Remember that guy in Georgia who swore not to hire anyone as long as Obama stays in office? Some helpful context:
(1) Bill Looman is hardly some regular joe SBO (small business owner) who snapped. The guy has organized fringe militia gangs for quite some time. He had a recent chat with the Feds that might have to do with his links to more than one well-publicized domestic terrorism story, or it might concern his promise to join an armed rebellion if Obama wins another term. Could be both!
(2) His firm provides cranes and chain hoists that are useful, for example, in large factory operations. Anyone in Looman’s line of work would be less than thrilled about the NLRB and liberal gummint for trying to shutter a new Boeing plant after South Carolina spent $270 million on top of Boeing’s almost $1 billion to build it. Tack on Toyota’s recent recall issues and the region’s latent racial prejudice which, to put it generously, may have some indirect influence on Mr. Looman, and the main surprise is that he has not already gone redneck rambo on some local IRS office.
CarolDuhart2
Unfortunately, I think it’s just a matter of time. Thankfully, there’s been some vigilance, but if Obama is re-elected I fear some of the worst as at that point he will never again have to face the voters. Impeachment will probably be out as well-Obama’s squeaky clean. So he would be in until the end of the second term.
MattF
One could make a joke about Waco, Georgia… but the first paragraph of the Wikipedia ‘Demographics’ section says it all:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco,_Georgia
Bago
Boing plant?
Joey Maloney
Owned by Xeni but not Cory. Or vice versa.
Josie
These people make me very nervous. I am not looking forward to the actual presidential campaign next year.
Cat Lady
Clearly he’s a liberal plant to make right wing birther militia groups look bad.
JPL
@Bago: Tim did manage to include the e in the second Boeing so that should count.
Cat Lady, The guy is mad. You do know where Deliverance was made. There are some strange folks in those hills.
Cat Lady
@JPL:
You need to recalibrate the dials on your snarkometer.
M-pop
When are authorities going to start connecting the dots and admit that we have a domestic terrorism problem? Between shooting doctors and flying planes into buildings, there has to be more attention drawn to our complicity in letting these nutbars get nuttier and more extremist. It’s almost as if in some wacked-out way we’re hoping for an armed insurrection. And I really thought that all this extremist talk about opposing the president was all bluff and bluster and things would have smoothed out by now. Not so.
capt
In spite of the crazy, I think it is good for these kinds of people to make themselves known. How else do we know who to watch out for?
Cat Lady
@capt:
I agree, and they’re all crawling out from under their rocks now because they think it’s OK, now that their worst fears have become manifest in the form of the smart near guy in the WH.
M-pop
@capt: It’s not so much that the media is making them more well known, it’s not calling them out for being extremists and denouncing them without question. There is no middle ground, here – the media cannot and should not treat this like a both-sides-do-it news story. You might as well give these crazies free recruitment advertising.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
fingefringe militia gangsDo you need some coffee, Tim?
Someone should go up to him and tell him “I’d love to hire your company but I am afraid you won’t have the manpower to keep up with my requirements.”
The Ancient Randonneur
OT: Very sad news. James Joyner of OTB announced the death of his wife on his blog.
El Cid
I’d caution you that this “examiner.com” is the same one people are freaking out about because of the guy who wrote about some minor coordination or talk about talking about thereof between DHS and police operations in cities re. OWS.
So, if it’s a horrendous sub-Murdoch right wing source when it comes to that story, it presumably is the same when it’s someone else writing about this story.
Odie Hugh Manatee
The linked article says that McConnell performs in civil war reenactments.
As what, Lee’s ass wiper? They lost, can’t they ever get over it or did they like losing so much that they have to keep doing it over and over. Glorifying war isn’t healthy for anyone, especially a war that split a nation, let alone the politicians who are supposed to lead it.
Sorry but war reenactments are just creepy and politicians who participate in them are even creepier.
cmorenc
I noted that the “Sons of Confederate Veterans” booth was absent from the annual NC State Fair in Raleigh back in October. I rather enjoyed winding them up with a mild show of interest and letting these gentlemen talk and watch the bats and demons figuratively fly out of their mouths. In that environment at least, they are very courtly and polite, kind of like your crazy uncle whom you are careful to avoid getting talking about political and social topics until the Thanksgiving meal is over and you’re all out on the front porch sipping beer.
