Sick sick sick sick sick.

If Bill Maher ever has Andrew Breitbart on his show again, I'm going to stop watching him for good. Why should we give air time to someone who hires people like this.

If telling people that people in the Administration should be shot in the head isn't going to drive someone to kill someone, what is?

I can't believe that we are reduced to running Tweety clips, but there we are:

The right has denied that anything said by Glenn Beck is going to drive anyone to violence. When Beck talks about shooting people in the head because they are destroying this country, does hereally think that no one is going to actually do it?

Right now there is an elderly professor named Frances Fox Piven, who in a recent column in The Nation, called on the unemployed to form a mass movement. Piven is one of Glenn Beck's favorite targets because of her advocacy of movements to produce social change. It's interesting that in Glenn Beck's sick, twisted world. a mass movement of peaceful action by the powerless and the disenfranchised is a threat to America, but a mass movement of people toting guns because of an imagined totalitarian threat led by the first Black president is what he wants to see.

Like Orcs, Beck's minions are already rising to their master's call:

These are not pretty e-mails, but they appear positively decorous compared with what has been written about her by commentators on Glenn Beck's website, The Blaze, where she's been the target of a relentless campaign to demonize her—and worse. There, under cover of anonymous handles, scores of people have called for Piven's murder, even volunteering to do the job with their own hands. "Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 roundas [sic] ready and I'll give My life to take Our freedom back," wrote superwrench4. "ONE SHOT...ONE KILL!" proclaimed Jst1425. "The only redistribution I am interested in is that of a precious metal.... LEAD," declared Patriot1952.

I ventured into the cesspool that is The Blaze, and comments like this have been scrubbed -- not surprisingly, since there is undoubtedly someone out there right now preparing to take a shot at a 78-year-old professor no one had heard of until Beck decided to place her in his Pantheon o'Scapegoats.

The thing that's so dangerous about Glenn Beck is that I'm not convinced he's buying any of it. When you look at him, and his TV schtick, he seems more of a carnival barker than a right-wing rabble-rouser. I'm always reminded more of Andy Kaufman than of Rush Limbaugh when I see what Beck does, because while Limbaugh is a genuinely mean, greedy, hateful man who gets paid millions for stirring the rage pot of downwardly-mobile white American males, Beck seems simply to be a guy with a troubled background, steamer trunks of emotional baggage, who has found a form of performance art that has made him wealthy beyond his wildest imaginings.

The jury is still out on whether an overall climate of hate, of legitimizing violence against those who disagree with you politically, of scapegoating politicians for your own grievances, contributed to the Tucson shootings. I still maintain that when you create an echo chamber of violent rhetoric, you legitimize the plottings of those mentally ill who hear voices in their heads. After all, if the voices outside your own head confirm what the ones inside your own head are telling you, that must make it OK, right?

For eight years you could get kicked out of school for wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt. Wal-Mart would rat you out for a photo of an anti-Bush poster you made and you'd get a visit from the Secret Service. Hang one in the privacy of your dorm room without even taking a photo and you'd also get a visit from the Secret Service. Nuns and Quakers were put on no-fly lists. And neither Glenn Beck, nor the frothing hysterics screaming about how Obama is going to take away their penis substitutes guns, said a word. But now, with a black man in the White House, the kind of lunatic ravings you used to hear on street corners by unhinged people distributing crude, homemade pamphlets, are pumped into people's homes and into the public consciousness every single night.

Glenn Beck has as much right to rant and rave as the street corner guy used to. What he does not have is a right to have the public airwaves on which to do it.

Remember this?

Remember how all the Usual Suspects freaked out when in April 2009 the Department of Homeland security issued a report on the threat of right-wing extremism?

DHS/I&A assesses that a number of economic and political factors are
driving a resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalization activity.
Despite similarities to the climate of the 1990s, the threat posed by lone wolves and small
terrorist cells is more pronounced than in past years. In addition, the historical election of an African American president and the prospect of policy changes are proving to be a driving force for rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalization.

[snip]

Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment
tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential
administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and
citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use. Rightwing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns and leverage them as drivers for recruitment. From the 2008 election timeframe to the present, rightwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential sympathizers.

[snip]

Most statements by rightwing extremists have been rhetorical, expressing concerns about the election of the first African American president, but stopping short of calls for violent action. In two instances in the run-up to the election, extremists appeared to be in the early planning stages of some threatening activity targeting the Democratic nominee, but law enforcement interceded.

