Will Bunch has a truly heartbreaking, infuriating post up on the murder of nine-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in Arizona in 2009. Brisenia’s mother survived by playing dead.
The killers were newly minted Tea Partiers and fledgling Minutemen, and I think it’s safe to say they were influenced by at least one Tea Party rally in Arizona before carrying out their murders. Shawna Forde, the mastermind of the operation, had apparently cooked up an idea to murder and rob drug dealers to fund her anti-immigrant activities. She and her accomplice, Jason Bush, broke into the Flores home on May 30, 2009.
[A warning (better late than never) this next bit is graphic and disturbing]
According to testimony, Bush shot Flores, then Gonzalez. Gonzalez was hit in the shoulder and leg and slumped to the floor. She testified that she played dead as she heard Bush pump more bullets into her husband as Brisenia woke up.
“Why did you shoot my dad?” the girl asked, sobbing, according to Gonzalez’s testimony. “Why did you shoot my mom?”
Gonzalez said she heard Bush slowly reload his gun and that he then ignored Brisenia’s pleas and fired.
People like Forde and Bush are life-long losers, criminals, racists. Forde has an erratic past and was described as unstable. Bush has ties to the Aryan Nation. These are scummy people, and they’d be scummy people without Glenn Beck or the Tea Party. But having a cause based on fear and hatred and bigotry just fuels these sorts of bigots. It gives them a moral edifice, however bizarre, to justify their actions. Murder and theft aren’t crimes – they’re part of the revolution! Gunning down a nine-year-old girl is part of the resistance, it’s patriotic! And Beck and others, including members of the Arizona government, who are fomenting fear and paranoia over immigration are at least partly to blame.
Maybe this is what Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik was talking about in the wake of the Giffords shootings. Maybe he was so quick to denounce heated rhetoric because he’d seen what it had already led to in his county, in his state and his country. It’s not just rhetoric, after all. It’s rallies and talk of revolution. It’s people up in arms, passing laws to get the Mexicans out, and when that fails, arming themselves and taking the vigilante route. And if Brisenia’s story doesn’t break your heart, nothing will.
mclaren
And if he’d played his cards right, he might’ve become a senator…or even president.
Martin
I read in quite a few places that Brisenia deserved to be shot because she was an anchor baby. Of course, that could have been someone on the left who said that, because both sides do it.
asiangrrlMN
Oh, god. This just makes me ill. I vaguely remember this case when it first came out, but there was very little publicity about it. You are right, E.D., that they would have been who they are without the Lipton Tea Party or Beck. However, would they have gone to this extent without the constant hate rhetoric pumping through their veins? Sadly, we’ll never know.
@Martin: Are you fucking kidding me that people actually wrote that? No mas. No fucking mas!
E.D. Kain
@mclaren: Actually, the one area where GW Bush gets any redemption points from me at all is on immigration. The Bush family in general is pretty good on immigration stuff – Jeb’s written some decent articles on it, and GW took a lot of heat for his own ideas (ones he never backed away from unlike the vile John McCain.)
E.D. Kain
@asiangrrlMN: Exactly. It seems at least plausible that the rally Forde went to either A) tipped her over the edge or B) gave her the idea. Either way it’s a bad outcome, even if that’s not the intended outcome. Playing with fire.
asiangrrlMN
@E.D. Kain: Yes. I’m not taking anything away from personal responsibility because of course Forde and Bush are the ones who committed the crimes (and should do the time). Still. Why this particular target? So many questions and way too much heartbreak.
piratedan
well part of the reason it was backgrounded so quickly was the fact that George Tiller was murdered less than a week later, which promptly kicked this to the curb.
here’s a link to a GOS diary regarding the AZ hatemaster that gives you an idea on the culture and ideology that is currently in control in the state:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/1/26/939064/-What-Russell-Pearces-Son-Costs-Taxpayers
These murders are an example of the stuff that is going on in the mostly sane part of the state, I can’t speak to Maricopa County as that’s Sheriff Joe country up there.
piratedan
@asiangrrlMN: they thought the inhabitants we’re part of the Mexican Drug Cartel system but needless to say, they’re intellignce was suspect (pun not intended).
kdaug
@asiangrrlMN:
I remember reading about this at the time.
IIRC, they thought the father was a drug dealer, and initially broke into the house to rob them for money to form their group of border-watchers.
Of course, brown people being subhuman…
Welcome to Arizona!
