Last night at the big Republican fundraiser (yeah, Palin ended up showing, if you were wondering), Jon Voight called on Republicans to "bring an end to this false prophet, Obama." Among other things, he also said:
Are we supposed to be sitting and waiting, watching for the possibility of a new Holocaust? Who’s going to take the responsibility to keep America [and] Israel safe? I’ll tell you why this really scares the hell out of me, because everything Obama has recommended has turned out to be disastrous.
[...]
Obama really thinks he is a soft-spoken Julius Caesar. He thinks he's going to conquer the world with his soft-spoken sweet talk.
[...]
We and we alone are the right frame of mind [sic] to free this nation from this Obama oppression.
Watch, if you must:
Rather than nervously chuckling and trying to move past Voight's rantings, Rep. Paul Ryan (WI), Sen. Orrin Hatch (UT), Sen. John Cornyn (TX), and Sen. Mitch McConnell (KY) all reportedly popped major woodies.
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On a related note, long-time GOP hack Frank Gaffney, Jr., published an op-ed in today's Washington Times. Here are some excerpts:
America's first Muslim president?
Obama aligns with the policies of Shariah-adherents[...]
The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich.
What little we know about Mr. Obama's youth certainly suggests that he not only had a Kenyan father who was Muslim, but spent his early, formative years as one in Indonesia. [...]
[...]
Whether Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim or simply plays one in the presidency may, in the end, be irrelevant. What is alarming is that in aligning himself and his policies with those of Shariah-adherents such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the president will greatly intensify the already enormous pressure on peaceful, tolerant American Muslims to submit to such forces - and heighten expectations, here and abroad, that the rest of us will do so as well.
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On another, possibly related, note, here's a charming new Twitter account: FuckObama. And here is the avatar this account uses:
So, you know, keep feeding the base raw red meat, Jon Voight, Frank Gaffney, and other well-coddled Republicans. I'm sure nothing bad will come of it.
[Added 2009-06-11 04:13] Sadly ironic that I typed that last line before yesterday's shooting at the Holocaust Museum. Add it to the list.
Oh, and one good point, that I noted in the Comments earlier: at least that avatar has been removed from that Twitter account.
(h/t: Roy Edroso, via Twitter)
10 comments:
There was a day when a graphic like that would have gotten you swiftly hauled off for an interrogation to determine if you were a potential assassin. So now, when such a thing should be of great concern to the Secret Service, they let that sit out there on a Twitter account?
* So now, when such a thing should be of great concern to the Secret Service, they let that sit out there on a Twitter account? *
There is, likewise, an immense amount of material like this posted on YouTube, by rightwing extremists who don't merely hint at, but promise violence in the near future. I monitor the stuff pretty closely, and have never seen a single threatening video removed from YouTube.
Example posted just today.
Perhaps the authorities are more concerned about the potential backlash that would result from strict enforcement, given that these wingnut/loons already think they are victims.
Fortunately, for now, the people who hold these views appear to be an extremely tiny minority of the population. Despite recent polls showing that 50% of Texas Republicans and a third of George Republicans favor secession, I doubt very many of those would actually favor murder of American citizens and government authorities.
What would turn this tiny minority of bed-wetting extremists into a real threat would be direct endorsement of their views from mainstream conservatives (if only at the state level). While many mainstream conservatives have tip-toed around support for this movement, it has yet to receive the kind of full throated support that would dramatically increase the ranks of violent extremists.
Teh Sadlys have just declared: "Wingnuts across America, consider yourselves put on notice. Frank Gaffney has impressively raised the bar for crazy in this column. This is the new standard toward which you must aspire."
Steve Benen:
"Instead of responding to the 'substance' of this nonsense, I'd just like to ask the same questions I always ponder when I see Gaffney gain attention from major media outlets: is there nothing conservatives can say that would force them from polite company? Just how nutty must a far-right activist be before he/she is no longer invited to share their ridiculous ideas?
This is the same Gaffney who was on national television in March, arguing that "evidence" exists connecting Saddam Hussein to 9/11, the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, and the Oklahoma City bombing. In September, Gaffney argued that Sarah Palin has learned foreign policy through "osmosis," by living in Alaska. He's argued that U.S. forces really did find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but the media covered it up. He's used made-up quotes and recommended "hanging" Democratic officials critical of the Bush administration's Iraq policy. He even believes there's "evidence" suggesting the president is not a natural born citizen of the United States, and once recommended a military strike on Al Jazeera headquarters.
Gaffney is certainly entitled to believe obvious nonsense, but that doesn't mean he deserves a platform."
NB: All of Steve's claims about Gaffney are documented with links -- I was just too lazy to copy them over.
See also No More Mister Nice Blog here and here.
All of this is scary. My biggest concern is not a united movement of wingnuts. It is that, with so many of them out there, some individual or small group will make a legitimate attempt on the President's life. In fact, I'm afraid it's only a matter of time, and since a number of them have military experience and connections, it will likely be a *very* legitimate attempt.
I agree somewhat, John, but I also think the Secret Service is about the best at doing what they do of any group in any field.
I also think we can't ever let fear of wingnuts change how we live. That, truly, is letting the terrorists win.
BTW: Just checked that Twitter account. The avatar is gone.
@Twin: just watched that video. My biggest concern is that the Secret Service personnel watching would suffer narcolepsy. What a witless drone.
Don't get me wrong. If I were to change anything - it would be to do things that would make the wingnuts even crazier. I just point out that this is a truly frightening situation and I really hope the Secret Service is up to the most difficult Presidential protection they have ever had.
I've been following up on the video Twin gave - cruising around to his subs and people he subs and has favorited. Dangerous minds, with the knowledge to follow through.
i don't completely disagree about the sense provoked by watching these nuts. I do think, however, that the vast majority of them are all talk, and I highly doubt any of them are mentally organized enough to get close to the president, especially given what I believe about the competence of the Secret Service.
I think, rather, what we will see is more incidents like the murder of Dr. Tiller, the one at the Holocaust Museum, and the previous shooting sprees at various churches and other places. These are sad, to be sure, but when one places them in the context of how many other people get gunned down each year in this country (who pretty much get no attention), it's not really that big a deal, in the sense of a national problem. It is, of course, horrible for those personally affected, but then, so are all murders.
What I hope is that these scattered incidents provoke a revulsion on the part of the general non-insane population that will make them that much more dismissive of far-right ideologies and ideologues.
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