when you hear comments like "On 9/11, I think they hit the wrong building" coming from the participants, you realize that these were just mini-versions of those ugly Sarah Palin rallies during the election, with all the hate talk and anti-Obama sentiment baked inside. Some would spin this out to say that Obama is a polarizing figure, but that's nonsense. The overriding sentiment at these tea parties was sour grapes, a "deeply neurotic reaction to the enormity of their own cockups in office," as Joe Klein puts it. They were an expression of anger from people who see the world passing them by, stoked on in their hatred by movement conservative groups.

We can talk about how the average American's tax burden was the lowest in decades, we can talk about all of the tax cuts for the middle class the President has already authored, we can talk about the fact that taxes are primarily used to finance the debt, defense, Social Security and Medicare, and so talking about lowering taxes means receiving less of those and other services. Some people even did this right to the faces of the teabaggers.



But while the chorus of boos reacting to those factual claims were revealing, that's honestly besides the point. These rallies were a chance for the people normally at the end of the bar to rant about the black Muslim in the White House.

Picture Gallery

To the great benefit of my sanity, I decided to be too lazy to teabag locally, so I can only get my intel on it from the Intertubez, which informs me that they were shouting "Obama is Hitler" here in Santa Monica. Nice.

It looks like a lot of people decided to be lazy like me, as in comparison to the 2003 antiwar protests these rallies are ridiculously puny, and only "epic" in terms of the outsized attention from TV cameras.

Here's a sampling of some of my favorite pictures that I'll be sure to pull out for the next year or so. This is a photo gallery of a political movement in a death spiral. And you'll note that most of them are violent.









And who could forget...



...UPDATE: I noticed this too. The "grassroots" organizer of the Chicago tea party is a guy from a right-wing think tank called the Heartland Institute. And Mike Barnicle let that fly right by.

If You've Done Nothing Wrong, You Have Nothing To Worry About

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security released a report on right-wing extremism, being fueled by the recession and the disturbing increase in activity from white supremacy groups after the election of the nation's first black President. Basically, fear and economic uncertainty breed a certain strain of anger that could morph into violence. And in particular, the targets here are anti-government hate groups, who may recruit and radicalize American citizens, including veterans.

Of course, this has set off conservative media, who claim that the President is directly targeting conservatives with this report. Never mind that the report initiated with the Bush Administration, and was a companion to a similar report on left-wing groups potentially using cyber-attacks (Here's a separate report referring to left-wing groups back in 2001). Somehow conservative media groups take a look at murderous extremists like Timothy McVeigh and see themselves. Here's Dave Neiwert, an authority on the subject:

Because, you know, the report -- which in fact is perfectly accurate in every jot and tittle -- couldn't be more clear. It carefully delineates that the subject of its report is "rightwing extremists," "domestic rightwing terrorist and extremist groups," "terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks," "white supremacists," and similar very real threats described in similar language.

Nothing about conservatives. The word never appears in the report.

Because, you know, we always thought there was a difference between right-wing extremists and mainstream conservatives too. My new book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, does explain that the distance between them has in fact shrunk considerably, thanks to the help of people like Malkin [...] The report itself, in fact, is all about accurately identifying very real looming threats. And, while it's obvious Malkin hasn't been paying attention, there in fact is considerable data coming over the transom to indicate that there's a real problem looming with the far right.

Don't forget: Before he'd even been sworn into office, we had skinheads [photo above] being arrested for plotting Obama's assassination.

Those who are slightly smarter than to describe themselves in the same breath as neo-Nazis are trying to shift the issue and claim that the report attacks veterans. Some good examples of this whining are Joe Scarborough, who said the Obama Administration is "more focused on targeting veterans than on protecting our border," and Newt Gingrich, who claimed that the White House "used terrorism to describe worrying about Americans but the word has been banned for describing foreigners." To their credit, some conservatives have maintained their sanity in discussing a report targeting violent extremist groups with a stated goal and long history of committing acts of terrorism.

Now, I think there is a potential danger of government over-reaching in the name of national security when it comes to monitoring citizen groups. I've ALWAYS thought so. That's why the utter hypocrisy coming from the right on this issue is too insane to ignore.