E.D. Kain
@piratedan: Tucson area and Northern Arizona are pretty sane comparatively, but also much less populated than the big Phoenix metro which, as you say, is Sheriff Joe country. Not all of it of course, but a lot of it.
Uriel
Hmmm- I’m eagerly awaiting the flood of posters self-righteously gang-rushing this thread to point out how and why you’re completely off base in your interpretation of this, based primarily on the fact that you happen to be-
Well, you.
Should be worth the time spent getting popcorn and such.
Pooh
Who stole EDK’s login? He sounds positively shrill in this post…
piratedan
@E.D. Kain: I dunno E.D., Tucson metro is about a million folks, we’re not exactly the sticks…we have an Air Force base (Davis Monthan) and a top flight University (University of Arizona) here. Arivaca is about 25 to 30 miles south of here, kinda rural and seeing a modest revitilization as an organic agriculture area just inside the Pima County line, but there’s definately a strong strain of wingnuttia here that like to stamp their feet and raise their voices at every opportunity. I’ve mentioned in other threads, Giffords had a close race here and if there hadn’t been an even more extreme Libertarian candidate (who pulled like 7% of the vote), its quite possible that Giffords would have lost in a very ugly election. There was a LOT of money tossed into this race from the outside on behalf of Jesse Kelly.
asiangrrlMN
@piratedan: Yeah. I vaguely remember that, too. “Not the brightest bulbs in the box” was the kindest thing I thought about these two when I first read the story.
@kdaug: Man. The details are coming back as I read these comments. It was so horrific at the time. It distresses me at how completely it slipped from my mind.
And, now I can’t stop thinking about the poor mother, Mrs. Flores, and the nightmare she is currently living.
Villago Delenda Est
This family had brown skin.
That’s all the scumbags needed to know. Actual drug dealing is irrelevant to their hatred.
Pretty much like concern over the deficit is irrelevant to their feelings about the current President.
Joey Maloney
Jesus Christ, I’m not going to read a blow-by-blow account of the murder of a little girl. Just reading the pull-quote I already know stuff I can’t get out of my head.
Adding…I don’t think of myself as an especially delicate flower, but could you maybe show a little consideration when choosing your excerpts in the future, consideration for those of us who imagine the last seconds of that poor kid’s life, and can’t immediatly pivot to a “fucking Teatard racist assholes” rant? My hands are literally trembling as I type.
eric
i am going to sleep the rest of the night with my angelic daughter. My heart breaks. the thought……
peace to you all
eric
kdaug
@Joey Maloney:
In E.D.’s defense, he did cut out the most heartbreaking part (though he left out the ellipses).
This is the ugly truth. It happened.
Sometimes it takes a gut-punch to get the rest of us to wake up. But blaming the messenger isn’t going to go far in solving this problem.
Biff Longbotham
Viva la revolucion!
cthulhu
I don’t fucking care if they were dealing drugs – there’s no excuse for coldly executing a nine-year-old. That it was for some hare-brained scheme to fund more insanity is purely insane crazy on the degenerate cake.
Joey Maloney
@kdaug:
That’s so completely not my point.
Uriel
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yep. Entirely right.
It’s just the flip-side of the wildly insincere talking point about how the presence of illegal aliens causes kidnapping rates to spike out of control- with the implication that the kidnapping victims must be decent, sufficiently pale skinned sons and daughters of the mayflower. Of course, no one mentions the fact that the victims are actually illegals themselves, who are being preyed upon because they lack any protection in this society due to the prejudices of the very people raising the argument in the first place.
It’s really a simple set of equations:
Brown person hurts white person = brown person’s fault.
White person hurts brown person = brown person’s fault.
Brown person hurts brown person = brown person’s fault (+ the implication that the victim is really white.)
I’m sure any day now, we’ll be treated to the spectacle of the proposition: White person hurts white person= brown person’s fault. In fact, I’m convinced that the Loughner case will, somehow, end up being the trial balloon for exactly this argument- at least on Instapundit or The Corner.
And, yes, in the interest of disclosure- +4 or 5. But This shit has been getting under my skin for a long time now, and I’m still right. When the great succession comes, I will have exactly no problem tipping my hat at the state of Arizona and saying, “merrily on your way, douchbags.”
Yutsano
@E.D. Kain:
I can guarantee you there is at least one die-hard Communist in Maricopa county. He’s a good friend of mine, he actually defected to East Germany over the wall in the 1980’s. I’ve been bugging him for years to write a book about the experience.
