Eric Fuller, one of the shooting victims last week, who when we last checked was on the receiving end of a five minute hate fest from the wingnuts, lost his shit at an event and was arrested for making threats:
The theme of the event was “An American Conversation Continued” — the idea being to continue the conversation that a madman’s brutal rampage had interrupted. So it was inevitable that the conversation would eventually turn to politics. It did, toward the end, with Amanpour leading a discussion on a very touchy but obvious topic: gun control.
That’s where the atmosphere turned tense. When Tucson Tea Party founder Trent Humphries rose to suggest that any conversation about gun control should be put off until after the funerals for all the victims, witnesses say Fuller became agitated. Two told KGUN9 News that finally, Fuller took a picture of Humphries, and said, “You’re dead.”
When State Rep. Terri Proud (R-Tucson) rose to explain and clarify current and proposed gun legislation in the state, several people groaned or booed her. One of those booing, according to several witnesses, was Fuller. Witnesses sitting near Fuller told KGUN9 News that Fuller was making them feel very uncomfortable.
The event wrapped up a short time later. Deputies then escorted Fuller from the room. As he was being led off, Fuller shouted loudly to the room at large. Several witnesses said that what they thought they heard him shout was, “You’re all whores!”
Couple of thoughts:
1.) Clearly Fuller is not in a good place right now mentally. I’m not sure how I would be, either, to be honest, if I had just watched a bunch of people murdered and had been shot twice. They guy needs some serious help, and I think he might have a pretty good legal defense for his behavior.
2.) What on earth were these media folks thinking letting this turn into a political discussion? Talk about bad judgment.
3.) I’d re-state that I think it is important for everyone to tone down the talk, and that these sorts of threats and intimidation are really toxic and create a horrible environment, but every time someone says something like that they are accused of blood libel. Regardless, everyone needs to take it down a notch.
The Dangerman
Hoping for exactly what they got; feature, not a bug.
Slide
I’m glad civility is taking hold.
MikeBoyScout
I know i should care, but i don’t.
STILLERS WIN!!!!!!
dr. bloor
“KGUN9.” Of course.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
I posted this in the other thread, but according to CNN, Fuller has been involuntarily committed to a county mental health facility. He seems to hold the tea party responsible for his getting shot and it was a bad idea to have the shooting victims in the same room with that tea party leader.
policomic
You know what this means, right?
A. After months of eliminationist rhetoric from right-wingers, a Democratic Representative is shot in an attempted assassination, and several other people are killed or wounded.
B. One of the wounded victims threatens a tea-partier.
Now it’s all even! Both sides! Balance!
Evolved Deep Southerner
That expression about reaping what one has sown is a sword that can cut both ways, no?
Bender
“Eliminationist rhetoric” which, again, I must point out, is almost entirely a figment of your imagination.
Don’t let reality stop a good hate-rant, though!
gwangung
@Bender: Lie.
You’d do better to exaggerate.
Ruckus
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
Unfortunately not in this case. PeeTardiers and conservatives in general never see two sides to, well, anything. They see their way. Only. So that sword only cuts them, never the other way.
ETA See #8
tkogrumpy
@Evolved Deep Southerner: Please explain what that means.
sherifffruitfly
Fuck all the “everyone needs to” and “we all need to” liars.
When our side is responsible for more than .0000000001% of the violent rhetoric, give me a call – you might have a point then. Might.
It’s not “everyone”. It’s not all of “us”. It’s an easily-identifiable sub-group of us: republicans. To say anything else is simply a lie.
magurakurin
I see the whole thing from eyes that have developed a very different perspective since I have lived abroad for the last 12 years. Two things I see and it goes beyond the whole RedState BlueState split and the Tea Party movement. Obviously, politics are a part of all this, but to me the deeper ill is the ingrained acceptance of gun violence and death in American society and the weakness of the mental health system. Many Americans just accept gun deaths as an unavoidable part of life. To many it is saddening, but there is nothing that can be done because guns are a right, nearly as sacred as breathing air. Along with that, mental health issues are mainly dealt with in a crisis management way and not in preventative way(I suppose the entire health care system could face the same verdict.)
This poor man faced a horrible, traumatic violent event and then American society just expects him to suck it up and “move on.” Were the victims and the people there offered any sort of professional help in dealing with the horror they experienced? I truly don’t know, but I suspect not. I sort of hope I am wrong and something was set up for these people. But on the whole, many Americans(of course not all) just accept gun violence too readily. It doesn’t have to be that way. I also realize, though, that this disfunctional love affair with guns that America endures will probably never end and that is why I think the problem is so much deeper than the current political strife. Certainly, the current political environment is an element, but the undercurrent of violence and the means to use it runs very deep indeed.
It’s a topsy-turvy country, my home I have left. The rest of the world has no guns and health care. You folks have no health care and lots of guns.
tkogrumpy
@Bender: I see a river in Egypt.
gbear
It’s not cool that Fuller shouted threats at someone, but it’s really stupid to actually arrest someone who’s just been thru a mass shooting for getting upset with people who use ‘second ammendment’ language as just another tool. Couldn’t they have just gotten him out of the room without hauling him in?
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): Jesus, I hope this is a brief hospitalization and he gets the help he needs.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
SEE! LIEBERULS ARE ALL OUT TO KILL US!
cathyx
I think it’s too late to expect the talk to be toned down. It’s been allowed to escalate to a fevered pitch for 10 years and now you can’t put that toothpaste back into the tube.
Ailuridae
@Bender:
You’re a stupid fucker, you know that, right?
Do you understand what eliminationism even is?
Go fellate a shot gun.
tkogrumpy
@gbear: It won’t be a bad thing for Fuller. He will now get the help he needs to cope with what was surely a horrendous event. The news media is all over this and should prevent abuse by exposing it.
Moonbatting Average
The right wing is gonna make so much hay with this, It’ll be apocalyptic. Forget their umbrage over the left’s “making political points” over this, the cashing in begins now in earnest.
JPL
Fuller is going to get help but what about the other victims?
@policomic: I hope you are wrong. If our country doesn’t show some empathy, I don’t want to live here anymore. Canada might be cold but wth.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Ruckus: I’m not really talking about what THOSE crazy fuckers see, Ruckus. But the teabaggers aren’t the only people with eyes – in fact, they don’t represent anything close to a majority, though they imagine they do. They imagine a lot of things.
I’ve given up on convincing those people of a God damn thing. But the takeaway most people will have from the Fuller incident – and I’m not talking about the left-of-center crowd here, either, because they can be pretty damn insular in their own way – will, I suspect, be more nuanced than any teabagger (or a lot of the people here, for that matter) could imagine.
Here’s this guy. A veteran. Shot in the knee. Super-atomic pissed at the least and completely unmoored at the most. What of it? When rational, non-teabagger people break that down, do you really think their takeaway will be the same as Rush Limbaugh’s?
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Yup. It’s called the 1st Amendment.
Linda Binda
What was a Tea Party guy doing there, anyway? When is ABC going to stop trolling their audience?
Why don’t they invite a Chinese Communist Party member the next time they want to hold a discussion about freeing Tibet? Why don’t they invite Tariq Aziz the next time they want to discuss whether or not the Kurds really had it all that bad in Saddam-era Iraq? Why don’t they invite another Holocaust denier and have him argue with a Jewish history professor again about World War II? It’s fair and balanced, after all.