Of course now that has changed, with calls for vandalism of Democratic offices, death threats against Democratic legislators, open calls for killing those who disagree...

Perhaps the right wing freakout at the time was because those who were even then fanning the flames of violence knew it was spot-on accurate. It just took time for what the DHS reported a year ago to reach critical mass.

Meet the Republican Base: yet another in a series

At what point does the media and the Republican leadership start telling these people that this is unacceptable:

Reps. Louise Slaughter and Bart Stupak have received death threats.

A tea party participant published what he thought was Rep. Thomas Perriello’s home address and urged disgruntled voters to “drop by” for a “good face-to-face chat.”

Vandals broke windows at Slaughter’s office in New York and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s office in Arizona.

And angry voters are planning to protest this weekend at the home of Steve Driehaus — who’s already seen a photograph of his children used in a newspaper ad published by reform opponents.

The vitriolic health care debate has become personal — too personal, say House Democrats who voted for the bill and now find not just themselves but their families in the cross hairs of opponents.

Slaughter, a Democrat who chairs the House Rules Committee, said a caller to her office last week vowed to send snipers to “kill the children of the members who voted yes.” Her office reported the call to police, who were dispatched to provide protection for Slaughter’s grandchildren. She has also been in touch with the FBI and U.S. Postal Service inspectors, who intercepted a letter en route to her home in upstate New York.

Stupak, the Michigan Democrat whose last-minute compromise on abortion guaranteed passage of the bill Sunday, said callers have left messages for him saying, “You’re dead; we know where you live; we’ll get you.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34907.html#ixzz0j8oqoLrM

I really resent these people putting me in a position where I have to defend Bart Stupak. But all kidding aside, what is it going to take for this kind of behavior to be branded as what it is -- terrorist threats and thuggery -- instead of "A grassroots movement of people being heard." Is a Congressperson, or a member of their family, or God forbid the President himself, going to have to be lying in a pool of blood before someone finally says "Enough!"?

No one is trying to take away anyone's free speech rights. But when people are afraid for their safety in their own homes, the only word for these tactics is TERRORISM.

This is the imagery being used by John McCain's 2008 Vice-Presidential running mate

Sarah Palin has Democratic legislators in her gun sight:



Yes, folks, a would-be presidential candidate IS dog-whistling violence at her frothing minions. But hey, Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan and Dick Morris and anyone who thinks this woman should be president can think about her while they're in the bathroom with a bottle of baby oil and this image.

(via)

Oh. And MORE right-wing thuggery.

Meet The Republican Party Base

GOP: The Party of Legitimized Hate.

I'm really sick of the mainstream media and hacks like David Brooks insisting that there is no difference between teabaggers and Daily Kos. Voicing an opinion, even a hateful one, is not criminal, nor should it be. But I remember when incitement to violence was regarded as akin to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre -- where the First Amendment ends. We've seen teabaggers harass Parkinson's disease sufferers and threaten gun violence if health care reform passes (above). There was a time not so long ago that simply wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt could get you arrested. Now you can threaten gun violence against public officials and not a peep is uttered.

Here's what happened at today's tea party rally in Washington:

Preceding the president's speech to a gathering of House Democrats, thousands of protesters descended around the Capitol to protest the passage of health care reform. The gathering quickly turned into abusive heckling, as members of Congress passing through Longworth House office building were subjected to epithets and even mild physical abuse.

A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-M.D.) had been spit on by a protestor. Rep. John Lewis (D-G.A.), a hero of the civil rights movement, was called a 'ni--er.' And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a "faggot," as protestors shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams. Frank, approached in the halls after the president's speech, shrugged off the incident.

But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed such treatment since he was leading civil rights protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.

"It was absolutely shocking to me," Clyburn told the Huffington Post. "Last Monday, this past Monday, I stayed home to meet on the campus of Claflin University where fifty years ago as of last Monday... I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit ins... And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus."

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Republican Party base.

Seriously....What is wrong with these people?

I'd really like to know what the parents of these teabaggers did to them when they were small. First we found out that party planners at the annual CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) conference were working on creating a Nancy Pelosi piñata and a Harry Reid punching bag for the amusement of attendees. In an effort to appear not like the complete psychopathic monsters they are, however, they make clear that only women will be allowed to smack the Pelosi Pipiñata. I guess even their delicate sensibilities would be offended by a lineup of men waiting to beat on the effigy of a woman.