Uriel
(And, yes I know that some of the people in Arizona are decent people, and undoubtedly some of them are posters here. To them, just let me say- no reflection on you, but have you noticed that some of your neighbors are really big assholes?)
Anne Laurie
@E.D. Kain:
Heck, Jeb married a Mexican and produced a couple ‘anchor babies’ of his very own (‘the little brown ones’, as their grampa called them). And some people say that Jeb’s made a good part of his personal fortune being… helpful… as a legislative go-between for the ex-Batista Cuban immigrants and the Floridian good ol’ boys, the Big Sugar and Big Real Estate Development honchos who’ve made their fortunes turning the Everglades into a sump tank for Disneyfication. “The immigration problem” has been good to Jeb Bush.
(Yeah, but cheap snark feels better than contemplating a little girl’s murder.)
kdaug
@Joey Maloney:
Ah. My sincere appologies, because when I read this:
…I took it to mean that you didn’t want your beautiful mind sullied with the thought of a little girl’s last words of “Please don’t shoot me” being answered with a bullet to the face.
I stand corrected.
GregB
You want to watch a wingnut head explode. Ask them why we shouldn’t extend the same courtesy to all illegal immigrants that we extend to Cuban refugees
I have been saying that the McVeigh wing of the GOP would get their band back together and they sure enough have.
But now we can’t talk about that because talking about things is now deemed attacking people with the intention of silencing them.
Also, we can’t talk about gun control after a large scale gun killing because Al Gore is fat.
Uriel
@Anne Laurie: Goddamn it — Disney is nice. I am so f’ing tired of hearing people on the left dump on it reflexively. I mean, cripes, it was only a few years ago that the right wing wanted to boycott the place because of it’s support of gay rights.
Plus, it’s been fairly forward thinking in regards to the environment, especially compared to companies of equivalent size.
Say what you want about dumbing down the culture, or problems with women’s issues in the past. But, at least give credit where credit is due.
(And with that, I’m out — so feel free in telling me how wrong I am about all of this.)
Villago Delenda Est
@GregB: @GregB:
Well, I believe Tom Tancredo has answered that question, when he got all bent out of shape over signs in Spanish in Miami, and hearing it spoken in the streets.
Brilliant. Pissing off the most reliably Rethuglican community in Florida. Tom’s a fucking SUPER genius!
andrewsomething
@E.D. Kain:
Fledgling? I suggest you read Digby:
cs
@Yutsano:
Was your friend in the USAF and did he end up working for the Stasi? If so, small world.
Yutsano
@cs: Army and he did do some informing but not actual Stasi work. Turns out they were too suspicious of him for that. He made good money spying on other folks although he refused to turn his friends in for anything. That and he still has a Trabbi over there. He really wants to bring it here and try to restore it.
EDIT: He also found out he could become a German citizen again if he so chose. He planned on it if Grandpa and Bible Spice won.
piratedan
@Uriel: yup, but as we have noticed elsewhere, its not exactly exclusive to Arizona, who knows, maybe it’s the humidity (or lack thereof). Arizona has a really strange mix politically….
Lots of hispanics here (after all, they were the first europeans here), roughly 25% of the total population and as such, there’s a huge history with those folks who take a certain umbridge with the gringos and they’re “immigration” claims. There’s also a good many native tribes here, the Apache, the Navajo, the Hopi and the Tohono O’Odham. The latter two are farmers, the first two, not so much and they don’t always get along with each other. The Phoenix metro area has a healthy influx/bastion of Mormons that carry that don’t believe in much government, don’t care for public schools and would just as soon you stay off their lawns, tyvm. Plus we have the transplated elderly generation from all over the nation that got tired of shovelling snow and don’t care much about anything other than the weather and golf tee times.
Phoenix metro has roughly 3.25m, Tucson, just over 1m in its metro area, that leaves roughly 750k scattered throughout the rest of the state. Tucson is the “bluest” of anywhere else in the state.
The rest of the folks living in the rural areas are mostly big ranchers and farmers, who have pointed views on illegal immigration, the farmers use them as cheap labor and prefer that everyone simply look the other way. the ranchers are tetchy about them as the folks crossing over cut fences, perform some property theft and vandalization has been known to happen from time to time in addition to some livestock theft. Not everyone crossing over is in search of the American dream (but most are) some are just looking to send money home.
