Just imagine the outrage if anyone had said anything like this about President Bush. But it's getting more and more common, these terrible things people are saying about President Obama. And made no mistake. These people are not patriots. They're anti-patriotic. They're scum of the earth.
First, a gubernatorial candidate in Idaho. Rex Rammell said he would buy a license to hunt President Obama if such a thing were offered. As it is he needs to stick with a $11.50 wolf tag. I say let's get out some of the anti-terrorist laws we had when Mr. Bush was president and put a guy like Rammell away for a while. This is outrageous. This guy is not a loyal American. And he's running for governor of one of our states? Crazy.
Second, a pastor (!), although no pastor I'd want to have anything to do with, Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, had a sermon titled "Why I Hate Barack Obama." Wow, nice pastor. Good grief, if this is the "Faithful Word," please steer me toward something else. This sounds like the devil.
Anyway, "Pastor" Steven Anderson said, "I don't obey Barack Obama. And I'd like Barack Obama to melt like a snail tonight." And he also said, "Nope. I'm not gonna pray for his good. I'm going to pray that he dies and goes to hell."
Obviously "Pastor" Anderson has issues, number one being he has no idea about God whatsoever. Loser.
The thing is, though, remember the uproar over the pastor from Chicago during the campaign? Pastor Wright? Supposedly he was so unpatriotic and the Republicans had their underpants in a knot over him. Wright doesn't hold a candle to these idiots.
Showing posts with label assassinations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label assassinations. Show all posts
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Good Idea -- Boycott Arizona
I'm not much on boycotting. I said I was going to boycott American Idol when Adam Lambert lost. But who knows? Maybe I'll sneak a few two hour peeks every week!
I was amazed that a boycott -- or I guess it was more calling advertisers -- affected the Glenn Beck show as much as it did. The advertisers were dropping a half dozen a day. I was stunned.
Now we have these clowns in Arizona packing heat whenever President Obama is around, parading around with their guns threatening him, racist intimidation in action.
I like what I glanced at in this guy's article. Arthur Frommer, a travel guide person:
I was amazed that a boycott -- or I guess it was more calling advertisers -- affected the Glenn Beck show as much as it did. The advertisers were dropping a half dozen a day. I was stunned.
Now we have these clowns in Arizona packing heat whenever President Obama is around, parading around with their guns threatening him, racist intimidation in action.
I like what I glanced at in this guy's article. Arthur Frommer, a travel guide person:
For myself, without yet suggesting that others follow me in an open boycott, I will not personally travel in a state where civilians carry loaded weapons onto the sidewalks and as a means of political protest. I not only believe such practices are a threat to the future of our democracy, but I am firmly convinced that they would also endanger my own personal safety there. And therefore I will cancel any plans to vacation or otherwise visit in Arizona until I learn more. And I will begin thinking about whether tourists should safeguard themselves by avoiding stays in Arizona.Personally, I've never been to Arizona. And based on the crazy laws they have there, that it's perfectly acceptable to be stalking the president with guns, it's not a place I'm planning to visit any time soon.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The First Guy With A Gun
The first guy with a gun at a presidential event is reminding everyone, "Hey, remember I was the FIRST. These other guys are imitators!"
"It never occurred to anyone just to show up with a gun till I did it. And now everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon!"
So look for his internet store, selling T-shirts with a gun on it, saying, "I was the first!" If anyone's name deserves a future trivia question on the subject, it's his. Although I don't remember what it is at the moment. Westric. Wrestic. Wettick. Weston. I'm not coming up with it.
Anyway, it's a new day for presidential events, and this will make them much more exciting for years to come. At least till we have another Republican president and all this is forbidden again.
But who knew what you can get away with?!
John Wilkes Booth is kicking himself in his grave. "I could've just bought a ticket, killed Lincoln, and stayed for the rest of the show. Silly me."
Lee Harvey Oswald's going. "I could've killed Kennedy and finished out my shift. No need to run."
Sirhan Sirhan's sitting there going, "He wasn't even president yet! And anyway, I was trying to kill a mouse in the kitchen."
Squeaky Fromme is out of prison, thinking, "That was a waste of 30 years. They should've pinned a medal on me."
It seems like John Hinkley's been doing time too, poor guy. But who knew he had the right to be there with a gun? We didn't know it at the time.
"It never occurred to anyone just to show up with a gun till I did it. And now everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon!"
