I almost felt guilty about implicitly comparing the Governor of Wisconsin to the murderous, possibly deranged dictator of Libya. It was more about how one handles (or fails to handle) a popular revolt than about murder per se, but obviously not everybody will get that. But no, Jeff Cox, a teabagger Assistant Deputy Attorney General for the State of Indiana, insists that I was also correct about the murder part.
Contacted by a reporter from Mother Jones, Cox reiterated that he really does think police should start killing protesters.
General Stuck
Hosni Walker. Sounds about right.
gnomedad
“Use live ammo” is just surveyor jargon for “take a measurement here”.
Doug Hill
Charles Lane says Gabby Giffords would agree with this AGA.
beltane
The teabaggers’ devotion to 2nd Amendment remedies mostly stems from the fact that they abhor 1st Amendment remedies. At least they are no longer hiding that fact anymore.
Violet
I just saw this elsewhere. I know they’re a bunch of unhinged loons, but it still astonished me. I just hardly know what to say.
Jack
And still they get offended when we call them “Rethuglicans”.
How about “Brownshirts” or even better, “Gestapo”.
BGinCHI
We have seen the terrorists, and they is us.
The next big thing is not gonna come from abroad.
Smurfhole
“Kudos to the Republicans for showing the courage not to negotiate.”
Elvis Elvisberg
@BGinCHI: It’ll come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross, you think?
Athenae
They really don’t think anyone who disagrees with them is a human. Much less a fellow American.
I swear I can’t listen to talk radio today, even to hear what the pushback is.
A.
MattF
@Violet
I agree that this is astonishing. It’s safe to assume, e.g., that an Assistant Attorney General is a lawyer, even in Indiana. Maybe this is a “I decided I don’t need my medication any more” type of problem.
Mattminus
This is blood libel, and I think Gabriel Giffords, if she could speak, would agree that all these union terrorists need to be shot in the face.
gnomedad
I’m thinking a lot of wingers are trying to figure out whether to respond “damn straight!” or “isolated crazy person.”
Elia
Holy shit.
Someone should demand Mitch Daniels fire this creep. Gives the Reasonable Adult Gov. Daniels an opportunity to showcase how Reasonable he is.
Xenocrates
Ah, but the liberals are “unhinged”!! Please, the entire rotten facade of the modern-day GOP is crumbling. I have some fond hopes that all of their lies and deceptions will be uncovered. However, I also have a great deal of faith in the ability of the U.S. electorate to screw it all up…
kay
@Violet:
I don’t know why. He’s the second conservative prosecutor who’s gone completely ’round the bend.
Remember this guy?
He was planning a coup to take back student government from the gays, and he wasn’t even a student.
I hope he’s in counseling. Prosecutors have a lot of power.
Holly McLachlan
Hello. Perspective?
One of the men mentioned in this piece is the duly elected governor of Wisconsin. Who is engaged in the most obvious and extreme union-breaking stunt undertaken by a pol since Reagan fired the air traffic controllers.
The other is some overpaid bureaucrat in Indiana who needs to be fired.
Comparing the 2 damages sound arguments against the one who has power and is intent on misusing it.
D. Mason
When the cops start mowing down citizens in the process of exercising their First Amendment rights he will be quick to remind us how this was only rhetoric and both sides do it.
Scott
They really can’t seem to keep themselves from jumping straight to the terrorism-based strategies. Even after the horrible blowback they got post-Tucson, it’s still their preferred solution for everything.
It’s only a matter of time before some Republican starts demanding a pardon for Eric Rudolph, or decides they want to rename a federal building for McVeigh.
Tim F.
@D. Mason: The cops would never follow an order like that. Any state official who tries it would be less Qadaffi and more Mubarak.
LGRooney
Yes, I was at one point a doctoral student in literature (before selling my soul for the corporate walk) and I know how to read. I didn’t get it. However, in light of Cox’s statement…
Zifnab
There are leaders and then there are leadership styles. Walker is not Qaddafi in that he is not a Libyian leader of a military regime. If you swapped the two leaders out, Qaddafi would have to change his leadership style pretty quick because he wouldn’t have African mercenaries on call or a massive overseas war chest of personal money to spend.
But then there are leadership styles. And style tends to come down to what kind of action you will take, given a range of options. Will you be openly confrontational? Will you work behind the scenes? Will you be accommodating, open to negotiation, or otherwise available to compromise? Or will you use political muscle to strong arm your opposition?