Now we have a tea party gathering out in Washington state where one adherent opined:

A tea party gathering in Asotin County, Washington turned more than a bit ugly on Saturday when a featured speaker actually called for the hanging of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash), the fourth ranking Democrat in the Senate and a vulnerable re-election candidate.

"How many of you have watched the movie Lonesome Dove?," asked an unidentified female speaker from the podium. "What happened to Jake when he ran with the wrong crowd? What happened to Jake when he ran with the wrong crowd. He got hung. And that's what I want to do with Patty Murray."

I'm serious: What the hell is wrong with these people? What kind of emotional and mental baggage do you have to have in order to find this kind of thing entertaining, or to think that the answer to every disagreement lies in the barrell of a gun? What kind of deep-seated, visceral terror leads people to this?

It's high time the media stopped calling these people some kind of patriotic grassroots revolt, especially when peaceful war protesters during the last administration were painted as terrorist sympathizers. Yes, you heard a lot of calls for impeachment during the last administration, including from me. You hear a lot of vitriol directed at Washington Republicans from the left. But I can guarantee you that no one was hitting a Bush punching bag at Netroots Nation and no one was advocating the mass murder of Republican politicians.

This murderousness is something that exists at the very core of these people. This is no longer a disagreement about the role of government. These are sick, sick, dangerous people, and should be treated as such.

I'm sure this won't affect Bill O'Reilly's desire to kidnap and waterboard Nancy Pelosi one bit

If you don't know what the title of this post refers to, here you go:

During a recent stop of the Bold & Fresh Tour with fellow Fox News personality Glenn Beck, right-wing talker Bill O'Reilly couldn't help but to spin a hypothetical.

In his fantasy world where Obama hires him as a presidential adviser, O'Reilly explained the first thing he'd do is lavishly decorate his office. Thing two would be having the CIA director kidnap top Democrats and "waterboard" Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

He was, of course, "joking" during the Jan. 23 appearance. The audience roared with laughter, even as O'Reilly had cautioned, "Don't tell anyone I said this, please."

Yes, because advocating abduction and torture of a public official, especially a female one, is such a laff riot. Ladies and gentlemen, meet your teabaggers.

I'm not sure what O'Reilly would get out of this, other than the boner he clearly gets when images of violence against women dance in his sick little cranium, but if he thinks waterboarding would somehow get her to "confess" something, he's wrong about that too:

Well, it's official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn't know what he was talking about.

Kiriakou, a 15-year veteran of the agency's intelligence analysis and operations directorates, electrified the hand-wringing national debate over torture in December 2007 when he told ABC's Brian Ross and Richard Esposito in a much ballyhooed, exclusive interview that senior al Qaeda commando Abu Zubaydah cracked after only one application of the face cloth and water.

[snip]

Now comes John Kiriakou, again, with a wholly different story. On the next-to-last page of a new memoir, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror (written with Michael Ruby), Kiriakou now rather off handedly admits that he basically made it all up.

"What I told Brian Ross in late 2007 was wrong on a couple counts," he writes. "I suggested that Abu Zubaydah had lasted only thirty or thirty-five seconds during his waterboarding before he begged his interrogators to stop; after that, I said he opened up and gave the agency actionable intelligence."

But never mind, he says now.

"I wasn't there when the interrogation took place; instead, I relied on what I'd heard and read inside the agency at the time."

Kiriakou needn't worry about his so-called reputation being marred with the wingnuts, though. Because for them, even if there is a one percent possibility that something could be true, in an alternate universe, every sixteenth leap year on February 29th, in the snow, both ways, uphill, it means it is a certainty.

And if you believe this WASN'T done by a teabagger, I've got a bridge to sell you

This is what happens when you take blind batshit crazy rage and fan the flames of anti-government rhetoric:

When Bill Sparkman told retired trooper Gilbert Acciardo that he was going door-to-door collecting census data in rural Kentucky, the former cop drawing on years of experience warned: "Be careful."

The 51-year-old Sparkman was found hanged from a tree near a Kentucky cemetery and had the word "fed" scrawled on his chest, a law enforcement official said Wednesday, and the FBI is investigating whether he was a victim of anti-government sentiment.