What a bunch of morons.
gwangung
I think that’s quite important.
But there’s the back part of my head that says the people I’d come down the lightest on are the direct victims here….
Martin
Anyone else notice that the local Tuscon station that reported this is KGUN9.
Not helping dispel the preconceptions of Arizona, there, channel 9…
Evolved Deep Southerner
@tkogrumpy: What this means:
This guy has come unglued at what happened to him, and he sounds pretty damn convinced about why it happened.
You stand up, snap a picture, and say “You’re dead.”
Do you not think that he was saying “How does it feel to be in the crosshairs, fucker?”
Whether he meant to take that picture and post it somewhere for real, or whether he was just fucking with the guy, or whether he’s just come unglued because of PTSD or whatever … however you choose to interpret it, it is the sword cutting the other way, is it not?
kth
If I witnessed a massacre and was wounded in it, hearing some asshole argue that the best way to prevent such incidents is for more people to pack heat would definitely drive me around the bend (not that it’s a long drive).
Buck
Cooooool…. Fuller’s a victim – TWICE. How dare we discuss taking guns out of the hands of the mentally imbalanced.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
I’ve used that phrase (or variants) on siblings, friends, people who cut me off in traffic so I hope it isn’t considered a death threat.
But by midnight the denizens of the blargosphere will KNOW Fuller screamed “Ima kill you muthafucka!” and brandished a sawed off shotgun.
gwangung
@Evolved Deep Southerner: If the Tea Party in AZ had any scrap of common sense, they’d just shut up and not say a thing.
Svensker
How the hell do you think a guy who’s just been shot and just watched other people get killed would react to some asshole talking about frigging gun rights? This stupid gun disease is killing America. And I grew up with hunters, worked for a handgun manufacturer and was in the Army, so I don’t want to hear any coastal elite wimpy liberal crap from the likes of Bender, et al.
Nick
Lets try to get someone on the left to pop so we can be justified in blaming both sides.
beltane
@Slide: Yes, and that rally for sanity brought us sanity.
Buck
Question…. How would the crowd have felt if Fuller had been “packing” tonight?
I wonder how that little gathering would have turned out? Makes one wonder.
MoonBatista
It’s enough to require me to have a cranberry/pomegranate/seltzer in a stemmed glass and turn off the interwebz.
arguingwithsignposts
Well, I keep hearing samuel l. jackson.
Moonbatting Average
@Evolved Deep Southerner: Your optimism, if I can call it that, is totally misplaced, IMO. Veteran and/or victim status will not protect this guy, the wingers will latch on to this and attack relentlessly.
J
@Linda Binda: precisely!
Evolved Deep Southerner
@gwangung: You’re right. If they had any sense, they’d shut the fuck up. But they haven’t. Those people have never, ever been dealt a hand they could not manage to overplay. But they don’t understand anything but the bluntest of “calls,” do they? Did Fuller not, on some level, call their hand on a level that even those reptilian fuckers could understand?
I wonder if any of the photographers there happened to snap a photo of the AZ teabagger guy’s face as he realized what was happening, what Fuller was doing and saying. That would probably say more than any of our words of speculation here.
Buck
@Moonbatting Average:
They’d latch on and attack even if the victim were on his or her deathbed. (Unless the victim’s last name is Schiavo. Then it’s more of a twisted Republican fundraiser.)
4tehlulz
The only way to stop the pogrom against Real Americans is to commit shooting victims until they acknowledge the true victim of their ordeal: Sarah Palin.
Ruckus
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
I was agreeing with you.
PeeTardiers are not rational. Conservatives are not rational. That’s my opinion and until I hear anything from one of them to convince me otherwise I sticking with it. And not holding my breath.
A rational person would realize that under current conditions bringing politics into a discussion such as this one this soon after such a horrific event, with victims involved would turn ugly. And it did. Any calls for more guns to handle horrific events such as the one last week do not come from a rational perspective.
Now to answer your actual question. No. A rational person will not come up with anything that remotely resembles the crap that spews from that fat fucks mouth. But that’s why I referenced comment #8, to make our point that rationality is in short supply for a fairly large segment of our population.
gbear
Easy-to-use cameras are often referred to as ‘point-and-shoot’ cameras. That’s how I refer to my camera. I realize this is kind of an eye-rolling euphamism, but I’m wondering if this might be what Fuller was thinking when he lost his temper. The camera was the only tool he had. I feel so sad for this guy.
Nick
@Linda Binda:
Here’s the rules
If it’s an issue that A.) the left cares about and B.) is popular, the media will always present the “fair and balanced” angle, which is to give the other side carte blanche to reshape public opinion while ignoring the left, because no one will ever push back, the left will just form its circular firing squad and the media will be warmly rewarded from its sugar daddies.
I thought this was obvious by now.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Moonbatting Average: I’m sure you’re right. But I’m just wondering how well such attacks will resonate with any non-winger.
They will take this “opportunity” as a way to further isolate themselves. I’m surprised and disappointed that their “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” moment hasn’t come way before now. But I’m optimistic that it is coming. Every reaction they’ve had to this situation – and every reaction they’ll take in response to this new wrinkle to it – is just hastening that moment’s arrival.
I HAVE to believe that. The moment I cease to believe that that reckoning isn’t coming is the moment that I truly lose faith in this country. I know that sounds corny as hell, but it’s truly how I feel. As much bad bread as that crowd has cast out upon the waters, I HAVE to believe that it is floating back to them now, good and rancid.
eemom
for fucks sake. When the fuck are we gonna stop living our lives in terror of what the wingnuts and the emmessemm are gonna attack us over??Excuse me. Forgive the intrusion, but may I respectfully inquire why so much energy and attention is devoted to anticipating what the wingnuts and the emmessemm are going to attack us over?
sb
@magurakurin: Fucking great post, IMHO.
everyone needs to take it down a notch
I’m going one better. I’m ignoring the crazy ass wingnuts. How do you talk sense to someone who believes Obama was calling for applause during a speech that was close-captioned? How do you convince people that Obama & Co. are not trying to kill old people? Etc., ad nauseam.
Fuck it, folk. I’m disassociating. I’ll make phone calls on election time, give funds to the Democratic Party, and I’ll fight hard to convince Arne Duncan to pull his head out of his ass with regard to education. But arguing anything with tea partiers and wingnuts without using the phrase, “You are such a fucking asshole and stupid to boot” is just too difficult for me. Additionally, anything I say to them will be seen as an accusation, an insult, or an attack. Keeping it civil when talking to these assholes is just not possible.
eemom
Furthermore, no one has even mentioned the possibility that Fuller is a surveyor.
Nick
@sb:
We tried doing that already, but other people don’t ignore them, hear just them and believe them
you don’t. I applaud Obama’s call for civility, but that’s a pipe dream. They’re enemies. We’re in a civil war.
4tehlulz
It almost happened, actually; luckily the ADL was still useful. and helped derail that.
asiangrrlMN
Poor guy. WTF? This just makes me very sad for him and our country. I agree that you don’t put a Tea Partier and this guy together so soon after the shooting.
JGabriel
Wait, stop the presses! A guy who was just shot at a mass murder makes gun proponents feel uncomfortable!
