“Moms with Guns” Founder calls for President Obama’s Assassination

John O’Connor

In a deleted Facebook post, the founder of a pro gun open carry in Texas called for President Obama to be assassinated. Kathy Perkins posted a picture of Obama to her Facebook page and wrote “Where is an assasin (sic) when you need one?”

Perkins is the founder of a pro gun group that agitates for the normalization of openly carrying guns in Texas and, following that, the rest of the country. On her twitter feed, she also linked to Alex Jones and posted a link to a Youtube video showing vehicles with UN markings being transported on a flatbed with the comment “Something BIG Is Happening In America (JUNE 2014).” In the tweet linking to Alex Jones, she seemed to call for armed rebellion: “Our government has declared war on us. Rise up!”

The site of Perkins’ pro gun group displays the following description of the group’s motivation and goals:

Moms With Guns Demand Action was created in response to the anti-constitutional propaganda being put forth by MDA (Moms Demand Action.) It is the perception of Pro-Second Amendment Gun owners that MDA’s soul purpose is to disarm American Citizens. Make no mistake about it. Despite what they claim verbally to the contrary, every one of their efforts can be clearly interpretted as being set in place to this end. It is my belief, that they will not be happy until every citizen in this country is disarmed leaving only law enforcement armed, thereby finalizing the Liberal Socialist goal of a Police State where Free Citizens are no longer Free to defend themselves, essentially nullifying our 2nd Amendment rights.

…

Moms With Guns Demand Action demands REAL Gun Sense in America. This is a place where we will be free to refute the propaganda being put forth by the enemies of our Great Republic and Constitution. Here we will together set the record straight, and fight to keep TRUE Guns Sense here in America. An Armed American Citizenship is a SAFE and FREE American Citizenship.

While publicly calling for the assassination of the president may be atypical, pretty much everything else about her rhetoric and positions is typical of “liberty loving” “real American” pro gun open carry agitators.

These are people who lay claim to being the only ones who truly understand the constitution and who feel they must “educate” the rest of us about how ignorant we are of the true meaning of freedom and liberty.

Basically, we’re all doing it wrong unless we feel the overwhelming urge to strap guns on ourselves whenever we do anything or go anywhere. And if you disagree with them, not only are you ignorant and probably not really a true American, you are also an enemy of liberty and “our Great Republic.” If you do not want this person and others like her to be walking around in public armed to the teeth, you “pose a serious threat to my safety and that of my children” and may have to be dealt with accordingly. If you do all this and you’re the president, Perkins believes you should be assassinated.

This is the “liberty” that pro gun open carry agitators want to impose on the rest of us. One of their favorite slogans is “An armed society is a polite society,” meaning if you cut them off in traffic, or just look at them in what they decide is the wrong way, they just might shoot you down.

Every pro gun group and agitator should be asked to condemn Perkins’ call for Obama’s assassination. If they do not immediately repudiate her comment, they should shunned and not invited to appear on media to advocate for their extremist views.

Make no mistake, Perkins is pretty typical of the extreme right wingers who now tell the Republican party what to do and what positions it must take. While she might be somewhat more extreme than others, it’s a difference in degree, not kind. Her lunacy is the predictable extension of other claims and beliefs that are very common on the right these days.

After all, if Obama truly is lawless and is trying to “take America down a notch,” then, right wingers argue, he truly is an enemy of liberty. And what do you do with an enemy of your “liberty”?

We must recognize how far gone so many on the right have become and call them out for it. If they refuse to condemn Perkins’ call for the assassination of the president, they should be publicly identified as lunatic extremist they are and be shunned and ridiculed

Cross posted at Daily Kos.

Impeachment Will Be a Bellwether

Steve M notes that

I’d rather see a drive to impeach than a drive to sue, if only because impeachment might be a wake-up call for Democratic voters. But Dem voters should take the lawsuit seriously…

It might be the escape valve Boehner’s hoping it will be, but I have my doubts. Booman seems to think impeachment might very well happen:

So, 2014 is basically a replay of 1998, except there is no stained black [sic] dress. It appears that six years is the limit Republicans can take of a Democratic president. After that, their lies circle back around and eat their brains.

