Either that or someone photoshopped the phone records:
Federal prosecutors have charged a Washington state man, Charles Wilson, with repeatedly making threatening calls to Sen. Patty Murray’s district office, threatening to kill her because of her support for the health-care bill.
FBI agents say they arrested Wilson after getting telephone records and calling him to confirm that his voice matched the voice left on voice mail in Sen. Murray’s office. Agents called, posing as opponents of the health-care bill, and engaged in a 14-minute conversation with him.
This is what Murray gets for defying the will of the American people.
GambitRF
I blame Nancy Pelosi’s gavel
ellaesther
I’m sure he spelled his threats perfectly.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Liberal lies!!
Brian J
Although their right to protest was never in question, it’s become worrisome to see the Teabaggers out in force. The majority of them aren’t acting like this, however ill-informed their political notions are, but my guess is that by feeling as if they are part of a group, their ideas of what is acceptable become twisted. It’s like the diffusion of responsibility spread across the entire country. And while it’s not fair to necessarily blame the Republicans for this, I wish they would come out more forcefully against it, because one of these days, someone will unfortunately get hurt, or worse yet killed. They will then have blood on their hands.
Fergus Wooster
Between this asshole and the recent militia arrest, expect the “jackbooted thugs cracking down on patriots” meme to escalate.
It’s just like the White Rose, people!
TR
You decided against the obvious title? “Charlie Wilson’s War”?
Your loss.
Mark S.
Why is the FBI dangerously fanning the flames here?
beltane
Surely the FBI has overreacted. All this guy was doing was expressing his awesome authenticity by making death threats against an elected official. Patty Murray must have hurt his feelings by looking down on him for being a bloody minded assclown.
Undercover FBI Agent DougJ
You decided against the obvious title? “Charlie Wilson’s War”?
I lose.
Sentient Puddle
They didn’t just post as mere “opponents” of the health care bill. According to TPM, it was an industry-backed anti-reform group. The fact that they were able to get this dude to open up to being so threatening just by saying that they were a part of this group strikes me as a fairly important detail.
geg6
Damn, just posted this in the last thread. Here’s the complaint:
http://www.justice.gov/usao/waw/press/2010/apr/pdfs/wilson%20complaint.pdf
And whaddayaknow? Dude’s on Social Security but he doesn’t want no damn sockalists in his gubmint.
Paris
The transcripts are pretty scary:
http://tinyurl.com/yhw9cc4
Chyron HR
Clearly a hoax. Any real Teabagger transcript would have FAR more instances of “(unintelligible)”.
WereBear
It’s not just that the lunatics are running the asylum.
It’s also that their leaders see nothing wrong with that.
FormerSwingVoter
These jack-booted thugs are taking his freedoms!!!!111one
Brian J
@GambitRF:
Tom Coburn, who isn’t anyone’s idea of a Marxist revolutionary or a fake maverick, was recently booed because he said Nancy Pelosi was a nice lady even as he indicated he didn’t share many beliefs with her and blamed her for holding up an extension of unemployment benefits. If only more Republicans were to say something good like that.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Is it just me, or does this phrase simply reek of the Jacobins and Bolsheviks? When I hear this phrase coming from the lips of people who are (apparently) deathly afraid of soshulism, it makes me dizzy. I know irony is dead, but do they have to keep digging up the corpse and mutilating it like this?
EthylEster
and the folks who DO see things wrong with it make jokes about it.
Violet
@ ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
No, it reeks of religious fanatics – “The will of God.” I don’t think it’s an accident that the Christianist wingnuts are the ones flinging this phrase around.
Bulworth
“…repeatedly making threatening calls to Sen. Patty Murray’s district office.”
So I guess it wasn’t just a one-time thing.
Catsy
Strange as it may sound, it is possible to both joke about something and take it seriously. It’s true! People are complex, and may even multitask on occasion!
JGabriel
I can’t believe that NO ONE has yet run with the headline: Karzai Talks Smack And Shoots.
.
Ash Can
It’s not his fault. Patty Murray forced him to do this by being such a radical leftist.
(Yes, my lurking FBI friends, that is most assuredly snark.)
Bokonon
If only liberals would stop provoking ordinary, freedom-loving people by doing vicious stuff like governing (and showing themselves in public, by daylight). If they would just cower and be intimidated and accept their fate, then we would have less of this!
