Protect us from armed domestic terrorists
Today's shooting at the Holocaust Museum and the murder of Dr. Tiller should re-emphasize in everyone's mind the point that Keith Olberman has been making recently: We need to treat the threat from these domestic terrorists just as seriously as we treat the threat from Al Qaeda.
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Amen to that, tlees2. Amen to that.
June 10, 2009 3:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
You got that right Tlees.
What is terrorism?
Just those who carry a Qaran? Ha
Who was Tim McVeigh anyway?
June 10, 2009 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, and it doesn't help that they're being constantly prodded into a frenzy by Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Gordon Liddy and all their ilk, plus assorted psychotic members of government current and past (Cheney, Inhofe, et al). And how about Jon Voight ranting that we need to "PUT AN END" to the "false prophet Obama". There are plenty of unstable people among us, and they are picking up on this shit. Feed enough hate speech into the populace, and those teetering on the brink will be pushed into violence.
June 10, 2009 3:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
that's a good point. It's fascinating to watch how Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and O'reilly try and distance themselves from these "crazy nuts who go out there and foment hatred" as soon as someone gets killed.
June 10, 2009 7:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
snark
Just goes to show, good ole "W" Bush kept us safe from terrists. There wasn't a single terrist act on his watch (after 9-11 and those pesky anthrax attacks but who's counting?) Now look what happens when we elect a Demacrat -- the terrists come out of the woodwork. We warned you this would happen!
/snark
June 10, 2009 3:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ha!
June 10, 2009 5:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes,
It reminds me of the quote from somewhere...
'We have seen the enemy and it is us'
or 'Houston, 'we' have a problem'.
Maybe the democrats should start saying...
be afraid... be very afraid of bringing those terrorists from Gitmo over to the US because they may be innocent and our psycho, raging, american lunatics might hurt them. Now that would be a 'legitimate' concern:)
June 10, 2009 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's called 'jailhouse justice'. It's real. As in Jeffrey Dahmer real.
I consider it a legitimate concern for not bringing the Gitmo detainees into an American prison unless they can guarantee they will be isolated from the general prison population.
June 10, 2009 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well I was half-joking there but you are right there may be a reason to have to use caution to protect them... but I think the reason the republicans have pushed fear of bringing them to the US because 'they' are dangerous, is the fear of them gaining rights and any move toward accountability. The president has already called them POW's so they already should have rights... I'll be glad when Gitmo is closed.
June 11, 2009 3:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
"'We have seen the enemy and it is us"
Source: The comic strip, Pogo.
June 11, 2009 6:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
What those on the right do not seem to realize is that this kind of thing is a major turn off, at the very least, to the vast majority of people in this country and could easily push it further to the left as a reaction.
C
June 10, 2009 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
The tools to prevent these types of events are all in place. In this case the perpetrator had a history of violence going back 40 years. He set up a website advocating racist and anti-semitic sentiments. He openly associated with groups and individuals known for their violent tendencies. Under the Patriot Act he could have been incarcerated indefinitely as a terrorist threat. So why wasn't he?
Both the PA and the perpetrator are repugnant and I would be appalled if he were preemptively detained. But then again it would have stopped him at least for a while.
Freedom comes at a price. Sadly the price is sometimes paid by the blood of innocents. Better that the guilty go free than the innocent be imprisoned.
June 10, 2009 8:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
An 88 year old man with a 100 year old rifle equals armed conspirators who blow up embassies and take down skyscrapers.
Keith Olberman is a jerk, a joke of a liberal host out-pandered only by Rachel Maddow.
When are we ever going to have responsible, adult liberals on cable talk shows?
June 10, 2009 9:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe I should add that the only T.V. reporters I can manage to watch without my gorge rising are Bill Moyers and David Brancaccio.
June 10, 2009 9:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen,
I've mentioned this before, but I think all four of them (Olberman, Maddow, Moyers, and Brancaccio) are good in their own ways.
June 10, 2009 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Olberman was a sports guy, still is, at heart.
My sense is that he stepped into the breach because there was no one else filling it.
He is, at least, no hagiographer.
June 11, 2009 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, we are all so glad to hear what doesn't make you puke. That makes us all feel better.
PS: Your simple-minded comparison of the 88 year-old with the 911 conspirators betrays your ignorance. If you shoot and kill someone in a robbery and they only had $5 in their pocket are you less a murderer than the person who kills someone who has $10,000 in their pocket?
The 911 "pilots" were enormously "successful." This latest killer had only his own limited brain to hatch his plot. In the words of our traitorous former VP, "so what?"
June 10, 2009 9:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm trying to figure out, CVille Dem, whether you're suffering from the fallacy of composition or the fallacy of hasty generalization.
A guy with a beef -- no matter with whom he has that beef -- does not, by acting out violently, suddenly become a "terrorist" -- that is, a member of a group which employs terror to achieve political aims.