This seems more likely to me. Things can of course change, but at this point I’d be surprised if they don’t at least try to impeach him before the election in November.

Will they be able to say “No“?

Cross posted at Daily Kos.

Right Wingers Will Be Unable to Resist Defending Cheney

By John O’Connor

Steve Benen writes on the jabs that Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney traded this week:

Even putting aside questions about foreign policies and the public’s war weariness, Bill Clinton vs. Dick Cheney is the kind of match-up that Democrats welcome.

Love him or hate him, the former Democratic president is enormously popular. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found Clinton is easily the most admired president of the last quarter century. Whatever one might think of his presidency, Clinton is one of the most well liked figures on the planet.

Dick Cheney is … Dick Cheney. The man’s name is synonymous with violence and failure. Outside of far-right circles, Cheney enjoys little credibility, even less respect, and is more often seen as a punch-line to a painful joke.

The more Cheney rears his head and reminds the country of what it mean to put the reins of power in the hands of lunatic war mongering extremist Republicans, the better. And I agree with Benen’s conclusion that Cheney, who should really be in jail, picking very public fights not just with Obama but also with Clinton is not good for the Republicans.

Hell, even Laura Ingraham gets that.

But what will be especially damaging is that some of the rank and file right wingers as well as pundits and politicians will loudly and emphatically defend Dick Freaking Cheney.

Many will simply not be able to help themselves. The tribal knee jerk reaction will set in and will have to be expressed. Cheney’s reference to Clinton’s sex life, coupled with the reactions of liberals, progressives and Democrats, will make silence impossible.

I share Booman’s skepticism about the good electoral results the GOP is supposed by some to be guaranteed this time around.

Cross posted at Daily Kos.

Teabaggers Set to Educate ‘Murica about Why Black People Voting Is Illegal

By John O’Connor

Mississippi is burning with white hot teabagging rage.

The despicable racists who make up the vast majority of the “tea party” faction of the crazed extremist right wing GOP are poised to educate at the rest of us. They have gazed upon the country and, as always, they have found the rest of us sorely in need of being educated by them about just who in the hell can cast legitimate votes and who steals democracy when they vote.

This time, as always, it’s black people voting that is breaking the constitution.

But they see this as a golden opportunity to make the rest of us less ignorant while also being electoral and PR gold. These people are so wrapped up in their racist worldview that they are quite incapable of seeing how such unabashed retrograde bigotry looks to the rest of us.

Chris McDaniel is not at all happy that African Americans were able to play a — completely legal — role in the election:

When Cochran was named the winner, McDaniel himself openly questioned the results, and said “there is something a bit strange, there is something a bit unusual about a Republican primary that’s decided by liberal Democrats.”

“Before this race ends we have to be absolutely certain that the Republican primary was won by Republican voters,” McDaniel also said.

This means we’ll have the neo confederate and white supremacist schmoozing McDaniel to educate at us why only white people should be allowed to vote.

Please proceed, ragebaggers. Please proceed.

Cross posted at Daily Kos.

Accelerating towards the Buzz Saw: Will the #Benghazi! Hearings Thwart GOP 2014 Dreams?

John O’Connor

Lynn Westmoreland, a Republican member of the new Benghazi select committee member has called Michelle Obama “uppity“:

Westmoreland, 64, has been criticized before as being overly partisan. Democrats disparaged him during the 2008 presidential election for describing candidate Barack Obama and wife Michelle as “uppity” — a derogatory term for blacks who sought equal treatment in the segregated South.

The extreme right wing blog Redstate recently published a front page diary accusing Michelle Obama and Eric Holder of encouraging “sustainable racism“:

Sustainable Racism, along with Cargo Cult Economics, are the philosophical mainstays of modern liberalism. What Sustainable Racism seeks to do is to keep fanning the flames of racial discord in order to provide jobs and political power for a handful of 1%, mostly very privileged blacks and Hispanics, by allowing them to act as Christ-like mediators between the average black and Latino and a system they revile as unjust. Rather than pursue that society where people are not judged by skin color, the advocates of Sustainable Racism insist that everyone is completely defined by their skin color.