Besides, Nancy Pelosi provoked freedom-loving people everywhere into complete madness by carrying a big gavel in public. We all know what that means. It was just like the Nazis demonstrating in Skokie in the 1970’s – but, like, what it would have looked like if the Nazis were all women and were dressed in business suits and were carrying an enormous phallic symbol … oh my god!
Horrible times we live in. The fascism. The fascism.
Linda Featheringill
I read the court complaint.
Charlie likes words with the letter “u” in them, doesn’t he?
He seemed to be trying very hard to dehumanize his target [so it would be easier to kill her?].
So this genius left those messages on voice mail several days running? That is not very bright.
The real problem, of course, is that someday somebody not quite so dense will feel the same way and won’t bother advertising his feelings or intent. An then really do some serious harm.
Scary.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
A Robert Palmer music video?
Linda Featheringill
To General Stuck:
I can see the video now: Very red lipstick, all the ladies in matching suits, skirts a bit shorter than Nancy wears them, heels a little higher than Nancy wears them.
Actually, it sounds cool.
Legalize
Anyone know if the Senator has ever made an appearance in public? If so, this seems like a clear-cut case of her provoking an attack.
flukebucket
Meanwhile my new Georgia Tea Party friend just sent me this.
AhabTRuler
[email protected]: Yeah, well, those helicopters ain’t gonna laugh at themselves, y’know.
M. Bouffant
Not in favor of calling in death threats or anything, but today’s technology has certainly put a damper on prank phone calling.
I believe the General right above has just won something.
LuciaMia
Limbaugh recently ranted about the Obama ‘regime’ going against teh will of the people, despite the election!
Still trying to figure out which election he’s refering to.
I bow to you.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Pg. 9, lines 12 & 13:
“They want to come throw me in jail, they can go ahead and do that. That’s fine.”
Wish granted!
MikeJ
This is why I didn’t take cookies around after the ACA passed. Didn’t think staffers would trust people off the street.
AhabTRuler
[email protected]: You mean like ‘harbour’ or ‘colour’? That monster!
asiangrrlMN
Oh crap. Now I got Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love video running through my mind, but the updated version. Damn you, Gen. Stuck! #Shakes fist at General Stuck#.
As for making jokes, hell yeah! It helps dissipate some of the frustration and anger I feel over shit like this. I read the message he left on Sen. Murray’s voice mail, and it just pisses me the fuck off. So condescending (my dear) and delusional (you’ll see how cowardly we are) and filled with anti-sockulism rants. It doesn’t surprise me one whit that he’s on SS.
OT: Oh, fuck. Ratface Pawlenty is doubling down on the crazy.
AhabTRuler, snert. I have to remember the helicopters line. That joke never gets old!
Bob K
Hey – he was only doing what Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck/etc. etc. etc. told him to do. I think Rupert Murdoch will be picking up his legal bills. It’s all in fun. Freakin’ left wingers are too thin skinned.
JGabriel
General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Nah. It would look like a Jesse James home video.
.
Ash Can
@ LuciaMia:
All those drugs must be frying the hell out of his brain.
Rhoda
It’s things like this that piss me off at the thought that anyone is going to be staying home this November for any reason and won’t vote the Democratic party line down the ticket.
Hell, if Lincoln made it through the AR Democratic primary I’d vote for her over the Republican every single day and twice on Sunday. I’d hope that black and latino voters that came out in November of ’08 would come out again and same with younger voters. I honestly don’t understand anyone staying at home with these crazies standing between us and two years of legislative trench warfare.
If it works in ’10 the Republicans are going to bring everything to a halt hoping to make Obama look like an ineffectual loser in ’12.
bkny
ya know, if you’re gonna make death threats via the telephone, you might want to make them from a pay phone. blocking your number is easily trumped … esp if you’re the effin f…..b…..i….
god, the stupid.
Bulworth
Perhaps Limbo is referring to the election of President Scotty Pickup Truck Brown.
Bob K
Who knew? Apparently the KKK has a new Grand Wizard. Kind of reminds me of that scene from “Blazing Saddles” –
“Where the white women at?”
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/06/mcdonnell-confederate/
Elie
This is such a sad time… in between chuckling at the gallows humor of B-J commenters, I still feel such sadness that passing health care reform — giving some more people access to health care — many of whom are teabaggers and who can barely meet their financial obligations — would lead to such threats of violence… that helping people with a big part of guaranteeing a good life would be met with contempt and derision rather than celebration. I briefly listened to NPR and to other news programs in passing and the message these outlets repeat over and over is one of negativity and opposition.