"Even though he was with the Census Bureau, sometimes people can view someone with any government agency as 'the government.' I just was afraid that he might meet the wrong character along the way up there," said Acciardo, who directs an after-school program at an elementary school where Sparkman was a frequent substitute teacher.

The Census Bureau has suspended door-to-door interviews in rural Clay County, where the body was found, until the investigation is complete, an official said.

The law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, did not say what type of instrument was used to write the word on the chest of Sparkman, who was supplementing his income doing Census field work. He was found Sept. 12 in a remote patch of Daniel Boone National Forest and an autopsy report is pending.

Manchester, the main hub of the southeastern Kentucky county, is an exit off the highway, with a Walmart, a few hotels, chain restaurants and a couple gas stations. The drive away from town and toward the area Sparkman's body was found is decidedly different, through the forest with no streetlights on winding roads, up and down steep hills and sparsely populated.

FBI spokesman David Beyer said the bureau is assisting state police and declined to discuss any details about the crime scene. Agents are trying to determine if foul play was involved and whether it had anything to do with Sparkman's job as Census worker, Beyer said. Attacking a federal worker during or because of his federal job is a federal crime.

I am, of course, jumping to conclusions, as I freely admit. But it's difficult to imagine a random murder being decorated with the word "fed" when the victim is a census worker and there are lunatics like Michele Bachmann, a sitting U.S. Congresswoman (to the eternal shame of those who put her there), railing against the census like a crazy person on the street.

Words have consequences. Incitement to violence has consequences. People like Glenn Beck are making millions doing exactly that, their paychecks signed by executives of supposedly mainstream publications. This crime is only the beginning, because there are tens of thousands of people being whipped into a frenzy by these hatemongers of right-wing talk radio and other mouthpieces of the lunatic right. It will be interesting to see them absolve themselves of any responsibility when things get REALLY ugly.

Questioning a prospective Supreme Court justice is not a lynching. Blue Girl is right: This crime is one.

Another hate murder

*Sigh*

Think back to all the ranting that Tom Tancredo and other Republicans and Lou Dobbs have done about immigration. Think of how they've been whipping people into a frenzy about marauding hordes from the south.

Now try to tell me that kind of talk does not lead to this:

An outspoken anti-immigration activist from Everett has been arrested in Arizona in connection to a deadly home invasion robbery.

Shawna Forde, the executive director of the Minutemen American Defense, is one of three accused in the shooting deaths of 29-year-old Raul Flores and his daughter, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores, at their home in Arivaca, Ariz., a town 10 miles north of the Mexican border.

Two others - 34-year-old Jason Bush and 42-year-old Albert Gaxiola - were arrested. All three have been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree burglary and one count of aggravated assault.

According to the Pima County Sheriff's Office, two men and a woman posing as police officers forced their way into the Flores ' home in the middle of the night on May 30.

It is not known exactly what transpired next, but Raul Flores and his daughter were shot and killed. The girl's mother was wounded and is recovering in a local hospital, deputies said.

Investigators believe the killings were premeditated by thieves looking for drugs and money.

On Thursday a tip led detectives to Bush, who was in a hospital in the Kingman area receiving treatment for wounds he allegedly sustained during the robbery.

On Friday deputies arrested Forde and Gaxiola in Sierra Vista and Tucson, respectively.

Investigators believe Forde masterminded the home invasion robbery, which Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik described as "evil" and "heinous."

"It was a planned home invasion where the plan was to kill all the people inside this trailer so there would be no witnesses," he said. "This is perhaps the most despicable crime that any of us in this organization has ever been associated with."

Moments after her arrest, Forde turned to news cameras and denied involvement in the deadly robbery with the words "No, I didn't."

But the sheriff described the woman as a dangerous, unstable person.

"If you look at her history closely and you know what we know, she's, at best, a psychopath," Dupnik said.

The mission of Forde's group is to secure U.S. borders and coastal boundaries from unlawful entry, as well as to "increase the awareness of the devastation caused by illegal immigration to our state and country," according to the group's Web site.

MAD sends volunteers to the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona for the purpose of "gathering exclusive footage of drug cartel drug smuggling and humane trafficking (sic)," Forde wrote on the site.

When you have people abusing the public airwaves to spout crap like this, and you tell lunatics with guns to "take their country back", people get killed. In this case, one of them was a 9-year-old child.