RSA
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
In his book Uniforms, Paul Fussell gives his view of war re-enactors:
The chapter is titled “Weirdos”. As Wikipedia puts it, in a nicely understated way, “It is often difficult for veterans or the public to understand why reenactors do what they do…”
Schlemizel
Not gonna happen. Guys like this POS have too much to lose & are too bright to get themselves into trouble of that magnitude. What they want is for the moron battalion that swallows this shit to act out and end up dead or in FedMax. They will of course say “HOOCOODANODE?”
CarolDuhart2
@Schlemizel: Good point. They would rather some schizo who believes them all and wants their approval to do it for them. McVeigh. Oswald. Sirhan. The September 11th 19. Egging on the troubled and disturbed keeps their hands clean, like Pontius Pilate.
Schlemizel
@CarolDuhart2:
I am still surprised that there have not been multiple attempts on the President already. It was one of my great fears, not just for him and his family but for the damage it would do to the country.
If he gets reelected it may push some of the moron battalion over the edge, particularly after being egged on by guys like this shitheel, Rush, Coulter, Reilly – well I could go on & on but we all know the length of the list of librul media types who like to rouse the rabble.
CarolDuhart2
@Schlemizel: One of the things about Homeland Security is that now the security agencies work together, especially with something like that. Any agency that gets creditable intel on a plot passes to the Secret Service-and it’s not just the Secret Service that’s tasked to protect the President anymore.
The days when a yahoo like that would find it easy to try anymore are long gone. The skills used to defend against Al Queda are finding themselves quite handy against these yahoos who have less organizing skills and resources.
CarolDuhart2
I always thought that war re-enactments were like Ren Faire: a chance to pretend for an afternoon to live a more courtly/heroic/historic life, (with indoor plumbing) and then go back to reality later on. Certainly Ren Faire doesn’t attempt to bring back the Middle Ages for everybody and repeal Democracy and modern technology.
ThresherK
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Countcherblessings. I’m surprised a sizeable segment below the Mason-Dixon line hasn’t created the ultimate ubergeek/historian/firearms/anti-authoritarian* pastime: A LARP tournament reenacting the Civil War in an alternate universe with the South winning.
*Only when a Dem is in the White House, natch.
desertflower
@M Pop They know, and HAVE known, for years. In fact, if I remember correctly, Republicans berated Sec. Napolitano for even THINKING that was possible!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/us/politics/10terror.html
Joel
Any mention of civil war re-enactments merits an obligatory Mr. Show reference.
Schlemizel
@ThresherK:
I know I have told this story here before but I am old so repeating stories should be expected “So I tied an onion to my belt. Which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ’em . . .”
When I lived in Florida the locals put on a ACW re-enactment as part of the 4th of July celebration. There were always 2 acts, one the good guys won & the other won by the secessionist bastards. There was always polite clapping when the right side won but when the traitors won there would be a great cheer.
I know some re-enactors and for them it is a historically accurate lark but it isn’t hard to imagine some hoping to change history through force of will.
Faulkner said:
“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago….
ThresherK
@Schlemizel: Thanx for the story. It bears repeating as I lurk here often but haven’t read it before.
I also haven’t read Faulkner, but there is a strain of that through some Southern writers I have read, such as Florence King. Therefore I’m familiar with the idea and accepting it it as truth.
As a lifelong Nutmegger (not a Red Sox fan, but married to a Worcesterite) it’s like these folks are always reimagining Gettysburg the way New England sport fans were always reimagining Game Six of the 1986 World Series. Except after 2004, one of these populaces were able to put their all-consuming debilitations to rest.
PS Can I get five bees for a quarter from you?
carpeduum
You cannot deny this is all Obama’s fault. If only he wasn’t so ‘uppity’.
CarolDuhart2
Perhaps that’s part of the problem for the re-enactors. There is no going back-ever. The Red Sox could win a World Series eventually-the Buffalo Bills will win a Super Bowl someday. But America/and the world has changed far too much for Civil War II to even get started, let alone be a win for the South. If the South couldn’t get it done back when it seemed to have all the advantages, there’s no hope now.