That was probably unfair to actual whores, whose profession — unlike lobbyists, pundits, and media — rarely involves recklessly shilling for the widespread availability of murder tools.
.
Buck
@gbear: I don’t know. He probably knew what he was saying. I think he was just upset that most in the audience were dumbshits….and tried to show the audience how easy it is, and what it feels like, to wind up on the other end of a barrel.
I’m not quite sure how but I think this may end up being a big gift to the NRA loons in the end.
teedub
Well put John.
Congrats to you on the steelers. I’m a Browns fan and I hate the steelers, but you guys had our backs when the sob’s from Baltimore stole our team. Consider it a respectful, irrational, sports type of hatred. Not the serious kind.
WyldPirate
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
I hate to say this, but It would seem that you would be wrong about what the “majority” of American’s think about the shooting if this Quinnipiac poll is reliable.
Here’s the worst one…
“Who do you think is more responsible for using heated political rhetoric, liberals or conservatives? ”
Liberals 36%, Conservatives, 22%
I didn’t check out the numbers on what/whom was asked, but even if wildly off it says a lot about the American public and their connection to reality.
Americans aren’t very bright and they can’t analyze a situation for shit. Then they have our terminally retarded “both sides do it” media pumping shit into their pudding heads 24/7.
I’ll give us 20 years tops before shit completely falls apart.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@eemom: Would you like your internet in a bag or will you wear it out of the store?
gwangung
@Buck: Maybe, maybe not. If it were some random person or even political figure, I can see it.
But a recent victim? The NRA is a lot smarter than the Tea Party, I think (the Tea Party is relatively new to politics). I think they won’t push very hard or very directly.
KG
@Nick:
Um, no they are not. No we are not. Until there is actual armed resistance or conflict, or some state’s governor mobilizes the state’s national guard to take arms against the government, or one state decides to invade another state, we are not in a civil war.
What you do is keep talking, keep making your point and convince others that you are right and they are wrong. It’s hard work, and simply calling for war is so much easier. You might not convince those on the far right or Tea Partiers, but you can convince others, you know those so called independents and moderates?
Nick
@Buck:
when Sarah Palin cries crocodile tears this week about how people like Fuller are threatening her because she’s just trying to be a great America, the media will be her shoulder to cry on, and the left will wonder “how the fuck did we lose this?”
and then they’ll probably blame Obama or something
Joshua Norton
Of course they feel uncomfortable when the result of their half-assed theory and ideology is sitting in front of them disproving their every word.
It’s much easier when everyone ends up dead and no one can talk back to them with any authority. Then all they have to do is squeeze out a few crocadile tears before screaming everyone down who points out the idiocy of their actions.
JPL
@asiangrrlMN: hi..left you a message down below but the same guy wrote a comment about fuller on p.j.media. they didn’t post my comment but you seem to have a way with words so maybe they will accept yours.
Ailuridae
@asiangrrlMN:
I feel for him. I had three friends die in HS in a very high profile drunk driving accident. The two weeks after the accident nobody I knew handled themselves remotely well and we all did some really dumb shit including several of us bum rushing a news crew and taking their camera and smashing it as they tried to film one of the funerals.
This guy has to deal with a traumatic event publicly. Let;s be clear – if the news report is accurate what he did is deplorable and clearly illegal. I hope he isn’t prosecuted for this and, more importantly, I hop someone gets him some help.
JGabriel
Buck:
That’s my interpretation too. Shooting a picture was an analogy for shooting with a gun, and saying “You’re dead” a stand-in for the blood spray and extermination of conscious being.
Of course it made people uncomfortable. Fuller has just recently experienced how easy it is in America for people to kill one another, and he’s pissed that no one gets it despite how obvious it should be to the meanest intelligence.
.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@eemom: @sb: @Nick: I think you all are hitting the nail on the head.
I am fucking DONE worrying about what the crazy winger fucks think or don’t think, what they believe or don’t believe. I have given up on them. They have their talk shows and their cable channels and blogs and so forth, and the people who make that shit possible deserve to be pariahs shunned by the sane voters left in this country. Let them all huddle and hate and shit their pants together. I’m done wasting my breath to them or about them.
Nick, I think you overestimate the number of people who believe that shit and underestimate the number of people who aren’t stepping back – because of the Tucson shooting and for a lot of other reasons – and saying “Whoa, now.”
From now on, we need to reach the people we can still reach. It’s time to write the wingnuts off. The ones, after this, who are still beyond reason are truly and finally beyond reason about anything.
We don’t need to worry about what they think. We don’t need to worry about what they think about what WE think. We need to reach the people who are still reachable. And once those sheep and goats are separated, the goats will look even more pathetic than they look now, because there will be so few of them, and the few that are left will be so fucking ugly to any sane eye that comes to rest upon them.
Nick
@KG:
you cant if they’re not listening to you or cant hear you through the media blockade.
When the President spoke on Tuesday, I heard two types of responses
“Get this n*gg*r off my TV” from the right
and
“Fucking Obama, now i won’t get to see Modern Family” from those independents and moderates you seem to think can easily be “convinced”
Church Lady
@Ailuridae: I love the smell of civil discourse in the morning.
Nick
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
these are the people being told day in and day out that we’re just as crazy, or worse, than the wingnuts. They have to want to listen to us first.
KG
@Nick: I didn’t say it would be easy to convince anyone, in fact, I specifically said it’s hard work. And convincing anyone of anything is actually hard work, it takes time and effort. But it seems like you’re much more interested in bitching and calling people enemies and saying we are in a war that doesn’t exist. Which is entirely understandable, because it’s much easier to write people off and bitch about how nobody is listening to you.
gwangung
@Church Lady: The refs always focus on the second guy, not the first.
asiangrrlMN
@Ailuridae: Agreed with what you said. I do not condone what he said, but man just got shot. Putting him in the same room as someone he holds responsible for creating the atmosphere is NOT a smart thing to do. I, too, hope he can get help.
@JPL: What guy posted? I try not to visit those sites. I get way too pissed off.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@WyldPirate: And a plurality says neither one definitively. There’s hope yet. And if there were ever a group of people who could fucking turn off that other 42% that’s on the fence, it’s the paranoid, ignorant, redneck losers leading the teabagger charge.
I mean, fuck, LOOK at them. LISTEN to them. Even the “shallow public” that is politically disinterested and follows their gut will turn against them just because they’re pious, shrill, spiritually ugly fucks – even at the gut level.
Nick
@KG: you don’t think I try to convince people every damn day? I got ridiculed here a good part of last year for making the same argument you’re making.
magurakurin
@Svensker:
“gun disease,” exactly. And, in my opinion, if you move away from it it becomes crystal clear how senseless the obsession with gun ownership is.
Think of some of the justifications for the need of a gun. Perhaps the most ridiculous is the notion that citizens with guns will somehow prevent tyranny. Even in the American Revolution it wasn’t until the citizen army received training from the French Military and former British Colonial army officers (Washington was hardly a citizen soldier) did they become an effective force. And the American Insurgency was fighting an occupying force. Does anyone really believe that citizens can successful overthrow a government in this day and age without the support of the Army. Revolutions only succeed when the Army switches side. The citizen “militia” that exist in the United States would be decimated by US Army regulars. Right now, American troops are fighting bravely, and more or less effectively, in distant lands and for causes that many of them don’t actually believe in. How hard do you think they would fight against insurgents in their own country if they felt those insurgents were treasonous? Pretty goddamn fuckin’ hard, I reckon.