So look for his internet store, selling T-shirts with a gun on it, saying, "I was the first!" If anyone's name deserves a future trivia question on the subject, it's his. Although I don't remember what it is at the moment. Westric. Wrestic. Wettick. Weston. I'm not coming up with it.
Anyway, it's a new day for presidential events, and this will make them much more exciting for years to come. At least till we have another Republican president and all this is forbidden again.
But who knew what you can get away with?!
John Wilkes Booth is kicking himself in his grave. "I could've just bought a ticket, killed Lincoln, and stayed for the rest of the show. Silly me."
Lee Harvey Oswald's going. "I could've killed Kennedy and finished out my shift. No need to run."
Sirhan Sirhan's sitting there going, "He wasn't even president yet! And anyway, I was trying to kill a mouse in the kitchen."
Squeaky Fromme is out of prison, thinking, "That was a waste of 30 years. They should've pinned a medal on me."
It seems like John Hinkley's been doing time too, poor guy. But who knew he had the right to be there with a gun? We didn't know it at the time.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
The Murderous Opposition
There's a phrase you don't hear much in politics anymore, "The loyal opposition." It looks like things got really bad in the Clinton years, with the right wing attributing every evil to President Clinton. There wasn't much "loyal" about this opposition, instead it was about that time that the phrase "the politics of personal destruction" came into common use.
With George W. Bush's administration -- the Anti-Clinton -- we've had eight years of in-your-face opposition. The Democrats have been painted with every broad brush charge, weak on defense, the favorite of the terrorists, and, just in the last couple weeks, as appeasers. Bush, who was to be a uniter not a divider, never had any ability to reach across the aisle, except maybe for a jab or slap. For him bipartisanship always meant "my way or the highway -- with us or against us." Of course it's not true, what they say about the Democrats, because we're all Americans, and at heart we want good things for our country. We all live here, after all. But the advantage that's to be had by this other nonsense, it's too tempting...
Then of course add to this a compliant media, always eager for every fight in a society raised on cowboy shows and half-hour good vs. evil dramas. Whatever it is, there has to be winners and losers, white hats and black hats. With Bush in power, certainly, the media bought into this narrative. So much so, that now it is more common to hear reporting on the "narrative" the opposition creates for the other side than it is the actual issues, what is promised, and what needs to be done. The horse race and the opposition's defining of the other side are what we get. Is there any way that can have a humane outcome, any kind of common good at the heart of it? In practical terms, the answer seems to be no.
So now we have another election year. And decent people on both sides are coincidentally being transformed into cartoon images of themselves, evil caricatures by those on the other side. What happens when we buy into this is that it takes us lower yet. What is happening with Barack Obama's image? He's tagged as a Muslim, as a terrorist sympathizer, as someone with a suspicious middle name(!), as someone who did whatever it was he supposedly did as an eight-year-old together with American dissidents. Anyone with any sense at all knows all this is a crock, but still it's pushed because of the short-term advantages seen in lying.
And now, on top of that, we have these assassination fears (maybe hopes on the part of some.) It's all coinciding with the anniversary of RFK's death in 1968. Hillary makes some comment about why she can't drop out of the race. Whether she had different motives in saying these things than what has been attributed to her, all that is lost in the hysteria, phony or real. The thing is she shouldn't have said it, because of what actually could happen as a result. Before that, Mike Huckabee made an Obama assassination joke at the NRA convention. It was a spur of the moment (meant to be humorous) aside that would've never happened except for the coincidence of a loud noise backstage. But once said, it's said. And what it revealed was that gun violence and Obama are not far from his mind. Then today, Liz Trotta on Fox News, mixing up the names Osama and Obama, then goes on to 'joke' that it would be a positive thing if both could be 'knocked off.' So what's that do for you? Is that the America we want? Everyone who we disagree with killed off so it leaves us standing there alone?
We're reaping what we've sown. One of my criticisms of George W. Bush over the years is that he either doesn't have the mental capacity for it, or he made a conscious choice, not to be the president of all the people. He divided us up into his supporters and everyone else. We saw this in the way he had private rallies and people had to sign loyalty oaths to get in. And anytime there was a time when he could have helped bridge the divide -- with the possible exception of 9/11, which he quickly moved to exploit for political and every other advantage -- he would not do it. National emergencies, foreign policy, the military, maybe even the White House Easter egg hunt, all of had to be exploited for partisan gain, to diminish the other side.