The editor of Redstate is theorizing that the perfectly natural negative reaction to the ugly actions of the McDaniel supporting blogger in Mississippi is in reality a part of an elaborate conspiracy:

I have to wonder if this was coordinated. I ask because the situation came to light due to a press release from the Madison, MS police department. But the Madison Police Department does not issue press releases with any regularity.

These three issues share different commonalities. Two involve conspiracy theories. Two involve attacks on Michelle Obama fueled by unabashed racism.

And all three involve right wing extremist Republicans.

And they are not alone. Cliven Bundy, Donald Sterling and this New Hampshire police commissioner also just happened of course. Conspiracy theories about climate change, gun confiscation, Christian persecution, electoral fraud, and even Barack Obama’s birthplace have been around for years. And Republicans have been advocating extremist policies and ideas for years.

Taken all together, these occurrences seem to point to a party that is running headlong into a buzz saw and ignoring all warnings about the dangers they face. They seem ready to move from extremists to crackpots.

The Benghazi select committee hearings are gearing up to be a window into the extremism that reigns on the right and in the Republican party.

Some on the right, even including Charles Krauthammer, have warned against going too far in the Benghazi hearings. Given the extreme statements of the committee members, it seems practically guaranteed that they will go too far, both in and out of the hearings. Fox News appearances will probably be especially likely to evoke absurd, extreme, and offensive statements by Republican committee members.

But they are not slowing down or taking steps to moderate their growing extremism. Instead, they are dialing it up. Not unlike Karl Rove’s ethereal “permanent Republican majority,” they fervently believe that they’re on the cusp of a tea party revival sweeping the nation and the vast majority of Americans — at least a vast majority of people they consider “real Americans” — adopting their extremist far right wing beliefs.

It’s as if they have looked up and seen the buzz saw rushing toward them as they run to it. And in response, they’re speeding up as much as they possibly can.

Racist N.H. Police Commissioner Resigns, Right Wingers and Republicans across the Nation Set to Decry the “Violation” of his Free Speech

John O’Connor

The horrible racist New Hampshire police commissioner who called Barack Obama a “n*****” — and who subsequently proudly and defiantly defended doing so — has resigned.

Good riddance to that disgrace of a person.

But now we have to get ready for the right wing and Republican gnashing of teeth and studied head shaking about his supposed “loss” of his right to free speech.

Such tripe is utter nonsense designed to deflect from the fact that bigoted speech is real and has real consequences for real people. And that sometimes includes retrograde throwbacks who say idiotic things in public.

Sometimes, just sometimes, they have to suffer actual consequences for their actions. You say an ignorant and bigoted thing like this buffoon did, and you occasionally have to deal with consequences for that.

But right wingers and most Republicans reject that. They demand to right to be ignorant bigots, which of course they have in spades. No one can stop them from being either ignorant or bigoted.

But the problem is that they also demand the right to not experience any consequences for their ignorant and bigoted speech acts.

And when they are not granted this wish, we all must listen to them whine about this loss of privilege that is so unfair and mean to the ignorant and the bigoted.

But no one who doesn’t already believe that absurd notion is going to buy what they’re trying to sell.

Cross posted at Daily Kos.

Complaining about Nonexistant “Violations” of Free Speech to Try to Shut Down Criticism

John O’Connor

Criticism is not censorship.

Though that seems obvious, it sadly needs to be reiterated in the face of whining by many on the right that their, or some fellow traveler’s, free speech rights have been violated when in fact they were merely the subject of criticism. They take full advantage of their own rights to free speech, which are never in danger, but, when others exercise their own rights to free speech, many right wingers decry the free speech they disagree with and, bizarrely, call it a violation of the free speech rights of the original commenter.

Most recently, this happened when the Duck Dynasty patriot made racist and homophobic remarks, with Cliven Bundy’s ruminations on “the Negro,” with Donald Sterling’s racist rants, and with condemnations of Micheal Sam kissing his boyfriend on televised NFL draft coverage.