The right has looked at the census numbers and the birthrate numbers and within the next 20 years, white, non-hispanics, will be a minority in the state. With the Native Americans coming in around 5%, the other minorities (Blacks and Asians) making up about 6 to 7 percent of the population, that coalition of minorities scares the baby jeebus out of those retirees and mormons (who preach tolerance but hardly practice it) and as such, brings out the scared white folk out in droves to protect the wimmenfolk and their property (sometimes that order is reversed) from the unwashed masses. They use immigration and abortion (big Catholic prescence here) and taxes to put the fear of folks being destitute and unable to continue their retirement in the manner that they’ve grown accustomed to into huge political chits. Our state leg has gerrymandered the legislative districts to suit themselves to keep themselves in power, we can only hope that they will soon run out of ways to coerce folks to vote against their own best interests, but its a dry heat and mirages occur frequently.
auntieeminaz
@Uriel: Yes. Literally.
cs
@Yutsano:
Thanks for the clarification. There was an acquaintance of mine who was USAF intelligence and then ended up in East Berlin and worked for the Stasi. Was arrested by US investigators in Berlin after the wall came down. I had corresponded with him briefly while he was in Leavenworth but lost touch years ago. Would have been surprising to find someone else who knew him.
Angry Black Lady
@Uriel: My parents have noticed. They’ve been there four years and it’s getting worse. in 4 years, my mom went from “I love it here!” to “I have to get the fuck out of here!” (By way of comparison, they spent twenty years in Philadelphia in the same house.) Moved west to be closer to me when my dad retired. Now they’re talking about moving overseas.
All of this is to say: People are noticing.
Hob
@kdaug: What the fuck? I don’t know if you’re trying to be an Internet Tough Guy, but that’s how this is coming across. It sounds like you think people need to have their noses rubbed in every heartbreaking detail of a horrible racist murder in order to prove that they really care about it, or something.
And a gut-punch doesn’t wake people up, it makes them double over and barf. Which is exactly what Joey was saying in his first comment: it’s kind of hard to focus on the political meaning of this (if that’s what you want to do) if you’ve just had the vision of a screaming child projected into your head.
Joey Maloney
@kdaug: Jesus fuck. Really? Really?
I KNOW THAT POOR LITTLE GIRL WAS KILLED BY BAD PEOPLE. I KNOW THEY ARE SYMPTOMS OF A SYSTEMIC PROBLEM. I HAVE PLENTY OF IDEAS OF WHAT OUGHT TO BE DONE ABOUT THAT. I manage to know all of that without having to read the horrific moment-by-moment details of the crime. I chose not to expose myself to them because I know they’ll make me physically ill and give me nightmares.
Maybe I am unique in being such a ridiculous pathetic puling little wuss that I find a blow-by-blow account of the cold-blooded murder of a child terribly upsetting. If so, I guess it is unreasonable for me to ask the front-pager not to include those details in a way that makes them impossible to avoid.
I’m just not as manly and turgid an internet tough guy as you are, and for that I sincerely apologize.
NobodySpecial
@Uriel: All that might be true, and you may be gone and don’t want to hear it, but I have two words on why Disney sucks: Copyright law.
WereBear
@Uriel: Disney is not nice.
They have a fiefdom in central Florida because no one else wanted it. And they do whatever they want. That part is well documented in Team Rodent : How Disney Devours the World by Carl Hiaasen
A friend once asked me why I dislike Disney so much and I said, “It’s because of their relentless commodification of art.”
So, that, too. And there’s the way they run ABC. Remember that hideous 911 movie? Wasn’t that a Disney production company?
I mean really, there’s very little evidence that Disney is “nice.”
WereBear
To be on topic, I didn’t know about this, and it’s utterly hideous; but to realize it was brushed aside over ANOTHER right wing murder (Dr. Tiller) means it is way past time right wing terrorism gets called such.
The fact that it hasn’t yet shows how relentless our media (Disney again!) is about pressing their point of view.
Waldo
To be fair, no one could have foreseen that letting gangs of gun-toting racist vigilantes patrol the border would end in tragedy.
matoko_chan
@E.D. Kain: /yawn
another day, another EDK formula post.
And how relentless EDK and his cohort are about base pandering.
This is another naked headfake on EDK’s part– see guyz? im just like you. while SAYING to the base “you arent relly racists”, i totally unnerstand the fetus=slave thingy, “both sides dooo eet” and fapfapfap markets!
lol does anyone else remember EDK’s homies Douchebag and McMegan blaming liberals for Dr. Tillers assassination because we refuse to overturn Roe?
hawhawhaw.
the teahadists are becomming a liability after Gifford.
EDK and the rest of the bourgie conservatives are going to try to distance themselves naow.