My opinion is that any talk of assassinations ought to be done in a sensible way, as something that is not positive. (It's a measure of how far we've fallen that that even needs to be said.) Maybe something to talk about would be the historic contexts of assassinations and how to prevent them, like if you know someone who is 'off-the-wall,' deranged, and making threats, get them help. But certainly there should be no joking about assassinations, or expressing a desire for them. And anyone on TV -- Fox News, CNN, any network -- who does joke or encourage this kind of terrible thing on our country, should be out of a job immediately and never invited back.
I would like to see Fox News make a public example of Liz Trotta, and have her out immediately. If they would do something positive like that, maybe they could actually lead the way to putting the political life in this country on a higher plane.
It'd be good, I think, to have a "loyal opposition" back.
With George W. Bush's administration -- the Anti-Clinton -- we've had eight years of in-your-face opposition. The Democrats have been painted with every broad brush charge, weak on defense, the favorite of the terrorists, and, just in the last couple weeks, as appeasers. Bush, who was to be a uniter not a divider, never had any ability to reach across the aisle, except maybe for a jab or slap. For him bipartisanship always meant "my way or the highway -- with us or against us." Of course it's not true, what they say about the Democrats, because we're all Americans, and at heart we want good things for our country. We all live here, after all. But the advantage that's to be had by this other nonsense, it's too tempting...
Then of course add to this a compliant media, always eager for every fight in a society raised on cowboy shows and half-hour good vs. evil dramas. Whatever it is, there has to be winners and losers, white hats and black hats. With Bush in power, certainly, the media bought into this narrative. So much so, that now it is more common to hear reporting on the "narrative" the opposition creates for the other side than it is the actual issues, what is promised, and what needs to be done. The horse race and the opposition's defining of the other side are what we get. Is there any way that can have a humane outcome, any kind of common good at the heart of it? In practical terms, the answer seems to be no.
So now we have another election year. And decent people on both sides are coincidentally being transformed into cartoon images of themselves, evil caricatures by those on the other side. What happens when we buy into this is that it takes us lower yet. What is happening with Barack Obama's image? He's tagged as a Muslim, as a terrorist sympathizer, as someone with a suspicious middle name(!), as someone who did whatever it was he supposedly did as an eight-year-old together with American dissidents. Anyone with any sense at all knows all this is a crock, but still it's pushed because of the short-term advantages seen in lying.
And now, on top of that, we have these assassination fears (maybe hopes on the part of some.) It's all coinciding with the anniversary of RFK's death in 1968. Hillary makes some comment about why she can't drop out of the race. Whether she had different motives in saying these things than what has been attributed to her, all that is lost in the hysteria, phony or real. The thing is she shouldn't have said it, because of what actually could happen as a result. Before that, Mike Huckabee made an Obama assassination joke at the NRA convention. It was a spur of the moment (meant to be humorous) aside that would've never happened except for the coincidence of a loud noise backstage. But once said, it's said. And what it revealed was that gun violence and Obama are not far from his mind. Then today, Liz Trotta on Fox News, mixing up the names Osama and Obama, then goes on to 'joke' that it would be a positive thing if both could be 'knocked off.' So what's that do for you? Is that the America we want? Everyone who we disagree with killed off so it leaves us standing there alone?
We're reaping what we've sown. One of my criticisms of George W. Bush over the years is that he either doesn't have the mental capacity for it, or he made a conscious choice, not to be the president of all the people. He divided us up into his supporters and everyone else. We saw this in the way he had private rallies and people had to sign loyalty oaths to get in. And anytime there was a time when he could have helped bridge the divide -- with the possible exception of 9/11, which he quickly moved to exploit for political and every other advantage -- he would not do it. National emergencies, foreign policy, the military, maybe even the White House Easter egg hunt, all of had to be exploited for partisan gain, to diminish the other side.
My opinion is that any talk of assassinations ought to be done in a sensible way, as something that is not positive. (It's a measure of how far we've fallen that that even needs to be said.) Maybe something to talk about would be the historic contexts of assassinations and how to prevent them, like if you know someone who is 'off-the-wall,' deranged, and making threats, get them help. But certainly there should be no joking about assassinations, or expressing a desire for them. And anyone on TV -- Fox News, CNN, any network -- who does joke or encourage this kind of terrible thing on our country, should be out of a job immediately and never invited back.
I would like to see Fox News make a public example of Liz Trotta, and have her out immediately. If they would do something positive like that, maybe they could actually lead the way to putting the political life in this country on a higher plane.
It'd be good, I think, to have a "loyal opposition" back.
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