Chris
@M-pop:
Don’t hold your breath. The Ku Klux Klan was around for a literal hundred years before the feds finally started treating them as the domestic terrorism problem they were. At least we’re not quite that bad. But for the entire conservative movement, there’s no such thing as domestic right wing terrorism.
And to think of all the crap we once gave the Italians for “omerta”…
@CarolDuhart2:
I’m sure they’re useful as hell in neutralizing militia groups, as we saw with the Hutaree. Less so with lone wolf terrorism, I think, which is increasingly our problem here.
rikyrah
Newt got the Union Leader endorsement.
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA
CarolDuhart2
Notice, though, the number of guys who now surround Obama wherever he goes? And there’s probably more folks who are undercover looking for those lone wolves in a crowd or casing a place before Obama arrives.
Schlemizel
@CarolDuhart2:
I was at an event around 64-65 with LBJ in attendance. Now it is true Kennedy was not completely cold by then but I was stunned by the number of obviously armed men around him. From the pictures I have seen since then I think that is standard for every President.
Joe Max
@CarolDuhart2:
There is a difference between the Ren Faire/SCA crowd and the military re-enacters. The former are trying to recreate the social trappings of a past age, and the most violent thing going on at a Ren Faire are the guys jousting, which itself was a re-enactment of an actual battlefield. SCA meets will sometimes stage a “battle”, but it’s still just organized jousting.
Military re-enacters, OTOH, are focused only on the actual warfare itself, with the costuming and other trappings being only a sideline. It’s also telling that in Ren Faires, you’ll see a good number of “historical anachronisms” regarding women, such as the ubiquitous “woman warrior” dressed up in some form of a Xena outfit, or as a lady pirate. Women are very much a part of the “action”, particularly since there is always a Queen Elizabeth I. Some purists may scoff a bit, but it’s generally considered part of the fun.
In a Civil War re-enactement (according to a friend who makes costumes for them) the “womenfolk” (almost invariably the wives and girlfriends of the play soldiers) do nothing but sit on the sidelines in Scarlet O’Hara outfits, fanning themselves and blurting out “ah deCLARE!” at appropriate moments. Women are never allowed to “cross-dress” and play the part of a soldier. The purists among them make the Ren Faire types look positively liberal.
Mike in NC
@rikyrah:
It had to be Newt since Benito Mussolini is dead. Also, too, they get to rub it in Romney’s face.
CarolDuhart2
@Schlemizel: I suspect the number has increased since then, and even more so since September 11th. In Dallas there were no sharpshooters occupying the windows overhead looking for snipers as there are now. Nobody publishes the President’s route anymore, and the motorcade almost never stops except by request. Needless to say, the President never travels by convertible anymore.
CarolDuhart2
@Joe Max: On further review, you have a point I hadn’t realized. Ren Faires are pretty holistic: there are arts, crafts, entertainment, food, celebration. So it’s about the whole era, not just battles.
And there’s no bitterness behind the Faire either.
On the other hand, Civil War re-enactments don’t celebrate the era. Music? Food? Crafts? Those were provided by the slaves who ran away as soon as they were able to leave, and nobody is going to be found to re-enact that part of it. There’s an element of bitterness around the Civil War that no amount of play can quite erase.
RossInDetroit
@Schlemizel:
My best friend is an AA and he was certain that Obama would never make it to election day alive, then when he did, that he would never live past inauguration.
Looking at a black president from the point of view of a racist, I can kind of see what they’re furious about. Instead of a real (white, older, male) president there’s this impostor in the White House preventing America from having the real (white, older, male) leader that it needs.
They just can’t accept his legitimacy and never will. Be cause he doesn’t fit their definition of a president.
PurpleGirl
@CarolDuhart2: Or as one friend explains The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA): Living the Middle Ages as they SHOULD have been. And as is frequently added: “with indoor plumbing”.
From their website: The SCA is an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe. Our “Known World” consists of 19 kingdoms, with over 30,000 members residing in countries around the world. Members, dressed in clothing of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, attend events which feature tournaments, royal courts, feasts, dancing, various classes & workshops, and more.”