How much have we seen of this? Poplawski, Gifford, Tiller, and meanwhile EDK and Douchebag and the rest spew their soothing grammatically correct and exquistely spelled drench of “we are just like you”.
You arent just like us. You are fucking liars and panderers and intellectual whores.
GO AWAY you useless glibertarian assclown.
you are as transparent as cheap glass.
John S.
Yes, Disney does some pretty fucked up things. ABC has turned into PAX lite, they screw people over left and right and they rip people off with their cheap Chinese products and overpriced theme parks. But there isn’t child in this world who wouldn’t be overjoyed at the prospect of going to Disneyworld, because it’s an awfully fun place for children to go.
Can’t we just allow our children to actually enjoy the experience of being a child? Can they at least have until 10 before we start injecting politics into their worldview and teaching them how awful the Disney corporation is? Sheesh.
matoko_chan
Cole gave you a shot. We all gave you a shot.
You are not a “good guy”.
You have no “good ideas”.
You are a spinner and a basepanderer.
Now man up and admit that and switch sides, or GO THE FUCK BACK TO THE LEAGUE where you dont get ass-raped in the comments every time you post.
catpal
thanks for writing about this – Will Bunch deserves great credit for putting this out there.
Will we be able to stop the bigot vigilantes that are around us – I hope we can.
debbie
And where are the (comparatively) sensible Republicans who ought to be condemning this kind of thing loudly and unreservedly? Oh yeah, they’re standing in the background, silent but hoping for political advantage from all the other loons out there.
The entire Republican Party killed this child.
matoko_chan
@debbie:
along with EDK and the other glibertarian assclowns. Now EDK wants to headfake us that he wasnt there.
They exploited the heck out of this shit to WIN for fifty years.
Now this assclown and his homeslices Douchebag and McMegan want US to help them turn it down.
You baked this cake, EDK, with your fakereasonableness and basepandering, and now you can fucking choke on it.
numbskull
Seems like you’re conflating some issues here. Who said anything about teaching kids how awful Disney is? Nobody here said that.
Besides, in my limited experience, the smart kids figure out how awful it is all on their own.
catpal
@Anne Laurie:
uh yeah. let’s not Ever forget that the Bush family is happy to Exploit immigrants, especially undocumented low wage workers for their rich friends.
matoko_chan
@catpal: lawl. EDK was THERE. he was just busy helping Douchebag and McMegan blame liberals for Dr. Tillers death.
matoko_chan
@catpal: oh, yeah, and EDK was also helping deflect blame from Poplawski the Glenn Beck inspired copkiller.
stupid cudlips.
PurpleGirl
It seems to me only one commenter is complaining about Kain in this thread. Amirite?
gmknobl
Guys, check this cartoon out. It explains everything very well.
https://filterednews.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/glock-assembled.jpg
or
https://filterednews.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/glock-assembled.jpg
Cheap Jim
But these folks acted on their own, and ideally wanted no governmental interference. Why is Kain not celebrating these independent self-starters?
Bob
While these killings need to be pointed out, it’s not like these are the first right-wing terrorists in this country. While they alligned themselves with right-wing Democrats, the Klan has killed way more people in this country through terrorist acts than any brown-skinned person.
Bob
Is there a quick run down of all the Beck/Teabag, right-wing murders in the last few years out there?
Persia
@Angry Black Lady: There’s a dentist in my area who moved from Arizona. They decided they didn’t want to raise their children there. I suspect a bunch of other professional types will do so in the coming years, if things don’t improve.
anon84
Well said. Amoral petty criminals can easily morph into bloodthirsty sociopaths if given a dose of self-righteousness.
Persia
@Joey Maloney: I get what you’re saying. I kind of think you’re both right. Yes, this is upsetting no matter how you look at it (I have a nine-year-old girl of my own). But when the details come out, you realize there was nothing accidental about this. This was deliberate, cold-blooded murder. When the facts are in the post, you can’t say ‘well, maybe she got caught in the crossfire’ or ‘sometimes people get startled.’
E.D. Kain
Re: this being very hard to read, I agree. I am sorry if this is an image you’d rather never have had in your head. I’m there with you. But I thought it was important to include just like Will thought it was important to include.
Re: AZ demographics yes we have a very mixed state both racially and politically. And it has gotten carrier and carrier.
Re: Disney I think they make a lot of great kids movies and I certainly had fun at Disneyland and Disney World. A little Disney hate over some.of the stuff they’ve done is fine but they have also brought kids a lot of joy.