The political faction screeching about the dangers of the DHS is the same one that spent the last eight years vastly expanding the domestic Surveillance State and federal police powers in every area. DHS -- and the still-creepy phrase "homeland security" -- became George Bush's calling card. The Republicans won the 2002 election by demonizing those who opposed its creation. All of the enabling legislation underlying this Surveillance State -- from the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act, from the various FISA "reforms" to massive increases in domestic "counter-Terrorism" programs -- are the spawns of the very right-wing movement that today is petrified that this is all being directed at them.

When you cheer on a Surveillance State, you have no grounds to complain when it turns its eyes on you. If you create a massive and wildly empowered domestic surveillance apparatus, it's going to monitor and investigate domestic political activity. That's its nature [...]

I was in Minneapolis and St. Paul during the 2008 GOP Convention and witnessed first-hand massive federal police raids and "preventive" arrests of peaceful, law-abiding protesters and even the violent arrests of journalists, and I don't recall any complaints from Jonah Goldberg or Michelle Malkin. I don't recall Glenn Reynolds or Mark Steyn complaining that the FBI, for virtually the entire Bush administration, was systematically abusing its new National Security Letters authorities under the Patriot Act to collect extremely invasive information, in secret, about Americans who had done nothing wrong. Russ Feingold's efforts to place limits and abuse-preventing safeguards on these Patriot Act powers in 2006 attracted a grand total of 10 votes in the Senate -- none Republican.

Indeed, thanks to the very people who are today petulantly complaining about politically-motivated federal police actions (now that they imagine it's directed at them rather than at people they dislike), the Federal Government today has the power to eavesdrop on telephone calls and read the emails of American citizens without warrants; monitor bank records without court approval; obtain all sorts of invasive personal records, medical and financial, without Subpoenas; and obtain and store a whole host of other personal information about American citizens who have not been accused, let alone convicted, of having done anything wrong.

It was obvious that the same cheerleaders for excessive government surveillance, warrantless wiretapping, and police-state crackdowns would turn on a dime the moment that the federal apparatus transferred to Democrats. And it was obvious they would not fall back on their previous justifications - "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about," - once their party lost power. So they really have no right to complain at all. If they had any intellectual honesty at all, maybe they'd work with civil liberties groups to dismantle the national security state and put an end to the threat of concentrated power in the hands of the few. But they won't, because they're perpetual victims and rage addicts who just want to feel oppressed by their enemies.

Your Modern GOP: Endangering People Daily

I guess Michael Steele sent out an RNC fundraising letter accusing ACORN of conspiring to rig the Census. They forgot Americans for Democratic Action, NBC News, the Teamsters and most of the cast of the Broadway production of "Rent". It's a division of labor.

But I have to agree with this letter about the implications of demonizing the Census, an activity resulting in people coming to your home to count the population.

Michael Steele is playing a dangerous game with that fund-raising letter, and people are going to die because of it.

Nine years ago, my wife worked for the Census, knocking on people's doors and gathering information. There's no way she'll do it again next year. Steele is making it too dangerous.

Census takers put themselves in vulnerable positions. They don't know who or what is on the other side of the door. The door might be opened by a sexual predator, or someone who's not in control of a vicious dog. Or the door could be opened by someone with a gun in one hand and Steele's letter in the other, seething with hatred for liberals and ACORN.

I was a teenager in Southeast Pennsylvania in 1990, and Census enumeration (following up at homes that had no form returned) paid relatively well, wasn't too taxing and got me a sticker for my car that said "Official Government Business" that allowed me to park wherever I wanted. And one day, I walked to a house on my list, went around the back to knock on the fence to see if I could find anyone in the residence, and a man with a rifle yelled "Get off my property" and pointed the barrel in my direction. Somehow I got him to give up the number of people living in the house and I took off.

One letter politicizing the Census won't cause an "kill your enumerator" uprising of anti-government cranks. In fact, if conservatives want to sit out the Census and depress their own apportionment numbers, more power to them. But I don't think we can ignore the steady drumbeat of demonization of normal government functions, hard-wired into the modern conservative movement, and where that anger can export itself. In fact, it has to go somewhere.