RossInDetroit
@PurpleGirl:
My sister has been deep into SCA for several decades. She’s developed some amazing and useful skills as a result. As a pastime I’d rate it harmless to beneficial.
PurpleGirl
@RossInDetroit: I have several friends who have been members for varying amounts of time. I stand in awe of the research they do in order to be as authentic as possible and the skills they develop to cook, dress, etc. in period. I think it’s very beneficial — some of the research into manufacturing skills and techniques (such as iron working) has saved knowledge from being totally lost.
Origuy
There’s a group in the UK called the Sealed Knot that does English Civil War re-enactments. They get pretty serious about it, but as far as I know, they never stage a battle where the Royalists capture and execute Oliver Cromwell.
A Ghost To Most
If you want to experience one of the public epicenters of the “patriot” movement firsthand, I strongly suggest visiting the N-SSA (North-South Skirmish Association) National Skirmish at the home range north of Winchester, VA, the third weekend of May, or the first weekend of October.
These people are NOT your stereotypical, spectacle obsessed reenactors shooting at each other with powder cartridges. They dress in uniforms, but they shoot black powder muskets in 8 man teams at breakable targets. These are some of the best shots in the country, this side of military snipers, which many of them were.
They also form the core of many of the most dangerous militia movements in the eastern United States. You would be hard pressed to find a public gathering of this many (10k+) hardcore gun freaks, racists, and “patriots” in full freak mode where the public is welcome.
How would I know this? I grew up in it. For 40 years, until I cut ties in 2003, I was immersed in the culture. My family still is, and have close ties to militia and other like minded groups in from Maine to Texas.
Lojasmo
Waiting for McClaren to pop in and blame civil war reenactments on Obama, because…HITLER!
stickler
@Chris: No, not quite. The original Klan was a gen-u-wine terrorist group, made up mostly of ex-Confederate soldiers. Uncle Sam went after that organization will all the force he had: thousands of arrests, trials (often by courts-martial), and a large number of summary, short-drop sentences. By 1871 the Klan was gone as an organization.
The new Klan was founded in 1915 by a flim-flam man with a bad attitude.
Chris
@stickler:
It was my understanding that while the Klan itself was broken during Reconstruction, other similar organizations like the White League and the Red Shirts simply took over, and in some cases outlived Reconstruction. Certainly white Southern terrorism (e.g. lynching) lived on.
And while I’ll amend the dates to give full credit to Uncle Sam during Reconstruction, after Reconstruction, both that white terrorism and the second Klan that eventually came around were pretty solidly ignored by the feds for a good long time, I believe.
stickler
@Chris: I was picking nits.
(But the periodization is important.)
After 1877, the feds didn’t do much about Not Klan racist organizations like, well, the State of Mississippi. Mostly because enthusiasm for “doing something” to benefit the black people was close to nil in North and South alike.
The “new” Klan was, indeed, ignored by the Feds until at least the 1960s.
Mnemosyne
@Joe Max:
Ironically, that actually makes them less historically accurate than the Ren Faire types.
The Other Chuck
The SCA is terrific, and while there is some overlap among SCA members and Ren Faire attendees/performers, you would do well if you found yourself in an SCA gathering to not make the comparison.
For example, the standard Ren Faire greeting is “well met”. The standard SCA greeting is “Hi”.
AxelFoley
How fucking stupid do you have to be to draw attention to yourself when you have all this undercover shit like trying to undermine the government you’re doing?
AxelFoley
@Schlemizel:
I said this on a thread last week or so (think it was deleted), and I’ll say it again–white folks (and by white folks, I mean the crazy ones) really don’t wanna go there. They really don’t.
This ain’t the 50’s or 60’s when you had black folks turning the other cheek or rioting in their own neighborhoods when one of our leaders was gunned down.
Straight up, lots of white folks, innocent or guilty, will get hurt if something happens to President Obama or his family.
This is not a threat by me, it’s what will happen.
Remember the L.A. riots? Lots of innocent folks got hurt then (see Denny, Reginald).
All them racist redneck muthafuckas clamoring for the so-called race war are really just the redneck version of Keyboard Kommandos–they don’t want none of what would come to them.
Please believe.