Stay classy, Arizona:
A picture that shows several teens, a few of them carrying guns, displaying a bullet-riddled Obama T-shirt has led the U.S. Secret Service to investigate.
The Peoria Police Department is also doing its own investigation since the person who took the photograph is a Sergeant for the department.
There are just so many things to love about this- that a bunch of kids are running around posing with guns, that they thought it was appropriate to shoot up an Obama t-shirt, and that a cop was the person snapping the picture, and that then, in their infinite wisdom, they decided to post it on the internet.
And y’all wonder how Jan Brewer got elected.
gnomedad
Another one for Charles Murray’s quiz: Have you ever shot up an image of the President of the United States?
ETA: The comments at the link are … predictable.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
Not to be all controversial about this, but those boys really don’t look like a very diverse bunch, do they?
barkleyg
And y’all wonder how Jan Brewer got elected.
That is my GREAT fear of Newt. It should be Goldwater 64,
I am a little scared to find out
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Not me. John McCain is their smarter, more principled Senator.
Brian S
And yet their vote counts just as much as mine.
Betty Cracker
My mom has neighbors who tack up printed photos of President Obama for target practice. I don’t think even they are dumb enough to put it on Facebook, though.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Brian S: The rather unsettling part of democracy, isn’t it?
BO_Bill
Chittum postulated that police and military units would start to divide themselves by race before the split. He also recommended that white people avoid living in the Southwest. He is pretty solid in most of his facts, but I don’t understand his second argument.
Brian S
I’m also curious as to what Sgt Shearer thought the content of this political statement was. I mean, you can’t just throw that blanket statement out there and expect it to over everything, can you?
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@BO_Bill:
You don’t understand any argument, BillyBobBirdBrain. Surely you’ve noticed that by now?
mdblanche
When I first saw “Billy Jack” I thought it was over-the-top ridiculous.
Now I think it was a documentary.
c u n d gulag
We guarantee your boys will have a great time here at Camp Killemorwounedem!
Note to parents:
Please make sure to stitch your son’s name on his white hood, since they all look alike – which is ironic since that’s what we all say about the nigra’s.
WereBear
Yep. The kind whose life tends to fall apart by forty; wife leaves them, they find out their kids think they’re assholes, they’ve lost their butt and gained a paunch, and the serious drinking/bad dating begins.
Health troubles ensue but they are too manly to see a doctor. Bitter and angry and winds up dead in a trailer in a La-z-boy upholstered in duct tape. Because of the smell. Because they have no one left who cares.
Sorry. Small town upbringing, running away with me.
Hill Dweller
@Betty Cracker: And I suspect those people are just as ignorant about policy as the rednecks I encounter. The quickest way to set them off is to ask for a substantive rationale for their disdain.
Cat Lady
To all those folks here who are waiting for the old white farts to die off so that we can have nice things, guess what? Those old white farts raised families.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
I look at this and think of Gabby Giffords resigning from Congress while Sarah Palin gets to reload and put other Americans who disagree with her politically in the cross-hairs.
Yevgraf
Those boys could do with fewer trips to the range; they’d benefit from more time at the gym.
I hate pasty faced adolescent chubbos – they’re future wingnuts in training, full of dreams of using their guns to win the love of cute girls who normally laugh at them. When they grow up, they become Limbaugh, Norquist, Douthat, Sam Francis, Goldberg, Gingrich, etc.
They can let themselves go to pot later on (God knows I have), but when they’re young, they should be fit.
Turbulence
I’m not a gun person, but isn’t pointing a weapon at someone’s head, like the third guy from the right is doing, a really really bad thing? Granted, compared to the rest of the massive stupidity and evil on display here, that’s not a big deal, but I’d expect that kids who play with guns should at least have basic gun safety down.
cbear
The good news is that at least one or two of these fucksticks will probably be competing for a Darwin Award sometime in the near future.
Failing that happy result, chances are probably 50/50 that one the boys will accidentally blow his own dick off in some spectacularly entertaining manner, thus contributing to both our amusement and the survival of the species.
cathyx
Speaking of growing up so fast, my google profile says I’m an old man.
Amir Khalid
@Brian S:
I’m wondering why the ABC reporter didn’t ask Sgt Shearer the obvious follow-up question: “And the political statement is… ?”
Yevgraf
@Turbulence:
Yeah, but pointing out handling errors of firearm fetishists is kenyanmuslimatheistmarxistsoc!alisticallibruljewleftism.
As a red state gun nut, I was always taught muzzle down unless you’re firing.
dadanarchist
How does this not have a “Wolverines!” tag….
smintheus
Grew up in a small NE town. We had some supreme assholes on the police force, including one who, when I was 10, formed a gang of much older kids to waylay me before and after school every day for more than a year. Two years or so later, at 17, he joined the police force.