Protection. But against what? Someone with a bat? Generally, a culture has evolved in which people arm themselves against other people with guns. It’s a vicious cycle and it is senseless since actual home invasions that are prevented by a gun are negligible. The reality of gun ownership is that you are six times more likely to be shot if you choose to own a gun. Many people end up being shot by their own gun. Choosing to enter the cycle of violence only increase your chance of actual participation.
Hobby. Seriously? As a society Americans have to accept thousands and thousands of deaths every year because some people want to exercise their right to collect guns? If it weren’t so deadly it would be laughable.
Much of the world functions perfectly well, day after day, without the nearly unrestricted gun ownership that the USA boasts. Guns aren’t needed. But America’s relationship with guns is very much like an addict with substance abuse.
It’s fuckin’ sad, really.
Nick
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
Fatal error right there.
Why do you think Eric Fuller is going to become the media’s favorite person in the next few days. So those 42% will never LOOK or LISTEN to the paranoid, ignorant, redneck losers are say “they’re the problem,” rather they’ll say “they’re as much a problem as the left” or “they’re the solution”
Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter how paranoid, ignorant, or redneck they are if the media is going to work to defend them and present us in the same light. That 42% will continue to be…42%. They’ll stay home on election or go with whoever shouts the loudest…either way, paranoid, ignorant and redneck wins
I see this all the time with the left. We laugh off the crazies and say “no one is going to follow those jerks” and then the country does and we’re left in shock wondering why and pointing fingers at each other
KG
@Nick: sorry man, I was reacting to your comments in this thread, in all honesty, I can’t keep most commenters here straight. I’m just not of the mind that calling the other side “enemies” and saying we are engaged in a civil war is going to convince anyone of anything. That kind of stuff pisses me off, because that’s what you’re going to hear from the likes of Limbaugh (who regularly tells his listeners that Obama and the “Democrat Party” are determined to destroy America).
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Nick: Let them get shut up in a damn room with a true winger for about 20 minutes and tell me they won’t be more amenable to someone – ANYONE – else’s opinion about something?
I mean, fuck, LOOK at these people. LISTEN to them. The only fucking people who can STAND them are others just like them. The people who fall under their spell, such as it is, couldn’t be saved from themselves no matter what you said.
WyldPirate
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
I hope you’re right. I truly do.
I can’t pray for you to be right because I’m not a believer, but my cynicism that things will get better deepens every day.
maya
I don’t understand how Arizonans think their carry/conceal laws are going to help their major industry – tourism.
Come see our canyon and deserts, folks. Feel free to bring your fa-vo-right weapons along. One tip though; be careful when reaching for that cell phone.
Ailuridae
@Church Lady:
I love the smell of people who don’t understand what white flight is at anytime of the day
Judas Escargot
Very bad choice on his part.
That said… isn’t he kind of entitled to be angry?
It’s been a week. I still haven’t been convinced why we should give all TeaPartiers a pass on this, especially the ones still pushing the gun-rhetoric.
The TP response to him frankly feels like the classic schoolyard psych-out to me: “Yeah I taunted him to madness, but I didn’t throw the first punch, did I Teacher?”
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Nick:
Well, we’re fucked then. I was trying to make this more complicated than it really was all along.
Thank you for that epiphany.
John - A Motley Moose
@WyldPirate: The numbers are skewed towards conservatives. I couldn’t find crosstabs other than the breakdown of numbers, but looking at the numbers tells you a lot.
57% of cons blame libs and that raises the moderate level of 31% by 5%. 71% of libs blame cons and that lowers the mod level by 5%. Something screwy there.
JPL
@asiangrrlMN: I went back to the earlier post and it was arguing with sign posts.. The earlier post was one which ed complained about closed caption and thought the applause meant they were holding up applause signs or something. yeah..i’m jl and my last comment asked him if he read his own post..
I need help on this site and since you are around..one comment would not hurt.
Nick
@KG:
It’s not meant to convince anyone or anything. After last year’s elections, i’m done trying that on this electorate. Now I’d rather wait and see how my “moderate and independent” friends who told me to shut up and stop boring them with politics last year when I was trying to make the case for healthcare reform after they repeated right wing lies to me feel when Glenn Becks’ Gestapo is taking their brothers and fathers off to be shot on the side of I-80.
Cacti
Not a psychiatrist but I’d say this guy probably has PTSD.
Hope he gets the treatment he seems to need and that he doesn’t hurt anyone.
Ailuridae
@Judas Escargot:
Yes he is entitled to be angry. But that doesn’t mean he can publicly threaten someone’s life he disagrees with.
If he has close friends they will pull him completely out of the public sphere.
Judas Escargot
@John – A Motley Moose:
Wonder what the median age of those polled is.
To someone 55+, them noisy, obnoxious liberals from the 60s and early 70s are still a fresh memory.
hilts
What on earth were these media folks thinking? These media folks are whores who are incapable of thinking of anything other than ratings and profits. The MSM can always be relied upon to pour gasoline onto a fire.
cckids
@gwangung: That’s how I taught my kids not to fight: the second person always gets caught.
sb
@KG: I hear you, I really do. And yes, it does take a lot of energy and work to persuade in a political discussion. So I guess I should explain why I’m walking away from the conversation with regard to wingnuts.
Firstr, as soon as I’m Identified as an Obama supporter, that is the wingnut cue to stop listening. In order to have a discourse, you have to have both sides listening. They (and make no mistake, they are “they” and we are we) are not listening. They show no desire to listen.
And second, KG, a fairly large segment of this country looks at you and me and they see enemies. Not “people with a different point of view”, not “the other side of the aisle” and not “Democrats” unless Democrat is equated with “enemy of the state.” They see threats. They even see targets. And I’m sorry but I don’t think I’m overstating and I sure as hell don’t want to give these people the time of day. I say, let them have their Beck, their Limbaugh, their Fox. But if they come at me or my students with their lies and hate-filled bullshit, the last thing I’m going to worry about is being civil.
So no, KG, we’re not in a civil war. But make no mistake, they see you as the other side and they see you as a threat. And I’m saying, in no uncertain terms, “Fuck ’em and leave ’em alone.”
hilts
@WyldPirate:
Speaking of polls
Very Conservative Americans Reject Political Compromise Far More than Other Groups
h/t http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/438596/very_conservative_americans_reject_political_compromise_far_more_than_other_groups
gbear
@Evolved Deep Southerner: I like what you did there.
gwangung
@Ailuridae: Oh, I think the arrest had a pretty rational basis.
But I don’t think it’s appropriate for anyone to be dumping on him. Certainly not Teabaggers.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@Ailuridae: He’s been involuntarily committed. If he has friends they’ll be camped out in his house so they can shoo Malkin away from his counter tops.
The Dangerman
@KG:
Even though we are not in a Civil War, part of this is going to have to be fought on the “battlefield” they have chosen. The Left prefers a thoughtful ideas; the Right prefers violent rhetoric (and, in some cases, outright violence; if only the Congressperson had been killed last week, and if it HAD been a Tea Party member instead of a whack job, the story the Right would be telling would be far, far different).