Has their insistence on living in their echo chamber made them so delicate that they cannot stand to even hear their views criticized?

If not, then why is it so hard for so many on the right to grasp the elementary fact that, just as they have the right to say what they want, others have just as much right to respond to that speech, regardless of whether their response takes the form of agreement or disagreement, praise or criticism?

Ensconced in their tightly controlled echo chamber of Fox News, talk radio, and right wing blogs and sites, they rarely have to hear authentic opposing views, let alone maturely and productively interact for any appreciable length of time with anyone they disagree with. Extreme right wing views are never challenged and, for the echo chamber dwellers, they become normalized. This extends to various kinds of bigotry as well, especially racism, misogyny, and homophobia.

Speakers make all kinds of bigoted statements but are rarely, if ever, called out for doing so. Then, when they leave the echo chamber, they are shocked to learn how out of the mainstream their views are. They are not equipped to deal with all the criticism their bigotry engenders and they attempt to shut it all down with the absurd claim that the criticism is a violation of their rights.

Bigotry has become increasingly unacceptable in our society, so much so that even bigots generally want to avoid the opprobrium that their bigotry brings them. But many right wing bigots feel entitled to continue to be bigots yet avoid criticism for their bigotry.

They insist on their own free speech rights but demand no one else voices any disagreement with them. Is that a demand the rest of us will agree to?

Cross posted at Daily Kos.

The Right’s Mythologized Georgetown Cocktail Party Circuit Cabal

John O’Connor

If you spend any appreciable amount of time surveying right wing online discourse, it won’t be long before you run into a very frequently repeated right wing trope along the lines of: “Putatively “conservative” (read “right wing”) politician, journalist, or pundit X will not dare to seriously criticize the liberal/progressive statist hegemony because to do so would jeopardize their place on the invitation lists to all those fancy Georgetown cocktail parties we all know are so important to all those beltway types.”

And, if a location is offered, it’s always Georgetown. It fits in with their larger narrative that they, as “true conservatives” (leaving aside for now that they are not conservative but are instead radical right wingers), are arrayed against a vast and united front of leftists, progressives, and liberals in both the Democratic and Republican parties — all of whom are of course committed “statists.” It allows them to cast themselves as alienated and disenfranchised outsiders excluded and derided by the “kewl kidz” (yes, many of them have even adopted that spelling).

As Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog notes this morning, it allows them to wallow in their Ayn Randian fantasies of “going Galt” in protest against the monolithic leftism that they tell themselves dominates modern America and most of the globe. It’s a sort of daily affirmation that they must be constantly self administer in order to stave off the potential creeping realization that the world, and most definitely the US, has been dominated for a long time by just the sort of libertarian oligarchies whose effects on all of our lives they blame on the people on the left who are, at least ostensibly, working to curtail those Randian plutocrats and the misery they bring to all but the 1%ers who the right wingers have elevated to the status of near deities.

These “going Galt” daily affirmations sometimes seem bizarre to those of us outside the right wing discourse bubble, but more often they seem inane, sure, but really more trivial and inconsequential. They may indeed be inane, but they are not trivial. They are part of the crucial support structure of the top-heavy system of self-delusion right wingers must cart around with them every waking minute of every day in order to fend of recognition of the obvious reality that the people they cheer have largely got their way and that our current situation is a direct result of the triumph of right wing social, economic, and political ideology.

To test that theory, try pushing back on one of these seeming trivialities sometime, even just a little. Watch how indignant they become and how vehemently they defend some silly proposition such as the Georgetown Cocktail party circuit cabal. Their investment in these tropes is revealing.

Cross posted at Daily Kos.

The Republican Pout

John O’Connor

Republicans and others on the right are generally quite practiced at complaining about how unfair everyone is to them, especially the media. When not blaming their electoral losses on mythical election fraud, they often explain away lost opportunities by claiming they would have won if it wasn’t for those meddling media types.