In that regard, two very different leaders can have very similar leadership styles. And there’s nothing wrong with comparing Barrack Obama to Vladmir Putin or Angela Merkle to Hitler, because you can get a feel for how they’d act in each others’ shoes given the options they gravitate towards.
Of course, some people can just blow through all the political science mumbo-jumbo and make the comparisons obvious.
Violet
@kay:
I know I shouldn’t be astonished, but somehow my naive faith in the goodness of people keeps getting in the way. And then I’m astonished again when someone goes way over the line.
I do remember that horrible man. He’s clearly crazy.
Zifnab
@Tim F.:
Given half the police force is on the picket line, I imagine you’re right.
Mnemosyne
@Tim F.:
I’m more worried about the potential of calling in the National Guard than the police. Large unruly crowd + Iraq/Afghanistan veterans + live ammunition seems like a really bad combination to me.
ETA: It would only take one National Guardsman with untreated PTSD having a flashback to turn things very ugly, very fast.
Ash Can
Butbutbut some Dem staffer somewhere once farted in a crowded elevator, so BOTH SIDES DO IT
trollhattan
Directed at an individual that comment could constitute assault. Directed at the amassed rabble, it’s called “leadership.”
Kent State
BGinCHI
If these protests spread they are going to be hard to put down because they are so diverse. By that I mean you can’t just lump them into one group, and people know that. If it was just students, that would be different.
I’d watch Ohio for the next big set of protests and confrontation. Strong labor history there (stronger than IN) and more than one city.
I’d also expect Cincinnati to secede and join the Confederacy.
kdaug
I’m trying, really hard, to come up with the corollary on the left to this. Honestly.
Maude
@Athenae:
On local rightie radio it was the usual unions are greedy yada, yada, yada,
Talk show hosts are members of AFTRA. Union members.
kerFuFFler
@kay:
I heard he was fired. But still….
Zifnab
@Mnemosyne:
That’s assuming the crowd and the National Guard were confrontational. How many guardsmen are themselves union members or public servants anyway? This isn’t Kent State, with a bunch of upper class university kids throwing rocks at teenagers back from Vietnam. These are middle class, middle aged neighborhood people protesting here. Very likely, no one is going to start flipping out on the National Guardsmen themselves.
JGabriel
I usually check in on TPM for the news, not the laughs, but, speaking of Libya, yesterday Josh Marshall had an amusing summary on progress there:
Now if we could only get Walker to say, “I will resign before I bargain with unions!” Then we might have a path forward in Wisconsin that both sides could agree on.
.
Mnemosyne
@Zifnab:
I hope you’re right. But if there were going to be an ugly incident, I think it would be far more likely to come from a National Guard confrontation than the local police, at least as things have been going so far.
If the Guardsmen are ordered to clear the capitol building of protesters, I think a confrontation would be inevitable. Fortunately, it seems fairly unlikely that Walker will be stupid enough to call them out, so the whole point is probably moot.
Citizen_X
For more craziness, the FreiRepublikers are planning to meet an SEIU solidarity protest in Atlanta today with an armed counterprotest. Purpose being to provide “balance to the ravings of the passengers aboard the SEIU Thugbus, which is scheduled to vomit forth its stooges at that same place and time.”
Davis X. Machina
The neat thing about the The Revolution is that you know going in how it all turns out. The impartial and ineluctable forces of History are already in motion. The winners and losers are already chosen. Some people just aren’t in Act Five.
So it’s not unexpected that there should be casualties. No one’s fault, really. Nothing personal.
Pooh
Just a word of caution – if the AG’s office in Indians is anything like in my state, AAG is the title given to basically every working attorney, so until we see more this could just as easily be some 26 year-old FedSoc jagoff as someone with actual policy making authority.
ppcli
@kerFuFFler:
“I heard he was fired. But still….”
He was *eventually* fired. The wingnut attorney-general (also called Cox, as it happens. What is it with these dildos named Cox/Koch?)) temporized as long as he could (“first amendment rights”/”not part of his official duties”/ etc.) until it became clear what a massive political liability this guy was becoming. Then, of course when the instructions and the new set of talking points arrived for Cox from RNC/Koch/Fox Central, it was “poof” and the poor, misunderstood fellow vanished.
liberal
@Mnemosyne:
I thought there’s some emerging evidence that at Kent State the shooting started because of the actions of a provocateur.