More about Shawna Forde from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

So how high will the body count go before the hatemongers and bigots admit their role in fanning these flames? And no, these are not isolated cases. I've linked to the terrific work Sara Robinson has been doing on the eliminationist movement in the last few days, but it's worth going back to look at what she wrote back in April, when the DHS report that was so derided by conservatives, came out:

The far right wing has been laying the groundwork for violent action for decades. Long before they turn dangerous, political and religious groups take their first step down that road by adopting a worldview that justifies eventual violent action. The particulars of the narrative vary, but the basic themes are always the same. First: their story is apocalyptic, insisting that the end of the world as we've known it is near. Second: it divides the world into a Good-versus-Evil/Us-versus-Them dualism that encourages the group to interpret even small personal, social, or political events as major battles in a Great Cosmic Struggle -- a habit of mind that leads the group to demonize anyone who disagrees with them. This struggle also encourages members to invest everyday events with huge existential meaning, and as a result sometimes overreact wildly to very mundane stuff.

Third: this split allows for a major retreat from consensus reality and the mainstream culture. The group rejects the idea that it shares a common future with the rest of society, and curls up into its own insular worldview that's impervious to the outside culture's reasoning or facts. Fourth: insiders feel like they're a persecuted, prophetic elite who are being opposed by wicked, tyrannical forces. Left to fester, this paranoia will eventually drive the group to make concrete preparations for self-defense -- and perhaps go on the offense against their perceived persecutors. Fifth: communities following this logic will also advocate the elimination of their enemies by any means necessary, in order to purify the world for their ideology.

All these ideas have been part of the discourse on the right for decades. You can trace their genesis all the way back to the 1950s, starting with the overheated apocalypticism of the anti-Communist movement. Over time, it came to include the dualism of the John Birch Society and assorted white supremacist groups; the persecution complex of Nixon and his Silent Majority followers; the anti-liberal eliminationism that's been gathering force for the past decade; and the war on evidence-based science and reason that's always been at the heart of conservative arguments. As J. Peter Scoblic argues in Us vs. Them, narratives that justify violence have always been deeply ingrained in the right-wing belief system.

Since the Inauguration, all of these themes are being played far more loudly and openly. And somewhere between November 4 and this 100th day, the right wing has also begun to act on these beliefs in ways that push the whole process to the next level -- the level where thoughts and beliefs begin to crystallize into action.

And here we are. Now the question is whether these people and the groups with which they affiliate are going to be treated as the terrorists they are, or if the Obama Justice Department is going to take some time out from throwing the gays under the bus and look at the domestic terrorism that is happening right here, right now. On a recent Real Time with Bill Maher, Botox Blonde and Bush Apologist Fran Townsend tried to draw parallels between PETA, Greenpeace and guys like the murderers of George Tiller, Stephen Johns, and others. Maher dropped the ball on this, omitting the reality that however misguided the efforts of PETA and Earth Liberation Front and other such groups may be, their primary objective isn't killing people, and these groups are not embraced by the Democratic Party the way the Minutemen, with which Shawna Forde is associated and Operation Rescue, with which Scott Roeder is affilated, is embraced by the Republican Party.

Sorry, but Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage and Michael Reagan and Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity and Dick Cheney and Tom Tancredo and Jeff Sessions and John Boehner and the entire Republican Party owns these people. They own them lock, stock and barrel. When you hold a mirror up to the Republican rhetoric about race and women and minorities for the last thirty years, ever since their patron Saint Ronald Reagan took office, it's the faces of Shawna Forde, James W. Van Brunn, and Scott Roeder that look back at them.

And damn it if they don't like what they see.

These people truly are reprehensible

Don't tell ME the Republicans don't want someone to take a shot at Obama -- and his family.

From Media Matters:

First Fox Nation posts an image of a gun pointed at President Obama's head:



And now the Washinton Times joins in:


What's next, Gordon Liddy using photos of the Obamas for target practice?

It was not a liberal who did this

Oklahoma City, April 19, 1995

Letter from Timothy McVeigh to Fox News' Rita Cosby, April 2001:

I explain herein why I bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. I explain this not for publicity, nor seeking to win an argument of right or wrong. I explain so that the record is clear as to my thinking and motivations in bombing a government installation.