Just like a schoolyard bully, they have to be intimidated in return; they have to learn there is way more of “us” then there is of “them”. They have to learn that “we” are as well armed as “they” are. They have to learn that “we” don’t take lightly to the democratic process (i.e. they lost in 2008) be described as treasonous or unconstitutional. Basically, “they” have to be figuratively punched in the nose.
magurakurin
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gun-show-20110116,0,1240658.story
case closed.
someguy
Who the fuck cares? Honestly. This teatard is one of the people most responsible for creating the vitriolic political scene we have today, and I’m glad that somebody’s frightening him and his family the way his racist fucktard movement is frightening me and mine.
Jeanne ringland
@Bender: You sicken me.
Ailuridae
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Good for whomever had that done. I am not necessarily a believer in a “cry for help” but….
Also, your blog is the bee’s knees.
Judas Escargot
@Ailuridae:
Yes he is entitled to be angry. But that doesn’t mean he can publicly threaten someone’s life he disagrees with.
I agree here: As I said, bad choice on his part. Threats (explicit or implied) have no place at any public political event. Hopefully he’ll get what he needs.
Still seems to me like he was taunted into snapping, with the treatment he’s been given.
Lots of football fans here, but politics feels more like hockey to me. And I think the instigator rule applies here.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@gbear: The article doesn’t say how long Fuller will be held in the mental health facility. Does anyone know whether there’s a limit to the length of time an individual can be involuntarily committed in Arizona? I wonder what the criterion for releasing him will be. While I hope that Fuller gets the help he needs while he’s in there, I also hope he has family that can advocate for him.
Just a really bad decision by ABC to turn the conversation to gun control with the shooting victims and the anti-gun control people sitting in the same room.
Maude
It is also possible the two people didn’t hear him right.
I’m not saying he didn’t say you’re dead, but he may not have been speaking clearly.
Gun control should not have been brought up. That was stupid.
Nick
@someguy:
He wasn’t frightening him, he was martyring him.
Mark S.
@Jeanne ringland:
Bender? He’s been sickening all of us for years.
sb
@magurakurin: The last three paragraphs are priceless.
The Dangerman
Interesting; Fuller snaps and goes to the Mental Ward…
…Loughner has clear issues and does not.
There’s a moral to the story there, but … I’ve been watching football and may not be sober enough to find it.
JPL
@someguy: The guy would be better off ignored. Humphries was probably there in order to salvage his reputation and the last thing i want to see is his becoming a victim.
WyldPirate
@John – A Motley Moose:
I don’t doubt that they are skewed a bit. I didn’t like how the data was arranged/presented. I would like to see what their numbers were on the “breakdown” of political self-classification. It may have been there, but I’m was too tired and disheartened to look.
Even with the “skew”/screwiness of the numbers, that so many people would answer that way–even given poor design/sampling–is disheartening. It indicates to me that a lot of people are a.) not paying attention, b.) not being honest, c.) too stupid to breathe, or d.) all of the above.
@hilts:
I read some study once about how hard it was to blast people out of their wrongly-held political opinions with fact. When challanged, they simply entrench more deeply.
Depressing, but not surprising.
hilts
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):
I’d bet there were ABC news execs giving each other high fives after this incident occurred.
Bender
@Ailuridae:
Hint: It ISN’T what Krugman claimed it was after the shooting. Maybe you and he could consult a dictionary together.
And you just made my irony meter explode. Thanks.
magurakurin
@sb:
yeah, it’s awesome, huh? No waiting. Some days I really feel for the good folks back home. The yahoos really fuck it up for the people who want to do it right.
As aside. In Japan, nearly every hard to see around corner and curve on the roads has a big mirror on it. That way you can see approaching traffic.
http://www.zombiezodiac.com/rob/ped/utsunomiya/006%20mirror%20dean.jpg
Every time I use these amazingly convenient devices I remember how utterly impossible it would be to have such a good thing back home. Every single fucking one of them would be shot to pieces by some idiot with a gun exercising his “rights.”
Bender
@Jeanne ringland:
The truth is a powerful elixir. Those with weak stomachs may suffer side effects.
sb
@hilts: I don’t know about the high-fives but I agree that they were not upset about what happened. Quite the opposite, in fact.
On second thought, maybe they were slapping five.
Yutsano
@WyldPirate:
In survey research analysis, there is always the attempt to eliminate bias. The way you show that you indeed attempted to do this is by releasing exactly how you got the numbers that led you to what your final analysis showed. The fact that the outfit releasing those numbers specifically did not do so means their methodology cannot be tested. That tends to imply they are hiding something deeper than just saving space in an article. In other words, something is quite rotten in Denmark.
wasabi gasp
Can’t a fella challenge a duel?
hilts
More bullshit from the Tea Party movement
Tea Party demands Tennessee school curriculum erase minority experience
h/t http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2011/1/15/936339/-Tea-Party-demands-Tennessee-school-curriculum-erase-minority-experience
Anya
If the assholes in the media were doing their job, they would focus on exposing this racist criminal: The Most powerful political leader in Arizona, Russell Pearce, attends neo-Nazi rallies and is a source of hate and fear. Instead they are stirring up shit by manipulating vulnerable victims of voilence to scrore a cheep teevee drama.
General Stuck
@Maude:
No it shouldn’t have, but that is always the easiest and first response when something like this happens. Especially, when it is thoroughly enmeshed in politics, as this gun tragedy was.
And it was stupid to bring it up, and doubly stupid to have the tea party central command present. Poor Mr. Fuller got caught up in this mistake and said something unfortunate, though understandable, at least imo. Given the circumstances.
We are a revolutionary country born from the bullet, from day one, and harping about gun control in a country with more guns than people is just silly, and utterly pointless. Beyond the obvious of banning pure military style heavy weapons, like rocket launchers and tanks, and the like. The problem is not guns, it is us. As a people, with a big problem that has always been there in one form or another, since the beginning. It has two parts, race entitlement, and conflicting ideas of liberty. There is a large minority in this country that disagrees with major elements of how liberty is defined and the role of government enforcing it through interpretation of the founding constitution.
And both elements, this large minority feels threatened by in a primal way, with no apparently resolution available, given the march of democracy and demographics. The other part concerning concepts of liberty and government power to enforce those concepts are further threatening to these people by the coming turn of minority empowerment at the ballot box, and correctly perceived intent of that empowered minority to see the equality thingy realized like the founders intended. All of it, no exceptions. this is just the beginning.
my one cent
hilts
@sb:
The news standards of the MSM, especially the broadcast sector, sink lower and lower with each passing year.
FernandoPoo
So the Tea Party Founder plans to prosecute one of the survivors. Pitiful.
justawriter
Digby quotes Esquire saying that the surprising thing about the Oklahoma City bombing is how little it matters in today’s politics. I have been feeling that way ever since Ruby Ridge when the right came down firmly on the side of cop killers and not only didn’t suffer but actually increased their support because of it. The problem with calling for people to tone down the rhetoric is that only one side will do it and it won’t be the guys with the guns and bombs. One reason the right is ascendant is that our side has unilaterally disarmed.