Jay in Oregon
There is a part of me that wonders if dooming the GOP to being a regional rump party for the next 50 years or so would be worth a rerun of Kent State, with police or National Guard opening fire on unarmed protesters.
Then another part of me — the part I like to refer to as “my soul” — remembers that these are human beings and that no political goal I could aspire for is worth the death of innocent people.
Jay in Oregon
@JGabriel:
Reminds me of a comment on Twitter re: Hosni Mubarak.
http://twitter.com/#!/warrenellis/statuses/35806185022038016
dan
So this jagoff is in the AG’s office! He’s a fucking GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE!!!! Fucking leach.
liberal
@Xenocrates:
The problem is that their lies and deceptions are constantly uncovered, and many people either don’t care (“they protect unborn children!”) or are too stupid to understand.
JGabriel
@Zifnab:
Assuming that membership in the National Guard is public service, that would be all of them.
.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
I have no idea — I was less than a year old when Kent State happened and I haven’t done much reading on it. I’m more comparing the police to the National Guard and speculating on how likely it would be that they would respond violently. I think that at this point the chance of the police responding violently is about 1%, so even a 2% chance that the National Guard would makes it more likely, IMO.
evinfuilt
@Jack:
Stewart would say you need to tone down your rhetoric… Calling people who want to use live ammo on protestor’s nazi’s is just too mean for him.
Elia
Are we about 10-15 years away from repeating the 60s or something?
It seems like every 20 or so years, at least, this country flips the fuck out on itself.
Guster
@kdaug: What are you, an idiot? I’ll give you the corollary: Michael Moore claims that French health care is better than ours.
The Republic of Stupidity
Ludlow, Colorado, here we come…
Poopyman
@Zifnab: Ya know, I’m -half- expecting one of these guys to call in -the Pinkertons- Xe sooner or later. And my money’s on sooner.
RSA
TPM has a list of tweets from Cox, one of which runs,
What in the world is he referring to by “conservatives threatening lawful violence”? Secession, maybe?
Zifnab
@Elia:
God, we can only hope.
Repeating the 80s would be disastrous.
Kryptik
@RSA:
Lawful violence is when a conservative attacks a liberal. Unlawful violence is a liberal attacking a conservative. This is because liberals are, by definition, traitors, and thus any violence they commit is illegal, but violence toward them is simple patriotic duty.
Poopyman
@RSA: Did I miss something? What liberal was threatening violence? Or is this one of those strawman thingies?
Mnemosyne
@RSA:
It’s the conservative theory called If The Police Do It, It’s Legal.
LGRooney
@kdaug: Come on, commies did this to their people all the time and we all know they were true leftists!
Two perceived wrongs make it right + poor knowledge of governmental philosophies + prostration before power = modern conservatism
Zifnab
@Poopyman: Xe is expensive as fuck. They don’t have that kind of money.
Alwhite
I’m old enough to remember Kent State, there were plenty of people cheering those murders on. If they turn the NG loose of these demonstrators there is a better than 50-50 chance there will be a repeat. Nobody will know who fired and nobody will ever be actually called into account and the conventional wisdom will be “they had it coming”
Poopyman
@Zifnab: The Koch Brothers(TM)?
Legalize
For what it’s worth, I work with a woman who is married to a fella who is a member of a public employee union here in SW Ohio. They are both reliable, decades-long, rock-ribbed, pull-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps Republicans. My worker just told me that they are both hopping mad about all of this, and her and her husband know who the culprit is – the GOP. She said this union-busting stuff is enough to make them both vote for Democrats going forward. These are people who have signed pictures of Boener and Jean Schmidt in their homes and offices.
Citizen_X
Shooting abortion doctors, durr!
Cris
I hope Cox’s official apology comes from the unemployment line.
Ash Can
@Citizen_X:
What could possibly go wrong??
Davis X. Machina
@Alwhite: One of the most depressing things about Nixonland is the popular reaction to Kent State, and even worse, to the shootings at Jackson State.
Cris
I haven’t heard that, but even if true it doesn’t impact Mnemosyne’s point. “Large unruly crowd + Iraq/Afghanistan veterans + live ammunition” simply gives the provocateur a deadlier tinderbox to ignite.
ppcli
@Legalize: If he is surprised by this then he is too stupid for government work.
Cris
@Citizen_X: yay, we get to have armed nutjobs gathering at the Capitol steps in Helena, Montana, too!
jharp
No question that asshole be immediately fired.