Really, what is wrong with us? Will we ever again be well?
jenniebee
There’s no way to know yet if he was actually affiliated with a Tea Party, and he denies it himself in one of his rants, but it’s certain that he’s a Beck devotee. His phrasing in some of those tirades was straight from Beck – what caught me was the “awakened a sleeping giant” declaration. I’ve only encountered that from people who were Beck enthusiasts during his 9/12 Project phase. The woman who accosted Arlen Specter at his Townhall meeting used the exact same phrasing, picked up from Beck who pushed that phrase quite a bit.
Not that this isn’t what everybody here probably already would have guessed, but I thought it worth mentioning.
Svensker
A gavel is a phallic symbol? Kind of an odd shape. Maybe if you turn it around?
Maybe Nancy’s trying to get into the schlong measuring thing.
JGabriel
asiangrrlMN:
This would be amusing if the money for the HCR suits were coming out of GOP coffers. As it is, coming out of state funds that could be better spent elsewhere, it’s infuriating.
I’m so glad my state isn’t involved in this particular bullshit. My sympathies to those living in state’s that are.
.
Linda Featheringill
To flukebucket:
Those two fine young men in the video have gone out and joined the marines, haven’t they? Since they are so hot to wage war, you know.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Like roads and bridges?
Polar Bear Squares
Everytime I see the Burkean Bells tag, I bust out laughing.
Seriously tho, it doesn’t seem like “both sides” are doing this. One side is making the threats and the other side is receiving them.
Crazy.
Josh Huaco
But, but, but what about the kerning on that transcript?
MikeBoyScout
You watch, none of the sure to lose Republican candidates for Senator Murray’s seat will come out and publicly disavow support of those who think like this.
prediction: what you will hear, if you hear anything, is innocent until proven guilty. dog whistles.
Uriel
Today, we are all Charlie Wilson. Patty Murray is worse than a hundred hitlers and stalins thrown in a blender and set to evil for six hundred and sixty six seconds.
If only there was someone who could stand up to the thuggish Patty Murray and declaim, for we the people, for all us Charlie Wilsons:
“We will not let you assassinate Charlie Wilson further, Senator. You’ve done enough, with your sneaker shoes and soshalisim of medicines and your Pike Street Prostitution of babies, or something. Have you no sense of decency, Patty Murray, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
Also, I suppose they would probably have to add something like “fuck you, you fucking pike street god damned whore fucking slut- fuck you god damn fucking fuck damn,” at the end, to keep it authentic, although I think it hurts the flow a bit.
Ash Can
@ Bob K: I followed that link and spotted the WTF Headline Of the Day at Think Progress:
“Michigan Militia plans ‘open carry’ gun tea party to ‘take the stigma out of the word “militia.”‘”
The Darwin Awards are unpacked, polished up, and ready to be handed out.
Mnemosyne
You mean things like bridges? I guess it’s more important for the people of Minnesota to not have healthcare than it is for them to not have their bridges collapse under them.
Only 13 people died when the I-35 bridge collapsed. Think of how many more deaths Pawlenty will be able to claim responsibility for when he stops healthcare reform in his state!
Bob L
No way! A Teabagger on a government hand out? Who would have though.
slippy
This “Will of the American people” thing is getting so old I want to abandon it on a friggin’ ice floe.
The “will” of the American people was last checked in November 2008. We chose Obama. End of discussion until November of 2012.
Republicans love to talk about the will of the people but they seem to have trouble hearing us when we don’t choose Republican.
Often it seems as if Republicans want to pretend the conversation is all up in the air right up until the balance tips in their favor, and then they shout “Game Over!” and try to stop all the activity. This is what I perceived them doing during the 2000 election.
And they’re doing it now. Except instead of calling for an END to the tug of war, they are pretending that our quadrennial election is just a suggestion and that really the question of who is in charge lingers for all the time between 2008 and 2012, and can in fact be revoked at any time if they just get red-faced angry enough about it.
I have completely lost all respect for Republicans because of this. I consider their opinion on any topic to be utterly irrelevant. Until they quit treating politics like some silly game of Calvinball and grow the hell up, screw them.
Punchy
An Irish Senator in Washington state? What next, a Black House Rep from Utah?
slippy
@ Uriel
That is pure gold. I plan on polishing it and selling it to one of those companies that advertise on the Glenn Beck show.