Anya
These boys should put the guns away, and join Mrs. Obama’s Let’s Move. Their body and mind will benefit more and they’ll become less hostile.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@Amir Khalid:
Might have been interesting to ask why he took the picture, if he thought it was such a bad idea? Was he actually the group’s “wise” older leader?
RossInDetroit
@Turbulence:
At least some of them are wearing ear protection. So that’s progress.
MacKenna
If they stay on this track, those teens will someday be these guys.
The Thin Black Duke
@Turbulence:
Sshhhh.
Let the problem take care of itself.
“Darwinism For Dummies”, y’know?
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@MacKenna:
I suspect they’ll end up as Arizona’s answer to the Hutaree, with preposterous titles, flabby guts and shrinking minds.
RossInDetroit
@smintheus:
Also from a town of 2,500. The craziest bastard in high school, who nobody expected to live to see 20, ended up on the police force. I watch my ass when I visit home, which may have been the intent.
Raven
Shearer (the cop) said that he stands by President Barack Obama and would sacrifice his own life for the President’s.
Read more: http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_west_valley/peoria/secret-service-investigating-prank-photo-that-shows-students-holding-bullet-riddled-obama-shirt#ixzz1kmyAxRef
Amir Khalid
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson:
It worries me that someone so lacking in common sense is a police sergeant.
Raven
@MacKenna: “Those guys” would fuck you up, these guys are weenies.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@Amir Khalid:
What troubles me most is that when I see an older man with a group of young guys, he’s generally in some sort of position of leadership – be it as a captain, teacher, trainer or what have you. What exactly was the sergeant doing out there with them?
Benjamin Franklin
I tried to find the link for how many ATF agents there are to supervise the Thousands of gun dealers across the border states, but I remember it was about 200. Do the math….
About 8,500 gun dealers would be subject to the reporting requirement. Some 36,000 reports of multiple handgun sales were made from the four border states in fiscal 2010, according to the ATF.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/03/us-usa-mexico-guns-idUSTRE7725DB20110803
Operation ‘Gunwalker’ was a wrong-headed approach to the problem of proliferation, but the Supply-Siders can only carp about ‘Fast and Furious’,
and the agents who were killed by the guns sold, none of the ancillary issues, like THOUSANDs of victims in Mexico sacrificed in the Free Market of Firearms.
Linnaeus
When I go to my local doughnut shop and use the wi-fi there, I find that one of the other wi-fi networks in range is named “CopKillerDeathToObama”. Hmm.
smintheus
@RossInDetroit: Amazing what bizarre people end up wearing badges. At age 12 I was nearly strangled by a drunkard at the town fair, and one of our sergeants standing nearby refused to take a report from me or arrest the guy as he stumbled off yards away. The sergeant was yakking with somebody, loudly rebuked me for trying to interrupt him, and refused even to turn around to eyeball my attacker. Told me I’d have to go the police station if I wanted to report it. Guy got fired shortly afterwards, but still…talk about insane.
Amir Khalid
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson:
Ringleader, I guess. He certainly wasn’t teaching them gun safety, to judge from that photo, or setting any example of good sense.
@Raven:
To which I would reply: “Yeah, right.”
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Welcome to America. This is typical.
Moira setser
What a bunch of ignorant hicks.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@Amir Khalid:
Sergeant Stupido probably thinks that getting his ass shot off by one of his little buddies who was aiming for Obama’s face counts as giving his life for the POTUS.
West of the Cascades
@cathyx: My profile correctly identified that I am a man but missed my age by a decade — I guess I am prematurely prone to yelling “you kids get off my lawn!”
DanielX
@Turbulence:
Yup – basic safety says don’t ever point a weapon in the direction of something you’re not prepared to shoot. Can’t tell from the picture, but I’d bet that’s also a loaded weapon and that his finger is inside the trigger guard. But, stupid is as stupid does, and these are really some dumb white trash. Drop them into a gym with a thousand other kids and they’d lower the average IQ of those present by ten points.
West of the Cascades
@Gin & Tonic: it’s all a big joke until some congresswoman gets shot in the head, and then it’s still a big joke for these people.
russell
Fear of a black planet.
I think that’s serious drinking/wanking to bad porn.
All I have to say is fine, get it right out in the open where we can all see it for what it is.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
I am looking at the boys and the way they handle those guns and seeing a very irritated high school principal assigning an essay on just how ChuckBob Lee shot Ray Kludge in the foot shortly before Billy Dickweed put a round through Beauregard Leghumper’s cranial region and what do we learn from this all anyhow, y’all.
sb
From the linked article.
Shooting the image of Obama is a political statement. And this man is a police officer. And he carries a gun.
If I need to get to New Mexico from my California home, I think I’ll drive around Arizona.