I chose to bomb a federal building because such an action served more purposes than other options. Foremost, the bombing was a retaliatory strike; a counter attack, for the cumulative raids (and subsequent violence and damage) that federal agents had participated in over the preceding years (including, but not limited to, Waco.) From the formation of such units as the FBI's "Hostage Rescue" and other assault teams amongst federal agencies during the '80's; culminating in the Waco incident, federal actions grew increasingly militaristic and violent, to the point where at Waco, our government - like the Chinese - was deploying tanks against its own citizens.

Knowledge of these multiple and ever-more aggressive raids across the country constituted an identifiable pattern of conduct within and by the federal government and amongst its various agencies. For all intents and purposes, federal agents had become "soldiers" (using military training, tactics, techniques, equipment, language, dress, organization, and mindset) and they were escalating their behavior. Therefore, this bombing was also meant as a pre-emptive (or pro-active) strike against these forces and their command and control centers within the federal building. When an aggressor force continually launches attacks from a particular base of operation, it is sound military strategy to take the fight to the enemy.

Additionally, borrowing a page from U.S. foreign policy, I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government. Bombing the Murrah Federal Building was morally and strategically equivalent to the U.S. hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq, or other nations. Based on observations of the policies of my own government, I viewed this action as an acceptable option. From this perspective, what occurred in Oklahoma City was no different than what Americans rain on the heads of others all the time, and subsequently, my mindset was and is one of the clinical detachment. (the bombing of the Murrah building was not personal , no more than when Air Force, Army, Navy, or Marine personnel bomb or launch cruise missiles against government installations and their personnel.)

I hope that this clarification amply addresses your question.

Sincerely, Timothy J. McVeigh
USP Terre Haute (IN)

Wingnut radio personality Melanie Morgan, speaking about Nancy Pelosi, November 2005:

"We've got a bull's-eye painted on her big, wide laughing eyes."

Remark by Brian Smith, a marketer from Greenville, SC to Salon's Mike Madden at a "tea party" in Washington, DC

"I love my country and I don't like what's going on...Government -- to be honest with you, and this will probably be misquoted, but on 9/11, I think they hit the wrong building. They should have gone into the Capitol building, hit out, knocked out both sides of the aisle, we'd start from scratch, we'd be better off today...Yeah, I know, they missed. The wrong sequence. If someone had to go, it should have been the Capitol building. On that day I felt differently, but today that's the way I feel."

Republican Rep. Michelle Bachmann, March 2009:

'I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, “Having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,” and the people – we the people – are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country.'

James Dobson, April 14, 2009:

There are no Timothy McVeighs out there right now.

Imagine if Obama supporters were screaming that John McCain should be killed

John McCain, of course, thinks this is actually happening, but then John McCain seems to think he is the center of the universe and that when his supporters scream "Kill him!" when Barack Obama's name is mentioned at his rallies and those for his lipsticked pitbull, it's he, John McCain, who's the real victim.

Keith Olbermann weighed in last night on the pitchfork-and-torch would-be lynch mob that attends Republican rallies these days and how it reflects on the candidate:

Nasty Ugly People.

And Sarah Palin is their muse:

"Okay, so Florida, you know that you're going to have to hang onto your hats," Sarah Palin told a rally of a few thousand here this morning, "because from now until Election Day it may get kind of rough."

You betcha. And the person dishing out the roughest stuff at the moment is Sarah Palin.

"I was reading my copy of the New York Times the other day," she said.

"Booooo!" replied the crowd.

"I knew you guys would react that way, okay," she continued. "So I was reading the New York Times and I was really interested to read about Barack's friends from Chicago."

It was time to revive the allegation, made over the weekend, that Obama "pals around" with terrorists, in this case Bill Ayers, late of the Weather Underground. Many independent observers say Palin's allegations are a stretch; Obama served on a Chicago charitable board with Ayers, now an education professor, and has condemned his past activities.

"Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," Palin said.

"Boooo!" said the crowd.

"And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued.

"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Isn't advocating the murder of a presidential candidate something the Secret Service ought to look into? Isn't incitement to murder a presidential candidate something that should be regarded as unseemly in a Vice Presidential candidate?

You know, there are towns near where I live where the social climbing among the hockey moms and soccer moms and fencing moms and lacrosse moms is pretty ferocious. But even here in New Jersey, they aren't like this dame.

(h/t)