JGabriel
BREAKING NEWS! Scientists Discover Heavy New Element:
It’s only stable for 40ms, so they’re thinking of calling it glennbeckium.
Also under consideration: teabaggium.
.
jenniebee
@Josh 51 – quick, someone break out a sandtable and check the turn radius on his telephone!
Internet Scavenger Hunt:
* Post or comment arguing that this is an infringement of free speech
* Post arguing that obviously the accused wouldn’t have acted on any of the threats because he had telegraphed his intentions so clearly, and that by arresting people who are just venting, liberals are cutting off a needed outlet for conservative anger, for which only liberals may now be held responsible.
* Post or comment arguing that liberals are escalating the situation via the arrest by the FBI, leaving
conservativespatriots no choice but to mount an armed resistance before they can be thrown in jail by the aforementioned liberal FBI.* Post or comment arguing that the accused should have been left alone because as long as he was on the phone he obviously wasn’t a real threat, since he would need both hands to aim a rifle.
* Double points for any of the above written by an NRO contributor.
scav
and can we just get an ever so brief OT pause for the Young Eagles (TPM link) that seem to think The Billionaires for Bush are actual allies and role models.
Quaker in a Basement
Tuned in Limbaugh while driving for a big lunch burrito. Rush says it’s Obama’s fault. Sez Wilson got lured.
JGabriel
jenniebee:
Even more damning: it always dials from the left.
.
JGabriel
slippy @ 57:
No. Let’s NOT devolve into Bush/Cheney talking points. The practice of representative democracy is an ongoing discussion between citizens and the politicians who represent them in the government.
The problem isn’t that the will of the people is being ignored, it’s that a small minority with extreme right-wing views is claiming that they alone are the voice of Real Americans.
.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T but MSNBC has indefinitely suspended David Shuster. That’ll larn ‘im to make demo tapes for CNN.
Davis X. Machina
Is it just me, or does this phrase simply reek of the Jacobins and Bolsheviks?
The GOP has been effectively the last significant Leninist political party in the West for about 15 years.
A vanguard party of professional revolutionaries: Check—
That can achieve its aims only via a rigorously enforced democratic centralism: Check–
Class warfare: Check —
Dedication of all the organs of the state to serve the needs of the Party, to further the Revolution: Check —
Propaganda directed at the proletariat to overcome its age-old, organic societal false consciousness. Check —
Struggle against mere ‘trade union consciousness’: Check–
If “The Proletariat” is replaced by “A buncha bondholders” and “the withering away of the state” is replaced by “the final triumph of free markets, DIck Armey or Newt Gingrich could have written ‘Shto dyelat?’
All power to the Soviets of bankers and preachers!
damn good mr. jam
No big deal, it’s not like he threw eggs at a bus.
bkny
#54 “Michigan Militia plans ‘open carry’ gun tea party to ‘take the stigma out of the word “militia.”’”
The Darwin Awards are unpacked, polished up, and ready to be handed out.
you just know that one of those rootin’ tootin’ baggers is bound to show off his mad gun skilz … and end up shooting himself in the crotch.
Dungheap
Well, in one of his rants he mentions that Murray was in Yakima the week prior:
And it just so happens that some Tea Baggers decided to stage a rally while Senator Murray appeared at the Yakima County Chamber of Commerce luncheon:
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fix’t.
I hope that ol’ Charlie is enjoying his new accommodations and that any rabid teabaggers/Beckroids out there find themselves in a similar situation real soon.
Zifnab
Sounds like a distinction without a difference.
I’d say a sizable, if not bigger, problem is that the small minority continues to make up fabulous conspiracy theories and wild accusations purely for political gain. And that these claims get floated through the media unchallenged.
You can’t have a functional representative Democracy if no one has any genuine idea of what their representatives represent.
asiangrrlMN
Ratface Pawlenty has a long history (well, his tenure as governor) for disliking healthcare for the poor. He balanced the budget on the backs of the poorest Minnesotans, yet, pushed for the tax increase for the Hennepin County Tax Payers Stadium. He fits in nicely with the Republican Party.
ETA: The second link is basically the draft for the first link. Sorry about that.
ksmiami
And these clowns think they deserve to be elected in 2010… For what? They can kiss my demo as*. I want to make sure no Republicans win in November in 2010, 2012 and for the rest of my life. The party is a disgrace to governance.
slippy
@JGabriel: It’s not a Bush/Cheney talking point. It’s simply an observation that the election is over and Obama won and these fucking children need to get over it.