Jay
Perhaps y’all have already seen this, but Think Progress ran an item reporting that Kansas’s REPUBLICAN SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE, not some random guy, the state’s REPUBLICAN SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE, prayed for the President’s death.
Traitorous fucks like Mike O’Neal make me want to log eleventy billion phone bank hours for President Obama’s reelection, but there has never been a day – from the time he announced for POTUS to now – during which I didn’t feel he might get assassinated. Granted, the size of this fear has fluctuated (I think it peaked when I lived in Philly and heard someone had screamed “KILL HIM!” at a Pennsylvania rally.), but again, it’s always been there.
How many others here are juggling a fear of the President’s murder with a desire to see him reelected? How are you coping?
Kathy in St. Louis
I had family who lived in Arizona for 5 years. I’ve NEVER wondered how Jan Brewer got elected. The heat causes Arizonians to go crazy. That is all.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@Jay:
I’m more determined than ever not to let these murdering, racist, brain-dead, anti-American thugs win. Yes we can and yes we damn well will, if I personally have to re-enact Sherman’s March barefoot and with live ammunition. Phone-bank, donate, organize, drive people to the polls and do it all again five minutes later. Get it done, people. We have to win this one.
cathyx
@West of the Cascades: I’m already suffering from a midlife crisis as I’m turning 50 this year. The local grocery store clerks with whom I’m friendly have started to give me the senior discount without even asking me if I’m 55. Although I suspect that they are just giving it to me to be nice without thinking that I’m that old, or at least that’s what I tell myself. So to be anonymously profiled as being a man in my late 50’s 60’s is quite depressing.
Cain
The way they are holding their guns should really irritate gun owners. Seriously, I hope their safety was on, and they were unloaded before taking that picture.
I don’t give a shit what these people do with the picture. It is pretty crass IMHO. I’m sure that if liberals did something with Bush that there would be loud condemnation. The best thing at that point is to tell them to suck it.
RossInDetroit
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: Bullet to the cranium is just a flesh wound for that bunch.
Kathy in St. Louis
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson:
I think about it all the time when I read the truly stupid beliefs of some of the haters out there.
But I also fear that, between velcro and the falling IQs of average American citizens, our great grandkids won’t be able to tie their shoes in 30 years.
beergoggles
With that level of gun safety (or the lack thereof), one wonders how they haven’t shot each other by now…
MikeJ
@Cain:
A guy went to prison because he made a joke about how God was going to speak through a burning Bush.
WaterGirl
@c u n d gulag: Tried to reply to you in the other thread and life did not cooperate.
Here’s the direct link to Steve Benen’s first post at the Maddow Blog.
lamh35
Since we are on the subject of Arizona, here’s a link to a rant by one of the biggest nationally syndicated urban radio shows, The Rickey Smiley Morning Show, discussing Guv Brewer’s “finger-wagging”. I can tell you now, that this rant is pretty much the consensus on urban radio and in majority of Black radio, television, twitter and news programs.
It’s def a righteous rant, IMHO. I was nodding my head the whole time.
Rickey Smiley Goes Off On Jan Brewer for Disrespecting President Obama
WaterGirl
@Raven: Okay, so now I REALLY want to know what political statement he was making.
MacKenna
@Raven: Did you even click the link?
Ben Cisco
@Amir Khalid:
Because he doesn’t get his latinum if he asks that followup. It’s clearly stated in his Ferengi Commerce Authority contract.
Montysano
Am I failing at The New Civility if I hope that their visit from the Secret Service included a lengthy and thorough cavity search?
Excellent post title also, too.
WaterGirl
@lamh35:
Righteous rant.
Edit: I’m still listening, and now I’m laughing. In a good way. He’s handing out Brewer’s phone number on the radio and asking people to call. I love this guy.
feebog
RossInDetroit:
More like a complete miss.
Kyle
@Linnaeus:
If it were my neighborhood, I’d setup an access point within range of his and call it “FBI Surveillance Van”.
WaterGirl
@Kyle: Better yet, actually call the FBI and let them set up their own wireless access point. :-)
Loved your idea, though.
quannlace
Ask Dick Cheney’s lawyer friend.
((((((((
Looking at that picture, brings up the old saying:
“Beauty is skin deep-stupid goes down to the bone.”
khead
I just hope they didn’t use Obama targets here.
Allan
Young Guns 2024!
Rick
I remember when a group of teenagers in Marin county said something mean about Bush, and a police officer overheard, and didn’t do anything about it.
Both sides do it, dontcha know…
Arclite
I wonder if a case against these kids went to the SCOTUS, if they’d rule it protected speech under the first amendment. There are laws against this kind of thing, but I always wondered why they were exempt from first amendment protections. Not in any way condoning this behavior, of course.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jay:
The Secret Service is going to be going into crazy overdrive when the real election gets going. I’d say the last couple of weeks before the vote would be the most dangerous. That’s when a racist psycho would think committing murder would be making a difference.