Does the Indiana Bar Association have an interest in this?
Sure seems to me they should. It doesn’t seem to be behaviour becoming of the Bar.
Any lawyers out there know?
Zifnab
@Poopyman: If a private company drops millions of dollars to ship in a private security firm to fly into Wisconsin and break up a public protest, that will incur some serious shit.
Even though its kinda a badly kept secret, I don’t think Governor Walker wants to advertise that he’s such a complete tool of the Koch Family that he’s got to have his sugar dady call in mercenaries to get his own job done.
Alex S.
Just sick.
There is a reason why there are repressive dictators. Some people would like to be Gaddafi.
rapido
cox’s website is down: http://www.procynic.blogspot.com/
too much traffic or better?
Tony J
@Zifnab:
Methinks Eric Prince is the kind of ‘Real American’ patriot who’d do it pro bono.
HyperIon
@Legalize:
ya mean, idiots?
sorry, but having pics like this in their homes is tantamount to attending republican camp.
Cris
@rapido: It says it was “removed.” Blogspot can handle traffic. Somebody took it offline, probably Cox himself.
Judas Escargot
@Legalize:
Its almost as if no one cared about what the GOP was up to. Until they started pissing in their backyard…
I love people!
Poopyman
@Zifnab: An extremely improbable outcome, certainly. But we’ve seen such a mixture of frothy imbecility combined with truly shitty governance from these clowns recently that I don’t know what’s impossible anymore.
bostondreams
@HyperIon:
Which is, I think, the point being made. If this whole falderal has such an impact on THEM, then it cannot be good for that party..
Ruckus
Joe McCarthy was from WI. Just saying.
Omnes Omnibus
@Zifnab: Kent State did not have upper class kids. Upper class kids go to an Ivy (or equivalent), liberal arts college, or flagship state university.
Cris
@Omnes Omnibus: is UVM flagship?
PaulW
@Zifnab:
Stop pissing on my childhood, Zif.
There was nothing wrong with Live Aid, Miami Vice, Back to the Future, arcade games, or Members Only jackets.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cris: No idea. I am talking about schools like UW-Madison, University of Michigan, and Cal-Berkeley as opposed to UW-Oshkosh, Central Michigan, and the like. In Ohio, Kent State is not a posh campus.
PaulW
@Tony J:
You fool. No REAL Murrikan works for free.
Tony J
@PaulW:
Yeah, but it’s not really ‘work’ when the job involves laying the smack down on ‘Leftist Thugs’. More like paying for the staff to team-bond over an Xtreme lead-paintballing weekend. And if it attracts more job opportunities in states where ‘buisness-friendly’ Governors don’t want to call out the National Guard, you could call it an investment in the future.
Poopyman
@Tony J: IIRC, he’s the kind of Real American who’s now living in Abu Dhabi, also too.
JenJen
Aaaaaaaand… he’s fired.
Good riddance, jackhole.
soonergrunt
@Mnemosyne: Situations like that don’t cause PTSD freakouts. Things that remind you of being in country cause it. A bunch of people sitting around passively protesting probably won’t.
I suppose that if somebody starts ululating and firing an RPG at me, I would get a little edgy, but people sitting around eating pizza and singing ‘we shall overcome’? I doubt it. I don’t think I’m special that way, either.
This is one of the worst parts of PTSD–the assumption by many good people that you live on a hair trigger, ready to blow away everybody around you. Thank you sooooooo much, Hollywood and Sylvester Stallone.
And on another note, there is a high correlation between membership in the National Guard or past military experience and employment in law enforcement, so the likelihood of there being any real difference between them is rather small, certainly on that front, and Highway Patrol tend to have their own unique PTSD triggers.
The main difference is that law enforcement will take a law enforcement stand, and will use the minimal force necessary for the situation, about which they are relatively flexible, and the National Guard will take a Restoration of Order stand and use the minimal force they are ordered to use, which may involve anything from simply physically barring people from moving in certain directions (thereby channeling them out of the area gently) to doing the skirmish line with oak batons, which tends to fill ambulances quickly.
soonergrunt
@Tony J: He’s supposedly running around South Africa these days trying to set up a commercial anti-piracy contract force with a former Rhodesian SAS guy. At least, according to Wired’s Danger Room blog. he supposedly divested himself completely of his holdings in Xe if I read that article right, but I could be wrong.