America, Fuck Yeah

Dave Weigel took a trip to a gun show in Kentucky and came back with some sadly predictable snapshots.





Not everyone in a rural area is a militia-member-in-waiting. But there certainly are a substantial chunk of people weak-minded enough to be twisted by conservative hate media into believing this tripe, and potentially acting on it. Dave Neiwert has been on this beat forever, and today his new book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, gets its release. Neiwert writes:

This is a familiar refrain that comes up every time anyone raises a socially damning issue like this one: We're trying to oppress them, to silence their voices, by pointing out how morally and ethically bankrupt they are.

Actually, we're just pointing out how bankrupt they are. No one here has said anything about silencing their voices -- we just want them to face up to the consequences of their irresponsible rhetoric. It's called culpability: They obviously are not criminally culpable, nor likely even civilly culpable. But they are morally and ethically culpable.

We do have serious differences of opinion here. We strongly believe that there's a clear, common-sense connection between the paranoiac fearmongering that has passed for right-wing rhetoric since well before Obama's election (and has become acute since) and violence like that in Pittsburgh, or in Knoxville: horrifying tragedies, in which the sources of the criminal's unambiguous motives are that very same hysterical fearmongering -- whether it's about the evil socialists, stinking immigrants, or conspiring gun-grabbers who've taken over the country since Election Day.

It may be inconvenient to point out the rise of militia groups and hate talk, but it's vital to stop this violence and end the irresponsible talk that helps create a space for it.

Here Comes The Rage Again

In the early 90s, we saw a boomlet of militia movements and anti-government groups, and that was with a good ole boy in the White House. With the current occupant and a more mature hate radio and sensationalized cable news media, it was inevitable that this kind of thing would happen again. Dave Neiwert has been following this for about as long as anybody, and he notes the latest shooting in Pittsburgh along this continuum.

We're gathering more information about Richard Polawski, the 23-year-old man who decided to kill three Pittsburgh police officers and wound three others because it appears he was afraid they -- at the behest of the Obama administration -- were going to take his guns away. (Dude, they definitely are now.)

"Poplawski feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon," said Edward Perkovic, his best friend.

Perkovic, 22, said he got a call at work from him in which he said, "Eddie, I am going to die today. ... Tell your family I love them and I love you."

Perkovic said: "I heard gunshots and he hung up. ... He sounded like he was in pain, like he got shot."

Poplawski had once tried to join the Marines, but was kicked out of boot camp after throwing a food tray at a drill sergeant, Perkovic said."

Dennis Roddy at the Post-Gazette has more:

"Friends described a Richard Poplawski far different from the 22-year-old man accused of gunning down three police officers today -- a partier sometimes, a guy in search of an understanding of politics, even a walking comedian.

He was also convinced that the government wanted to take away his guns and his freedom."

The "best friend" quoted in reports has a MySpace page with all kinds of anti-Semitic reading material on it.

TBogg has an excellent juxtaposition of quotes. It was really awful for Obama to say that people grow bitter and cling to their guns, but three months into the new Administration, gun sales are up and these kind of rampages are happening seemingly every day. Hate talk from Coulter and Limbaugh and Glenn Beck has stoked a real fire, and it's up to them to put it out.

...I forgot to add in this op-ed by Charles Blow, who has listened to conservative movement media in the past several weeks and responded with alarm:

At first, it was entertaining — just harmless, hotheaded expostulation. Of course, there were the garbled facts, twisted logic and veiled hate speech. But what did I expect, fair and balanced? It was like walking through an ideological house of mirrors. The distortions can be mildly amusing at first, but if I stay too long it makes me sick.

But, it’s not all just harmless talk. For some, their disaffection has hardened into something more dark and dangerous. They’re talking about a revolution [...]

As the comedian Bill Maher pointed out, strong language can poison weak minds, as it did in the case of Timothy McVeigh. (We sometimes forget that not all dangerous men are trained by Al Qaeda.)

At the same time, the unrelenting meme being pushed by the right that Obama will mount an assault on the Second Amendment has helped fuel the panic buying of firearms. According to the F.B.I., there have been 1.2 million more requests for background checks of potential gun buyers from November to February than there were in the same four months last year. That’s 5.5 million requests altogether over that period; more than the number of people living in Bachmann’s Minnesota.