Ash Can
@matoko_chan: Go to hell. Seriously. Your shtick got tired a long time ago, and now you’re way over the line with this. Fuck off.
elmo
@Joey Maloney:
No, you’re not.
No, it isn’t. And snark about “your beautiful mind” isn’t called for, but it’s the Internet and people are assholes, so what can you do? I wasn’t going to say anything, but I was glad you did. I have the same reaction to Sully putting graphic pictures of dismembered children above the fold, where you can’t help but view the carnage.
Y’know, we get it. There are terrible, horrible things happening, some of them in our name. I can mourn, and I can organize, and I can protest, and I can work against them, without having images stuck in my head that will make me weepy for a week. Weepy emotionalism doesn’t drive commitment to change — it’s actually counterproductive — but FSM forbid somebody might not want to go through life with every nerve raw, because that means you don’t give a shit and you’re just like Barbara Bush.
rikyrah
this is a sad story. so sad. makes me pissed off
Gozer
@Persia: My wife was heavily recruited by UofA after getting her PhD, but we decided to move east instead. After the immigration law and the recent violence she’s very happy with the decision right about now.
Joey Maloney
@E.D. Kain: All I’m saying is, I wish you had white-fonted part of that excerpt, or put it beneath the fold with a warning. Would that have been so terrible?
Buck
[tosses out some rose colored glasses here]
DougJ DougJson
This is right. These people were already nuts but the Tea Party influenced how that manifested itself.
matoko_chan
@Ash Can: why dont you pie me so you can keep sukking down EDKs recycled conservative shit, Ash?
taste good?
EDK shares responsibility for all those deaths with the whole asshat glibertarian brigade…they are all enablers and apologists. i can avoid those blogspace shitholes of reeking spin, but Cole frontpages him here?
Why?
ovewr 50 posts and the guy hasnt changed his formula a nanowafer.
Give this assclown the hook.
He isnt sincere.
matoko_chan
aimai got him, even if the rest of you cudlips are still spoofed.
What the fuck is this useless glibertarian assclown DOING HERE?
IrishGirl
Why are you guys going off on E.D. about this post? I live in AZ and have heard little to nothing about this story and I’m royally pissed about it. If it wasn’t for E.D., I’d have missed it. If you don’t believe me, take a look at what i found on the subject within the AZ media: http://wp.me/pYORZ-5t
MattR
@matoko_chan: Does this mean we get to question what the fuck your useless, incoherent, hacker wannabe ass is doing here?
Citizen_X
@matoko_chan: Seriously: get on topic or GTFO.
matoko_chan
@Citizen_X: i am on topic. EDK is a formula.
He still endorses the fetus=slave eumeme, he still enables his base, he still deals in moral equivalency. he blames the teaparty for the deaths here. the teaparty IS the GOP. EDK is a CONSERVATIVE. what do you not get about this?
@MattR: i have made my position clear. im a griefer. im here to cause you enough intellectual pain that you will hopefully look up from the recycled conservative shit that EDK is ladeling into your troughs.
Tasty is it, naow?
MattR
@matoko_chan: I find it humorous that you think I was only referring to your quest against EDK when in fact I was referring to the totality of your contributions (if you can call them that) to BJ.
matoko_chan
@IrishGirl: because its too little too late, its a standard EDK headfake….. and hes still ducking.
he is blaming the teaparty naow.
the teaparty IS the GOP.
the glibertarian assclowns like EDK waffled around about that so they could use them right up to the midterms.
now they are going to try to run away from the teahadists.
i wont stand for it.
shall i link some of EDK’s old league posts about how the teabaggers aren’t REALLY racists?
lawl.
elvis nixon (formerly Judas Escargot)
@debbie:
The entire Republican Party killed this child.
Shhh. We’re not allowed to mention that. Too shrill.
Guilt-by-association only applies to the left.
matoko_chan
@MattR: pie me then. preserve your 20th century info-cocoon.
idc.
:)
MattR
@matoko_chan: And why don’t you pie EDK?
Citizen_X
A little bit about Forde’s mental makeup: in addition to being a sociopathic killer of a child, Forde’s a total pants-pissing gun-nut coward. Shortly after these murders, Dave Niewart posted a video from Forde that she had done while “patrolling” on the (New Mexico section of the) border. In it, she talks about the dangerous wild animals out there, mentioning javelinas and cougars, and says, “You’re CRAZY if you’re out here without a gun!”