At least this latest incident will remain in people’s memories for a while. Most of the rising tide of violence just seems to vanish down the memory hole.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@The Dangerman: Did Fuller not throw a punch on that playground?
What you’re saying is pretty well what I’ve been trying to say all night, though I haven’t said it well.
Do we need to fight the WHOLE WAR on “their ground” – i.e., the ground of threats and violent rhetoric? Of course not. We’d lose that war, because that’s not us.
But is it not a useful thing, every once in a while, to let them know that we UNDERSTAND that kind of battle? Whatever his motivations – anger, PTSD, whatever – Fuller took it to them a little bit with his actions. And I can’t say that I’m entirely disappointed that he did so.
This “turn the other cheek” shit … I don’t know. I’m still trying to articulate what I think. There’s a time and a place for every approach. Had the wingnuts responded to this whole debate with anything approaching decency, I’d have been in the “turn the other cheek” camp. But when you’re holding someone down who’s hysterical and trying to calm them down, sometimes you’ve got to slap them to snap them out of their tantrum.
I think Fuller just slapped him a teabagger. He didn’t shoot him. He just slapped him.
WyldPirate
@Yutsano:
One would hope so and I’m not making any claim for the reliability of their numbers.
I’m also disappointed that this polling was done by Quinniapiac U. I don’t know diddly-squat about the place, but one would think, given that it is an academic polling outfit, that they wouldn’t intentionally do shit to destroy their credibility.
Anya
@magurakurin: I find this obsession with guns creepy. Its like these guys worship guns. I really don’t get it, but I am a city girl through and through, so what do I know.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): My GUESS, three days. Still researching.
gogol's wife
The Times featured Fuller in an article on Thursday that I just got around to reading this evening. I was thinking that from the article it sounded as if he needed more help than he was getting — and then I read this post. It’s very sad.
Bill Arnold
@Bender:
eliminationism (wikipedia)::
Not sure what you’re saying here. If you read the more fire-breathing right wing blogs exactly this sort of rhetoric appears all the time, albeit mostly in comment sections. And people are generally not called on it. It’s not straight-up death squad promotion, but it’s kind of freaky to see when you’re a member of the targeted group.
There are sometimes similar sentiments on left wing blogs, though they are usually directed at the rich, or the “banksters”.
Thought leaders are almost always a lot more circumspect, and claim humor when they’re not, but – rhetoric to stir up one’s political allies will, if it’s any good, stir up the crazies who count themselves among one’s political allies.
Gravenstone
@Bender:
You wouldn’t recognize the truth if it bit you on your syphilitic dick.
hilts
@Anya:
The network news anchors are nothing but a bunch of Inspector Clouseau impersonators, the only difference being that they never solve anything.
Nellcote
via Politico:
Ailuridae
@Bender:
Google the term you unrelenting fucking ass hole.
Now shut up and put that shot gun back in your mouth
The Dangerman
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
No doubt true; the Right wants a monopoly on hateful rhetoric. They can’t be allowed to have it. If that means “both sides do it”, so shall it be.
Someone posted that the Teabagger intends to prosecute the offense; I suspect his pants need to be laundered, extra bleach on the underwear.
sb
@hilts: Yep. Sounds like just the kind of people who will listen to reasoned debate. Sounds like the type of folk who will consider evidence to the contrary. Sounds like the folk we should be civil to.
I’m all for dialing it down but if I’m on the school board and I tell these people they are wrong, you know as well as I that they are going to pound, scream and yes, threaten. At which point, were it me, I would say, ‘bring it. You want to threaten me, my job, my family? Do it. Tell me exactly what you will do after I tell you that your argument is ahistorical, not to mention amoral. You can scream and cry about tyranny until the cows come home but
a. the founding fathers owned slaves
b. the Indians suffered terribly as a result of American expansion
c. there was, believe it or not, a minority experience in our country back in the day
d. I’m sorry if your fee-fees are hurt by some of the founding fathers’ behavior but that really is your problem, and
e. The founding fathers were not gods or angels. Their successes and failures are evident and the study of both are instructive. It’s why we teach history. And we’ll continue to do it.
Now, in the most civil way possible, please fuck off. Meeting adjourned.
Yutsano
@The Dangerman:
Sounds like a task for the underpants gnomes to me!
Ailuridae
@WyldPirate:
It doesn’t hurt their credibility, The post the results of their poll including the partisan breakouts. It is pretty easy for any right thinking person to assess the results once they see the partisan identification gap
Ailuridae
@Bill Arnold:
Of course the American right is practicing eliminationist rhetoric. That much is trivially obvious. Bender is just a useless fucking knob
Jeanne ringland
@Judas Escargot: Duh, them noisy liberals of the 60s and 70s were us. I’m 60 and I’m one of the young ones.
Jeanne ringland
@magurakurin: And the Times totally missed the comment by the guy at the show who claimed that if just one person had been packing he would have only had to shoot once. We know there was a guy who showed up who was carrying and he damned near shot the wrong guy.
Cliff
haven’t read the thread here, but I’m damn glad I’m not in republitardland (SC) this last week.
Happy puppy vid is up on Mollys blog, links when we get a pets thread (pics of the Tunchster are always welcome of course.)
Jeanne ringland
@Mark S.: Makes me ashamed it took me so long to come to my senses regarding the Republican Party, which was back when Reagan ran for office.
I need to add, I was still registered as one and waiting for the party to come to its senses. I realized a couple of years ago that it’s not going to happen.
Jeanne ringland
@Bender: Fuck off.
Jeanne ringland
@Gravenstone: Thank you. Amen.
Nellcote
@JPL:
linky
rollSound
WyldPirate:
I place no value in the opinions of people who are uninterested in understanding the question. They’ll just use their Us Good, Them Bad rule to figure out which answer to give.
Chris
The receiving end of a five minute hate fest. You sure it wasn’t Two Minutes, bro?
General Stuck
@Nellcote:
Gawd I hate these entitled motherfuckers. His family is walking upright above ground, and don’t have bullet wounds to the head, struggling to survive. With any luck, the tea party will become a nasty blip from the past and get a citing in the history books next to ACORN.
Nellcote
@Nick:
No doubt LaPalin will bring it up in her MLK Day interview with Hannity.
The Dangerman
@General Stuck:
Eventually, the Republicans evolve into the Tea Party (or vice versa), and become a quasi-permenent minority party…
….or the Tea Party splits the Republican Party into separate pieces.
My money is on the latter, starting about the time of the Credit Limit increase.
eemom
Here y’all — I’m not a fan of this guy but right now this has the sound of a soothing lullaby:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bill-maher-tea-party-founding-fathers/
piratedan
@Bender: no… pretty sure you’re just gas
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
I refuse to be a victim of eliminationist rhetoric.
.
.
Joseph Nobles
Whooohooo, fresh off Applausegate, Jim Hoft now has Dyegate.
This one he grabbed from Ann Althouse. Obama, you see, is dying his hair for different occasions. And again they said exactly the same thing about Clinton.
Of course hair seems to change color on camera in different lighting conditions. It may not be common knowledge, but it’s true.
Someone on Twitter just thinks they’re plain trolling. Maybe so. But jeez Louise…
GregB
By the way, this poor guy won’t get the John McCain treatment when it comes to his service and his injury. He’s going to get the John Kerry treatment. He’ll be labeled a coward and a traitor.