Ugh. I think the vast majority of these gun-toting GOP macho men are utterly cowardly and harmless, but it only takes one truly homicidal cook.
alex milstein
They’re so proud of their actions that they take a picture and let it be posted, but know enough to have their faces blurred. Hypocrisy, thy name is ‘Conservative.’
Sara
@Jay: I cope with it by praying his Secret Service is loyal and dedicated and determined to safeguard him. I often don’t watch him speak in an open area because I don’t want to see what I’m afraid I’ll see. I am terrified to think he’s going to be speaking in a 74K seat open-air stadium during the Democratic National Convention. I won’t be watching that either.
cynn
Peoria, Arizona. The triumphal land of the inbred shitkickers. Say no more. As a native Arizonan, I know these things.
Steven Rockford
“And y’all wonder how Jan Brewer got elected.”
John,
The definition of Ad Hominem is “appealing to one’s prejudices, emotions, or special interests rather than to one’s intellect or reason.”
I’m not sure what state you live in. But, I’m sure there’s some right-wing elected schmuck in your state that is equally as insane as Jan Brewer.
Is it right for me to say “And y’all wonder how Joe Schmuck got elected in John Cole’s state,” implying that John Cole (and everyone else in his state) is a Neanderthal.
Think about it.
calliope jane
Oh, for fucks sake. Even though this is Peoria and they’re nuts (not that Tucson is an oasis of sanity anymore :(
And y’all wonder how Jan Brewer got elected.
I don’t wonder. She was barely going to be the repub nominee before SB 1070 made her a superstar (dem AG Terry Goddard was leading in the polls, refused to defend it in court, etc., etc.). Of course, that’s the point, isn’t it :) AZ’s new slogan: We have enough racist, hateful idiots to fill the Grand Canyon.
On the other hand, I’ve only seen (Tucson area) Obama and a few die-hard Bush-Cheney bumper-stickers, for whatever that’s worth. And Richard Carmona (former Bush Surgeon General, Gabby Giffords supporter / Affordable Care Act supporter, now Dem) running for Kyl’s open Senate seat, just raised a lot of money…. so, baby steps? :)
Bill Murray
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: what do you mean, there is like a foot height difference between the shortest and tallest. and a 100 pound difference between the lightest and heaviest. That’s some doversity
b-psycho
@calliope jane:
If only an attempt was made to prove that.
Thymezone
Well, since you, John, apparently still have no fucking clue on earth how idiots get elected, despite all the time you spend watching it happen, let me explain it to you again:
42% voter turnout. That’s the national number, which explains why you have a congress that can’t wipe its own butt.
The Arizona number was just below 41%, and the WV number was about 38%. Just in case you thought your hillbilly state was better than Arizona. At least Arizona, which supplies most of the nation’s copper, manages not to kill its miners all the time.
On the plus side, WV did manage to beat Texas. So you have that.
chuckieboy
I am a disabled vet (nam 68), from Chicago, vacationing in the panhandle of Florida. I now refer to the entire South, and similar areas, Arizona et.al. THE LAND OF THE SIX MONTH BIRTH. The wingnuts are truly a cult, to be feared and not taken lightly. I thoroughly despise these motherfuckers, to the point I am leaving, before my lease is up, never to return.
suzanne
Peoria is on the west side of Phoenix, and is such a pit of despair that I avoid it at all costs. Nonetheless, I feel like I have to apologize for this. I obviously didn’t work hard enough for the right people. GOD.
GOD.
Thymezone
This is the type of vehicle we use to crush cars with WV license plates in Arizona. Beware.
mclaren
As I’ve said many many many times before:
Q: What do you a call a heavily-armed member of the extreme right-wing lunatic fringe who shoots and beats people at random for no discernible reason?
A: A police officer.
Even better:
Q: What do you call a heavily-armed member of the extreme right-wing lunatic fringe who believes Barack Obama is an illegitimate Muslim usurper born in Kenya, and who has hundreds or thousands of followers?
A: An officer in the United States Army.</B
Gretchen
@Jay:
An amazingly smart young man of my acquaintance spent the last year on the White House cybersecurity beat. It was so intense, he needed a long rest after he was finished. I trust that the Secret Service has people of his caliber working on protecting the President. I have to believe that.
Yutsano
@calliope jane:
Sounds like a decent ActBlue target for down the road. Plus it’ll be an Obama year. We might just pull a few surprises off.
c u n d gulag
@WaterGirl:
Thanks.
What is it with the Facebook sign-in’s to comment?
First Charles Pierce, now Steve.
I don’t do Facebook – or any of them.
Oh well, at least I can still read him.