This pattern was repeated once again during and after the 2012 presidential election and is even still being repeated to this day. Recognizing the negative consequences of their primary debates that highlighted just how out of touch the GOP base is with the rest of the country, they mistakenly assign blame for that not on their extremist candidates or their extremist base, but on the media and debate moderators.

And so they are now taking steps to ensure that no such negative consequences result from the primary debates in 2015 and 2016. They of course are not taking steps to moderate their extremism. They instead are trying to manage the stagecraft of how they present their candidates to the dual, but wildly divergent, audiences of the primary debates: their far right base and the rest of the country.

They want to limit the number of debates and also exercise more control over who is allowed to moderate the debates.

Though it doesn’t refer to a GOP primary debate, this quote from an AP article at ABC’s site is nonetheless telling:

The RNC rule does not explicitly pick debate moderators, but its members were openly critical of CNN journalist Candy Crowley, who moderated a debate between Romney and Obama. During that debate, Crowley corrected Romney’s erroneous claim that Obama had not called the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, an act of terror.

Republicans, including Romney’s top aides, were furious that the moderator interjected herself into the debate as it was happening. It remains a point of frustration for GOP leaders.

Crowley had the temerity to interject facts while Romney was attempting to lie.

Though it happens far to infrequently, there are indeed times when simple facts can dispel right wing and Republican lies. The GOP’s efforts to exercise tighter control over their primary debates are designed to limit the amount of such pesky facts interfering with their lies as much as possible.

They may even largely succeed in minimizing the number of Aikenesque cringe-inducing gaffes. But even if they succeed in limiting the number of embarrassing and damaging remarks from their candidates, they will be doing themselves no favors.

Their main problem now is being so out of touch with the rest of the country. Walling themselves off even further from mainstream voters in their primary will do them no service in the general election.

They will be even further pressured to outdo each other in a mad dash to ever more extreme far right positions and braggadocio. This scheme will blow up in their faces.

But the base will get its red meat and be very, very happy. So there’s that.

Cross posted at Daily Kos.

Benghazi as Watergate Payback

Watergate, Benghazi, Solyndra, Fast & Furious, “Obamaphones,” Birthers, and Bundys. The right feels entitled to an impeachment or resignation causing scandal and Obama is really frustrating them

John O’Connor

Many on the right feel stung by Richard Nixon. Not by the way he exploited white resentment and backlash, north and south, in reaction to the federal government ensuring some of the most basic civil rights of all Americans, regardless of race. Not by his surveillance and harassment of domestic political opponents. And not even by his massive, secret, and illegal expansion of war in southeast Asia.

They feel stung by Watergate, though not by the shocking disregard and outright hostility to the Constitution he reveled in. They resent Nixon not for his criminally unconstitutional actions, but for doing those crimes — and getting caught — as a Republican. They resent having the saga of that profoundly criminal Republican president woven into the tapestry of recent American history in such a fundamental way as to be the unchallengeable archetype of presidential wrongdoing. They resent having to silently, if sullenly, accept at least minimal blame as a party and ideology for Richard Milhouse Nixon, the only president forced to resign to escape sure impeachment and even more certain conviction.

And they want payback.

They feel entitled to payback that whole generations on the right now view as their birthright — including, somehow, even those born before Watergate. Not long after Nixon’s retreat from office, they largely succeeded in stigmatizing and delegitimizing Jimmy Carter with everything from the supposed “malaise” speech to the hostage crisis at the embassy in Iran to the giant bunny bit. Still, though they diminished Carter in the eyes of many, that very diminishment prevented any Carter scandal, real or fabricated, from counterbalancing the historic nature of Nixon’s crimes.

Then, after the much hailed Reagan Restoration, they were reminded of the enduring nature of their party’s Nixon shame when former Nixon hatchet man Robert Bork was decisively prevented from ascending to the Supreme Court. This was a bitter reminder of the bile they had been forced to swallow a decade earlier and Bork’s rejection further fueled their simmering anger over Nixon’s humiliation of their party.