June 10, 2009 10:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Au contraire, Ellen - the guy seems to have links to neo-Nazi groups. The killer of Dr. Tiller appears to have links to people who have committed acts of violence. The far right is certainly capable of mass violence - see Timothy McVeigh. Morris Dees's Southern Poverty Law Center is a good resource on all of this.
June 10, 2009 10:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
What?
He trained in the Idaho panhandle? The neo-Nazis bought his ammunition for him?
What next? Harris and Klebold were terrorists.
June 10, 2009 11:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's already looking like what we pretty much have here is a propaganda of the deed" as the 1969 National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, described it. Where the intent is not really to terrorize, but believe it or not, in some brains addled by hate and anger, to convince others out there. (When I found that article, I was struck by how many sentences in that article could be already be used interchangably with this case.)
By the way, speaking of Howard Beale and his once fictional network (were you? I thought you were, heh,) I totally agree with you on Olberman and Maddow. It's gotten to the point where I stare at the MSNBC lineup in slack jawed amazement, thinking, what the heck, do TV cable news marketing have any brains at all, or did someone transplant a constant replay of "Network" into their brains? Every time I think they can't go lower in trying to plumb the depths of a small adolescent market and imitate Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly technique, they do. Stepping back and looking at the trajectory of what they did to cable news, it gets worse year by year, it's like there is no bottom to the graph. It's particularly amazing to continue to do this when a wonky, cool cucumber is wildly popular, it just makes no sense. Who would have thought when we watched Phil Donahue and Vladimir Posner back in the day that we were watching the height of a genre and not its low point? I wonder about Ted Turner, what he thinks--who would have thought that 60 Minutes would start to look like responsible TV journalism in comparison to 24/7 cable TV news, instead of the hackitude that show has always really been? Why can't they see that there is a unmet market out there, that they all aren't going to get anywhere very profitable carbon copying the political blogosphere? Why is Fareed Zakaria stuck in a public service time slot when he's offering what used to be infottainment and what's on prime time is what used to be called Jerry Springer? {/mini-rant.}
P.S. Maddow's participation in this all is particularly egregious to my mind, given her education. She definitely knows exactly what she's doing, knows how disingenuous it is.
June 10, 2009 11:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're astonished by the paucity of television news and opinion coverage that exhibits moderation, logic, good sense, and eschews hyperbole?
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.
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Where the fuck do you think you live? ;-)
Here on earth, in the USA, we have a media that is almost completely controlled by corporations whose primary business is not news, or even broadcasting or other media.
Their only stated goal is profit and/or "increasing shareholder value."
June 11, 2009 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are the one "suffering" from ignorance. This same guy went to prison for 6 years for similar behavior. He is a terrorist. I have news for you, Ellen. You are not the smartest person in this room.
June 11, 2009 12:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let's see.
Forty years ago the guy slugs a sheriff's officer and 28 years ago he attempts to take Paul Volcker hostage so he can get on television and tell the American people that the fix is in.
Schizophrenic or terrorist? You decide.
June 11, 2009 1:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Schizophrenic or terrorist?"
They are not mutually exclusive.
June 11, 2009 5:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't believe one has to be a member of a group, or to use violence to achieve exclusively political aims, to meet the definition of terrorism.
June 11, 2009 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bingo!
June 11, 2009 4:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
The proper counterexample to Von Brunn might be Timothy McVeigh. He wasn't a member of a very large conspiracy at all, but who wouldn't label him a terrorist? Does he get to be called a terrorist because he was successful?
Maybe so. Maybe it depends on what happens next, on who is inspired by Von Brunn to commit even more destructive crimes.
What about Yigal Amir as compared with Scott Roeder? Amir, by assassinating Yitzhak Rabin, a single man, arguably set the peace process back by decades. Roeder seems to have achieved the shutdown of one of only a handful of clinics offering late term abortions. The number of women (and men) potentially affected is huge. Everyone calls him a kook but it seems to me that if McVeigh and Amir are terrorists then so is Roeder.
I don't think it's at all clear cut that Von Brunn and Roeder are terrorists, but it isn't clear cut that they aren't either.
June 12, 2009 5:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's amazing to me that some people want to talk about television personalities and not the Neo-Nazi and the doctor killer, both of whom are typical of the kind of right wing violence the Southern Poverty Law Center warns us about.
June 11, 2009 12:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, it is so much easier to condemn tv personalities. Those others -- Hannity, Limberger, and Beck sell ad time, even if they are criticizing them.
It's all a game. The Single -Payer health care issue is a great example! The country is united, but they are denying it. They think they can spin it and spin it, that "the people don't want the "public option." I say to them ---- PROVE IT!
This country is ready, and we're all waiting to find out why Congress is cowering under the feet of the insurance agencies, who by their own admission, simply can[t complete. Why? If you have to pay your stockholders, you can't compete with those whose only goal is to provide health care, rather than to give extra money to those who don't deserve it.
June 11, 2009 1:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Paul Krugman's take on all of this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/opinion/12krugman.html
June 12, 2009 12:21 AM | Reply | Permalink