Nick
LOL Seth Myers on SNL
Mark S.
@Joseph Nobles:
We now have our first article of impeachment.
Yutsano
@Mark S.: They needed anything more than PWB?
Linda Binda
@Nick:
Whee! I’m hours late. :/
Don’t worry about the rules, man. I know all that already.
I also already know about the stunt C-SPAN tried to pull when they put David Irving and Deborah Lipstadt together. I read about it in Creative Loafing once. Last I heard of Irving, he was jailed in Austria for a year for denying the Holocaust there. Say what you want about free speech: Austrians obviously don’t put up with bullshit like that like we do. I was sort of referring to that, as vague as I was being about it.
I like how they’re already putting criminal charges on Fuller, yet, I’m sure more prominent liberals have been put through worse, with few, if any, immediate charges against the perpetrators. :P
Ever since Peter Jennings died, ABC’s become more and more of a soulless shill for ratings.
And wah, wah, wah about the Tea Party guy fearing political fallout. HEY! Maybe if your movement wasn’t run by extremist crackpots refusing to own up to having racists and fascists amongst your ranks, you wouldn’t have had anything to worry about. WATBs trying to make it all about them.
mclaren
I’m still waiting for Limbaugh or Coulter or Brooks or one of the media whores to blame Giffords.
They need to explain why it was all her fault, and why she needs to offer everyone an apology.
Joseph Nobles
@mclaren: It’s coming. I’ve already seen a commenter on a RW site saying that Giffords was supposed to be so afraid of death threats and what not and yet she didn’t have any security at the Congress on your Corner event.
eemom
I have had the displeasure of seeing a picture of this “Hoft” (whom I had never heard of before today), and OMG, what a fat, stupid, backpfeifengesicht* he has.
*”face that cries out for a fist in it”, from the folks who gave us “schadenfreude.”
xian
@Bill Arnold: you can’t argue with that jackhole. he’s dead inside and i doubt he even believes the bullshit that comes out of his orifice.
xian
@Bill Arnold: you can’t argue with that jackhole. he’s dead inside and i doubt he even believes the bullshit that comes out of his orifice.
xian
@eemom: also, too, remember that photo is his *preferred* headshot.
mclaren
Something to bear in mind when the talking heads on TV prattle on about `how both sides are equally to blame.’
goblue72
This is just proof of how far our country has swung in the right-wing authoritarian direction.
1. The average GOP politician IS a whore. A whore for the rich, corporate lobbyists and others of their ilk. When he called them whores he was speaking the truth.
2. He freaked out after discussions turned to the ass-backward efforts by Arizona right-wingers to loosen gun control laws in the wake of the tragedy. The only sane response to that is anger.
3. The Teahadists and GOP whore mongers DO bear the core responsibility for the reactionary, violence inducing crap of the last several years. If I had been shot by some nut spurred on by Becks, Limbaughs & Palins of the world and then told that no one was responsible and liberals do it too, I’d probably freak out too.
There’s nothing wrong with this guy and its telling that the response of the county government in Arizona was to lock this guy up One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest style.
Believe me, if I was in room with a handgun and Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, Mitch McConnel, or any other other random GOP leader, I wouldn’t have any qualms about pulling the trigger. At a certain point, you can understand why the serfs of Russia loaded their rifles and lined up behind Lenin.
cbear
I honestly can’t think of a single gooper blogger or pundit that doesn’t have a face made for radio.
Stupid, ignorant, vile, AND ugly ain’t no way to go thru life. I almost feel bad for the dumb fucks.
Church Lady
The New York Times has a fairly detailed report on this. It’s very sad, what happened to him, but from the article, it seems like he had some problems even before he got shot. Hopefully, he will get the treatment it seems like he needs.
cbear
@goblue72:
Of course if you were in a room with those fat fucks and a ham sandwich (or in McConnel’s case, a live boy) you probably wouldn’t make it out alive.
Joseph Nobles
Sorry, my bad, mclaren. It wasn’t a random commenter on a RW blog that said it was Giffords’ fault.
It was the goddamned piece of shit Fuller threatened in front of a studio audience, Trent Humphries of the Arizona Tea Party.
No, Humphries, you ignorant fuck, Giffords DID have security concerns and she was doing her job anyway.
Ailuridae
Open thread? Pretty please?
GregB
More unhingedness.
A former GOP candidate for Congress has been arrested for making threats to judges.
Please don’t make any blood libels on this woman.
Yutsano
@Ailuridae: Seconded. I haz mucho relaxing to do before the end of my brother’s existence tomorrow. Until pitchers and catchers report anyway.
Andy K
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
That’s the very first thing that crossed my mind. “See how easy it was for me to point something at you and click?”
bemused
Trying to stay mellow listening to one of my most favorite
songs, This Is The Time of Your Life, Little Steven. Never get tired of this song.
+6
harlana
Oh man, WTF, the guy had problems before?? Are you fucking kidding me? These people weren’t even raised by anything remotely resembling mammals. They were raised by fucking reptiles or something, jeez, why is anybody listening to or following these crazed fucks! They’re not even human! Their god is Beck! Why are they being taken seriously at all?? They are insane!
(and yes, apologizes to all reptiles out there, I’m just reaching at this point, but I realize now that no creature of god could be responsible for these crazed fucks)
Villago Delenda Est
Bender can be very brave…at a keyboard.
In the flesh? Probably not.
harlana
i.e., Devil Spawn. Thank you. And no apologies for being “uncivil” We are rocketing towards the Armageddon they pray for daily, so who gives a fuck?
Let’s go ahead and separate the wheat from the chaff, let’s do it NOW! please
I borrow from Beck: the END is nigh! Yeh, you brought it, now reap it, mf’rs!
harlana
OK, I got it know, since no creature of god could produce such vile progeny, they must indeed be alien spawn. No true America/God loving individual would behave this way, and no creature of God is capable of producing such cosmically destructive progeny.
So yeah, they’re aliens. Stuff that in your hash pipe and smoke it, Beck.
J. Michael Neal
@harlana: Uhm, it was the guy who was shot and was arrested today for threatening the Tea Party leader that apparently has had previous mental health issues. So, I don’t think your description of his parentage is necessarily accurate.
However, do we even know if the guy was a liberal prior to last Saturday?
Yutsano
@Villago Delenda Est: The bravery of wingnut warriors is in direct correlation to their Internet connection speeds. They think that just because they can type it and it goes out fast into the world that means they have power. When the fact is they can neither hurt nor help us. As long as they stay in the basement eating Cheetos.
Ailuridae
@Yutsano:
Pretty sure I passed a stone in the last three hours. I needs some sympathy!
Yutsano
@Ailuridae: Had a roommate in college who had a genetic predisposition to kidney stones. And a bifurcated ureter. I get totally how much those suckers hurt. Did you see it pop out? And at least now it’s out of you and not causing more issues.
Ailuridae
@Yutsano:
No issues beforehand at all. I started urinating, felt an unreal pain in my groin and woke up to my business partner knocking on the bathroom door. I had passed out and whacked my head on the tub. I was embarrassed when he knocked so I buttoned up and flushed.
I have urinated once since and it really really hurts to pee. Passed Stone right?
