Warning Bells
by digby
I’m listening to tea party chief Judson Phillips on TV this afternoon saying that there’s no correlation between guns and politics and that the debate hasn’t been particularly violent.
I’m sorry to do this again, but it’s just got to be emphasized right now:
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Working Themselves Into A Frenzy
by digby
You’ve probably already heard about the arrest in Washington of a person who threatened to kill Senator Patty Murray for her vote on Health Care Reform:
According to the criminal complaint, between March 22 and April 4, 2010, WILSON called Senator Patty Murray’s office on multiple occasions leaving expletive laden threatening messages. WILSON stated that Senator Murray “had a target on her back.” WILSON stated, “I want to (expletive) kill you.” WILSON discussed assisting others in an attempt to kill the senator. WILSON’s threats were in response to the passage of the Health Care Reform Act.
WILSON allegedly made the calls from a telephone line with a ‘blocked’ phone number. However, federally subpoenaed telephone records revealed the calls came from his home phone line. FBI agents were able to further confirm WILSON was the caller. WILSON told undercover FBI agents that he regularly carries a firearm with a concealed weapons permit. He also stated that he was extremely angry about the passage of the health care reform legislation
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Don’t tell me that hate radio and Fox didn’t have a hand in working this nut up. nobody in their right mind would normally want to kill someone over a health care bill.
People have been driven mad. You probably haven’t heard the hideous racist telephone message aimed at John Lewis that was also released today.(I couldn’t find it online anyway. Chris Matthews played it on the air:
Yes, Bill Ves, calling from (inaudible) I ain’t gonna get no health insurance, tell that son of a bitch that, I ain’t getting the damned health insurance. That goddamned ni**er, don’t tell me I gotta get some goddamned health insurance. I ain’t paying no goddamned fine. Tell that ni**er he can come put my ass in jail if he don’t like it. Goddamn worthless ni**er, and all them other ni**ers that voted for him. That ni**er Obama and them white trash honkies that voted for that damned communist, socialist stuff. Dumb motherfuckers, Goddamn! I ain’t getting the goddamned mandatory health insurance from some bitch motherfuckers! Goddamn bunch of ni**er,white trash honkies, sone of a bitch communist who voted for this shit. I didn’t go fight in no goddamned wart so I could be forced to do something I don'[t want to do. So fuck all y’all ni**ers. Fuck you John Lewis, you goddamned worthless, communist ni**er.
What an impressive fellow. According to Republican legislators and conservative leaders, Lewis has no one to blame but himself for this. If he hadn’t voted for health care, he wouldn’t have made this man mad and then this wouldn’t have happened. These Democraats need to understand that when they vote for thing Republicans don’t like they will be subject to violence. That’s how democracy works. (Of course, it’s also true that John Lewis made it all up. — according to them.)
This isn’t the end of it. The wingnuts are working overtime to keep this at a high boil. Check this out:
Now that might be benign under some circumstances. It only sort of looks like a target. But it happened at a Florida gun show.
“A year ago, you could have described the mood as one of hysteria.”
A year later, Burns said, a lot of gun owners are still waiting to see if the Obama administration decides to make it harder for them to keep the guns that they lawfully own. It’s one reason, he said, why people who support the right to bear arms come to an event like this one: out of concern that their freedom to buy another gun might get challenged in the future.
“You’ve got common people out here, concerned about their gun rights,” he said. “Some people think we’re all just a bunch of militants and survivalists. We’re not. These are people watching our rights being taken away by the folks in Washington.”
I guess he must be talking about his right to have other people pay for his emergency room visit if he doesn’t have health insurance, because nobody’s taking away his right to bear arms. In fact, Obama signed a law allowing these yahoos to carry guns in national parks.
When I see that stuff, I get worried for Grayson. He is a target for a lot of reasons. I hope he has protection. There are plenty of nuts like that one who left the message on Murray’s and Lewis’s answering machines out there. One of them could easily take it in their heads to take it to the next level.
Just a little reminder. Some of us have been disturbed by this for the last two years.
Update: Here’s another example.
Some images from the Southeast Republican Club gathering at a gun range could prove incendiary.
Though most of the targets of gunfire were standard gun-range fare — large silhouettes of a human figure — a few shooters used large color posters instead. They depicted a menacing figure, adorned in a kaffiyeh, the kind of headdress worn by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The person in the picture was holding a rocket-propelled grenade.
One of the shooters at the Tuesday evening event was Robert Lowry, a Republican candidate hoping to unseat U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston. Lowry’s target had the letters “DWS” next to the silhouette head.
Lowry said he didn’t know who wrote Wasserman Schultz’ initials on his target, but said he knew they were there before he started shooting. He initially described it as a “joke,” but after answering several questions he said it “was a mistake” to use a target labeled “DWS.”
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