"Has Someone Ever Criticized Your Tie And You Just Want To Slice Open Their Throat?"

I think Glenn Beck is delivering way too much information about himself in this clip:

BECK: So, the shooting in Alabama. Did you hear how they described this guy? I mean it was the typical, "He was a loner, he was quiet," oh really? But what they really described, when they really got down into it, what they said was, here's a guy who felt that he had been wronged. He didn't feel comfortable talking to anybody, he was disgruntled and everything else and then he went out and shot a bunch of people. As they were describing him and they said, you gotta go, now more than ever, you gotta start talking to people, you have to start connecting with people, because we're going into hard times, yada yada yada. As I'm listening to the description, first of all this guy's a psycho, clearly he's a psycho. But as I'm listening to him, I'm thinking about the American people that feel disenfranchised right now. That feel like no one is hearing their voice. The government isn't hearing their voice. Even if you call, they don't listen to you on both sides. If you're a conservative, you're called a racist, you want to starve children. Yada yada yada. And every time they do speak out, they’re shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into that guy?

O’REILLY: Well, look, nobody, even if they’re frustrated, is going to hurt another human being unless they’re mentally ill. I think.

BECK: I think pushed to the wall, you don’t think people get pushed to the wall?

O’REILLY: Nah, I don’t believe in this snap thing. I think that that kind of violence is inside you and it’s a personality disorder.

This is not an unfortunate attempt at a causal connection. This is Glenn Beck trying to justify himself to himself, with Bill O'Reilly (!) as the voice of reason. Since he's been put in his proper ideological box at Fox News, he has spiraled downward into this militia mentality ever faster. Today, he's doing his show from something called the Doom Room for a special called "You Are Not Alone."



Beck speaks to a small, strange, resentful movement at the far, far right of the spectrum that is emotionally unstable. There's clearly an audience for it, and increasingly the conservative movement is embodying it - note "the real problem is bisexuality, not mass murder" articulated by Rod Dreher - but it's notably dangerous. Beck is going to be leading a group out to the woods in Idaho and trying to secede within a month, I'm thinking.

When Messages Of Hate Find Willing Participants

I wrote last July about the shooting at the Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennessee by Jim Adkisson, which appeared to be a domestic terrorist incident motivated by "hatred of the liberal movement." Sara Robinson at Orcinus points us to Adkisson's "manifesto":

"Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country & these liberals are working together to attack every decent & honorable institution in the nation, trying to turn this country into a communist state. Shame on them....

"This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn't get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It's the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence."

"I thought I'd do something good for this Country Kill Democrats til the cops kill me....Liberals are a pest like termites. Millions of them Each little bite contributes to the downfall of this great nation. The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is to kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather. I'd like to encourage other like minded people to do what I've done. If life aint worth living anymore don't just kill yourself. do something for your Country before you go. Go Kill Liberals.

As Robinson notes, this is the fruit of a conservative movement which wraps its attacks on Democrats and liberals all too frequently in the language of eliminationism, preying on resentment ("Liberals are taking your hard-earned money for nothing") and fear of the other to cast the opposition party as an enemy to be fought, physically if necessary. With the economy sure to be on the skids for a while, it won't be long until the anger from the right builds, and seeks blame in their opponents. And obviously, this can lead to the kind of incidents we see with Jim Adkisson, who specifically cited conservative media for giving him a road map to channel his anger. Robinson closes:

A significant part of this country's media infrastructure is thoroughly devoted to inciting people to commit horrific acts of violence against us -- and now, we know for a fact that people are acting on those incitements. It's time to start taking this far more seriously. What goes out across our airwaves these days isn't all that different from what went out over Radio Rwanda a decade ago, spurring that country to genocide. At this point, it's only a difference of degree [...]

Adkisson's "manifesto" should end any doubts we ever had about how virulent and dangerous hate talk is, or whether or not that talk will eventually translate into action.

Politically, it's probably a good thing for Democrats if Rush Limbaugh becomes the voice of the opposition. But there are unintended consequences as well.