Yutsano
@Ailuridae: Or passing. It may have dropped into your bladder and your body is now trying to flush it out. When it goes up your unit, you’ll know it, because it will feel like it’s on fire.
(avoiding a certain anatomical term because FYWP)
Ailuridae
@Yutsano:
I think/hope I passed it. I have pissed afterwards and felt normal (Besides a little blood). I have a high tolerance for pain. If it made me pass out it had to be stone, right? Pretty please?
Yutsano
@Ailuridae: If the bleeding continues, get thee to a urologist tout suite.
Ailuridae
@Yutsano:
Tuesday at 1. Thanks for the help!
Joey Maloney
@Ailuridae:
You lived my dream. I’m so jealous.
bob h
No one wants to see more violence, but I sort of like the idea of Teabaggers getting the message that they do not have a monopoly on violence. My sense is that rightist violence will stop only when they perceive that this is a two-way street.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@gbear:
That’s what I’m thinking, Fuller was making a point (albeit angrily) that ‘it’s that easy; point, shoot and you’re dead like that’. Regardless, he shouldn’t have been there but the M$M got what they wanted from him.
Last week he watched six people die, was one of 14 wounded and it was over in an instant. He needs help to deal with this horror, not a ‘made for TV’ moment.
I hate our M$M with a white hot passion. Non-violent, of course, but white hot nonetheless. They set this up and I bet they were hoping this would happen.
It’s all for ratings and ad sales people, that’s all they care about. Nothing else. They are in this for themselves, fuck everyone else.
El Cid
@Joseph Nobles:
You disagree with this?
You think it’s responsible for Democrats to actually appear in person in public?
Why, that’s just risking danger. The public has a right to safety. Democrats, if they can’t be dissuaded from running for office in the first place, should endeavor to be seen as little as possible, both for safety and for not upsetting the general order.
keestadoll
@gwangung: No common sense–that’s a given. It’s about controlling the message and getting out in front of an inevitable replay of the Giffords shooting. Sadly, the best way to get in front of it would be to roust the crazies from their ranks, but that would mean there would be no one left to buy their t-shirts, hot dogs, apple pies baked by Gawd-fearing grannies, etc, etc.
keestadoll
@Anya: It’s a penis issue. There is a “big city” version of it I think in the form of who has the latest (read BIGGEST) apps on their iPhones…
Southern Beale
Too much media. We don’t need to keep talking about this on every cable show on earth.
Too many channels. Too many notes.
Mike Furlan
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):
The American way.
Step 1. Fail to commit right wing kook.
Step 2. Shooting.
Step 3. Commit the victim(s).
piratedan
kind of turns that old saw on its head where it used to be implied that a liberal was simply someone that hadn’t been mugged yet…. perhaps the reverse is true, a conservative is someone who hasn’t witnessed a mass murder firtshand yet.
aimai
@eemom:
eemom, you’ve been on fire recently.
aimai
bob h
Imagine that the Tea Party leader had threatened Fuller in similar fashion at some gathering. Would the former have been arrested for the threat? I doubt it.
Buck
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Remember “The Running Man“? I think we’re just about there.
matoko_chan
@aimai:
i think someone lit the methane from her cowfarts.
matoko_chan
@Cole
it will be interesting to see what Fuller says.
i think he might consider his arrest a win, since he will now get a media platform to voice what he feels is the problem, which teatards and the complicit media want desperately to sweep under the rug.
He is exploiting the media whores is all.
kgus
Don’t know if anyone else got this impression, but my first thought was that Fuller was showing the (ostensibly pro-gun) Tea Partier how easy it is to shoot someone — just as easy as taking his picture. Without film to hear his tone and see his gestures it’s difficult to know what he meant (although everyone seems to have already accepted the official explanation).
Joseph Nobles
@El Cid: Of course, what was I thinking? The shootings will continue until Democrats stop running for office.
polyorchnid octopunch
@matoko_chan: I suspect that’s why he was involuntarily committed. It’s a great way to preemptively discredit anything he might say: “see, he’s crazy! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…”
feebog
I just watched the program. It was a civil discourse and had a variety of comments and perspectives. The Teabagger was pushing their current talking point; lets not have the gun conversation right now, its time to grieve, yada yada yada. In other words, give this a chance to go away so we will not have to have the conversation. Don’t blame Fuller for going off. BTW, the Deputies escorted Fuller out of the room with no resistence on his part, at least none that I could see, there was no audio.
brendancalling
with all due respect (there’s your civility), FUCK THAT.
Fuller got shot, twice, in the knees. The dude most responsible for raising the temperature of the rhetoric, Trent Humphries, tried to tell him that gun control is an off-limits discussion.”
Fuller only did what I have personally seen tea partiers do all the time: they try to initmidate people. In fact, at one of the health care town hall eventys in Philadelphia, a whole group of those motherfuckers were doing just that: taking photos of health care reform advocates “for future reference”. I SAW that with my own eyes.
So to my thinking, Humphries has no complaint: Fuller did exactly what the tea party has been allowed to do for the past two years. Frankly, Humphries is lucky that the veteran didn’t beat the crap out of him, or show up at his house (which by the way is listed at 411.com) Michele Malkin style.
Jeanne ringland
@polyorchnid octopunch: I thought it was voluntary.
Kuvasz
I learned a long time ago not to give folks a heads up before I acted. Fuller’s mistake was speaking before acting.
For most progressive people, their capacity for self reflection and compromise is seen by conservatives as a character flaw to be both ridiculed as well as exploited. Had Fuller sat quietly he would have been called a pussy by the tea baggers; in other words any graceful commitment to civility would be scorned as a indication of unmanly behavior.
I consider that most conservatives have a sense of the social contract akin to that held by cannibals. In that case, and for your own protection you can’t take your eyes off of them for a second.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Not to mention a pogrom. It will definitely be a pogrom if we suggest that “these sorts of threats and intimidation are really toxic and create a horrible environment.”
Because saying that you disagree with a person’s tactics is just like the wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children.
Just.Like.
xian
@brendancalling: re
I guess the second amendment trumps the first?
Rhymes With Right
Frankly, Fuller belongs in a jail cell. Perhaps Loughner needs a roommate, since they are two crazy peas from the same loony pod.
http://rhymeswithright.mu.nu/archives/310810.php
LongHairedWeirdo
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
It depends. It definitely will get the police *very* interested in where you were at the time of death if the person to whom you said it ends up dead. Whether it should count as “making a threat” is a question I won’t answer. I know that when I was a kid, “you’re *dead*!” meant the speaker wanted to give the target a thrashing that might end with some bruises or a bloody nose. But I’ve seen that referred to as “death threats” when uttered by similarly-aged-children.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Rhymes With Right: Oooh! A new dumbass fucking troll! Neat!
jefft452
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/01/15/world-gone-mad-2/#comment-2371872
“I guess the second amendment trumps the first?”
Well, there is a 9 year old girl not saying much anymore
Rhymes With Right
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
Hardly. Just dropped by slumming through the Left’s attempts to justify the threat to murder an innocent man made by one of their heroes in the wake of the failure of the Left’s “received wisdom” that the Right is somehow responsible for violence.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Rhymes With Right: Well thanks for dropping by. Try not to leave a greasy assprint on the door on your way out.