There was partial redemption when Clarence Thomas overcame his putative “high tech lynching” during George H.W. Bush’s four years in office. But, though they were able to derive a not insignificant amount of satisfaction from the “nutty/slutty” attack on Thomas’s most visible accuser, the mere confirmation of a right wing Supreme Court justice, like the humbling of president Carter without forcing him from office, could never satisfy their hunger for proper revenge for Nixon’s disgrace.

That brings us to Clinton’s two terms in office, a time that provided many opportunities for GOP scandal hunters. The rise of talk radio and the emergence of the Internet in mainstream culture helped them gin up and sustain many controversies and scandals, both phony and real. After Ken Starr’s prolonged and dedicated examination of Clinton’s activities, especially his sexual activities, the Republican controlled House did manage to impose on Clinton what Nixon avoided through resignation: charges of impeachment.

However, by that time, the years of GOP scandal mongering and overreach provoked a public backlash at their monomaniacal obsession with using a sex scandal to satisfy their quarter century old quest to revenge Nixon’s legacy. They wasted their best chance to even the score and negate Nixon’s stain on their party with their ham-handed clumsiness and embarrassingly puritanical sexual obsession.

And so now we arrive at their current “opportunity,” the presidency of Barack Obama. But despite their best efforts, despite the continued though greatly diminished reach of talk radio, despite the rise of the Internet to a dominant position in our society, and despite an entire “news” network conceived and micromanaged by Nixon’s old press flack bent on historic revenge, during Obama’s time in office they have, devastatingly, found themselves wandering a scandal desert, chasing after innumerable mirages of fake scandals and false images of their promised land of Righteous Payback.

Such is the existence of the modern right: they have convinced themselves that Barack Obama, whose father was born in Kenya and whose middle name is Hussein, is an anti American fifth columnist and who must, by necessity, therefore be the most corrupt and scandal ridden president ever. But, inexplicably, exasperatingly — sooooooooo frustratingly — they have not been able to make any of their many charges stick, not legally, politically, or in the court of public opinion.

It has been termed “scandal envy,” the sense on the right that Republicans are always getting unfairly caught up in made up scandals while the wily Democrats somehow always slip the noose they, in contrast, fully deserve. Most of them don’t view the scandals that trip up right wing Republicans as legitimate. They see the scandals and controversies as political theater made up by insincere people bent on suppressing the free speech of good, honest, upstanding, and thoroughly decent right wing Republicans. Most on the right seem unable to grasp why Todd Aiken’s comments about “legitimate rape” are, uh, problematic. They don’t see the big deal in his or Rush Limbaugh’s bizarre misapprehensions about physiology. Though most will at least acknowledge that Cliven Bundy’s extemporizations on “the Negro” don’t play well to a wider audience these days, they have no problem with Paul Ryan saying essentially the same thing, only with a more polished smile.

Since they see the scandals people on their side fall into as illegitimate, it perhaps should not be all that surprising if the leaders and strategists on the right conclude that they should be able to trip Democrats up with similarly, in their eyes, made up and phony scandals. “Hey,” you can imagine them thinking, “if those damn Democrats can trap our good people in fake scandals, why can’t we do the same to those evil enemies of the Real America?”

And with a base starved for revenge and primed to believe the worst about the socialist/fascist Islamist/libertine evil genius/incompetent boob currently occupying We the People’s house, selling the congregation item after item from their product line of manufactured “scandals” is child’s play. The gewgaws range from Solyndra, Fast and Furious, and the IRS on the “respectable” end to “Obamaphones,” birtherism, accusations that Obama is a secret Muslim, and tales of Cliven Bundy’s oppression just a little further along towards the fringe.

But no bit sells so well as Benghazi. Benghazi will deliver the payback they’ve been waiting forty years for. They feel it. They know it. They believe it with as much faith as they believe anything. The Nixonian pallor will be lifted from the GOP brand like sins from the souls of the newly faithful. The Republican party and the right will be healed of the wounds that the criminal Nixon inflicted on them four decades ago. And they will be so healed by the blood of the four Americans whose deaths in Benghazi they show no shame in exploiting.

Cross posted at Daily Kos.