Now here’s the thing: I’ve worked for years out in the border country nearby, in west Texas. I carry a pistol sometimes, but mainly for the two-legged type of menace (specifically, smugglers, poachers, and real-life cattle rustlers).
The animals? Feh. Javelinas? Yes, they’re wild pigs, but they’re only about 35 pounds. Usually, you see their asses as they’re running away from you. Cougars? Never seen one, because they avoid people like the plague.
Rattlesnakes, on the other hand, are a real danger, mainly because if you get bit you’re likely to be in a very remote area. But the best way to defend yourself when stumbling upon a rattlesnake is to JUMP AWAY FROM THE DAMN SNAKE. Nobody is going to pull a handgun and shoot the snake faster and more safely than that reaction. And if I had to go where an angry snake was? I’d grab the long-handled shovel, not the pistol–an infinitely better weapon against a snake, whether you want to kill it or just drive it off.
It’s a bit of insight into Forde’s hostile view of the world, and that particular part is not that much different from other gun nuts or teabaggers.
matoko_chan
@DougJ DougJson: correction.
And EDK and Douchebag and McMegan and the rest of the glibertarian intellectual whore posse gave them cover.
matoko_chan
@MattR: EDK is on the front page. It is my intellectual duty to grief him.
matoko_chan
If EDK was a commenter i would gladly pie him. As long as he is on the FP the intellectual insult is too great to ignore.
matoko_chan
@MattR: Do you understand kanly?
I have sworn kanly on EDK.
he insults my tribe by his presence here.
MattR
@matoko_chan: You keep telling yourself that
matoko_chan
and now adieu.
the xgames require my prescence.
hav a nice weekend, juicers.
ill think of you………not.
;)
matoko_chan
@MattR: lawl. you guyz arent my tribe.
my tribe is the upper right tail of the bellcurve of IQ. juicers dont believe in IQ or bell curves. right?
btw, that is an empirical observation.
Joey Maloney
@matoko_chan: “Intellectual duty”, that’s just about right. Except for the typo. You spell that D-O-O-D-Y.
matoko_chan
@Joey Maloney: lawl. a truly brilliant riposte, and profoundly representative of the sheer wit and intellectual weight of this blog.
i am humbled.
hav a nice weekend cudlips.
crush crush
shred shred
Tsulagi
Good post, EDK.
Yep.
E.D. Kain
@Joey yeah I should have done that. My apologies.
Bruce Webb
Shawna Forde was not a “fledgling Minuteman”, she instead was a long time leader in the movement up here in the Pacific Northwest, nor was she influenced by any rally in Arizona, she was steeped deep in hate and violence for years in the city I just moved from, which is Everett Washington. The Arizona case got a lot of coverage up here due to some bizarre incidents when Forde claimed a home invasion robbery that left her husband shot and an attempted violent rape that left her with a bullet wound. The best police up here can figure both were inflicted by Forde in an attempt to whip up publicity for her subsequent Arizona crap.
Western Washington has a liberal reputation nationally but that is mostly because of Seattle and a couple of college towns, it has always been a hotbed of property rights/Minuteman activity and Forde was right in the middle of all that. But make no mistake she brought the hate with her, this is not isolated to southern Arizona, these people are all around you.
Cyrus
@Uriel:
Not me, not this time. I’ll give him credit for this. His first reaction to Loughner was to try to argue that Loughner was crazy in a nonpartisan, certainly non-right-wing way, both sides are equally responsible for him, and both sides need to tone down their rhetoric. Here, on the other hand, he’s being clear that this, at least this specific instance and the specific demogogue that fueled it, is a right-wing problem.
So, Kudos, E.D. For no reason I can understand, this is much better than your usual. Baby steps. If you don’t mind me asking, why the change? Was there some epiphany, or do you now feel more comfortable saying what you really think? If the latter, I’d understand if you don’t want to go into too much detail about the reasons, but I am curious.
Bruce Webb
“juicers dont believe in IQ or bell curves. right?
btw, that is an empirical observation.”
Speaking only for myself, not really.
But on the other hand by empirical observation I have found a certain infestation here of racist ‘morans’ like you.
BTW what is your tribe? Asian-American? Jewish? South-Asian? Groups that generally tend to swamp native born American Christians on most standardized tests?
Why do I suspect you share your tribe with Jethro Bodine?
gex
@Joey Maloney: It’s not just you. Some of us have been diagnosed with PTSD and details like this can cause horrific flashbacks. Not that kdaug need worry.
Joey Maloney
@E.D. Kain: Thanks, I appreciate your attention.
Mister Colorful Analogy
@matoko_chan:
…and welcome to my pie filter, matoko_chan. I look forward to chuckling over the pithy pie-related comments that will replace your increasingly obsessively inane ramblings.
Cleek, if you’re still around, let me once again thank you for creating such a useful tool. You, sir, rock.
MattR
@matoko_chan: So how pissed are you going to be when you realize that, based on your criteria, many of us are actually members of “your tribe” and yet we still find you to be a ridiculously incoherent waste of space?
Ajay
IIRC, Forde was a guest on Lou Dobbs program(before the shooting) on CNN and he thanked her for what she was doing. Minutemans in general are the favorite of Fox and right wing. Since the murder, none of these morons in the media even mentioned her or the incident attributing to minutemen.
Joel
God, this makes me so angry.
brantl
@E.D. Kain: Jeb’s married to a latina, and I think she came from out of the country, if my memory serves correctly. Where else could he stand on immigration, if he didn’t want his nuts cut off?
theturtlemoves
@MattR: Yeah, I’m pretty solidly on that right hand side of the curve myself and find the postings of a 12 year old emo poseur to be endlessly tedious. Here’s a pro-tip. Actual smart people don’t spend inordinate amounts of time telling everyone how smart they are. It just reeks of desperation and low self-esteem.
brantl
@Uriel: Disney’s lands/worlds what have you, suck as a place to do anything enjoyable, at all. I’ve never loved amusement park, but Disney sucks worst, no question.
Thymezone
This is pretty much a bullshit view of this story. Forde is a sociopathic criminal who hung around with people that provided her cover for her scheme … to use border security as a smokescreen for robbing drug dealers.
Nobody hates the Tea Party and Minutemen more than I do, but tarring them with a brush like this doesn’t help our cause. The Tea Party had nothing to do with this crime. Saying otherwise is just a lie. It’s akin to saying that if a highway robber uses a fake police badge to pull people over, then the police are responsible for the robbery.
Or another way to put it is that if somebody pretends to be a bounty hunter to break into a house and rob it (a fairly common crime, unfortunately), then bounty hunters are all criminals. Complete bullshit.
Thymezone
Honestly, if Balloon-Juice can’t do any better than to allow a high-school level logical fallacy (see Hasty Generalization, Wikipedia) to become the basis for an inflammatory post, you just ought to shut the whole fucking thing down and find a new hobby.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
I’m with Thymezone here. I’ve followed the far right for a long time(even getting arrested in a car chase trying to find where a neofascist group was holding a rally so we go protest it), but I can’t go with E.D.Kain drawing a link between the Tea Party and Beck and this crime.
There’s definitely a racial anxiety component to the Tea Party and Beck-worshippers, but there’re not overtly racist. Forde was.
As Forde was a white supremacist, she was seeing the Minutemen and Tea Partiers as potential recruits, like far-left Trotskyist groups will get involved with anti-war causes to try to recruit new members.
Aryan Nations got asset-stripped a decade ago thanks to a lawsuit filed the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of a woman and son who got beaten up by their thugs. Plus the other large neo-Nazi organization in the US, the National Alliance, has went into a tailspin after its leader was convicted on kiddie porn charges.
Since then, the neo-fascist white supremacist right’s been largely confined to prison activity.
Forde might have seen this as being their opportunity to revive by building a new compound and trying to infiltrate the minutemen.
But blaming this tragedy and the Spokane attempted bombing on the Tea Party or Beck is unjustified.
Thymezone
This is what happens when the editorial policy of a blog is “This is my house and if you don’t like my front pagers, tough shit!”
It sounds all macho and everything, but an editorial policy requires a little more integrity than that.
Moik
@matoko_chan: “This is another naked headfake on EDK’s part—see guyz? im just like you. while SAYING to the base “you arent relly racists”, i totally unnerstand the fetus=slave thingy, “both sides dooo eet” and fapfapfap markets!” I HAVE NOTHING TO ADD TO THE CONVERSATION, BUT HE TOTALLY SAID THESE THINGS ONCE!
“lol does anyone else remember EDK’s homies Douchebag and McMegan blaming liberals for Dr. Tillers assassination because we refuse to overturn Roe?” WOO I DON’T FEEL LIKE REBUTTING ANYTHING HE SAYS BUT HEY THESE OTHER PEOPLE ARE EVIL WOO!
“my tribe is the upper right tail of the bellcurve of IQ. juicers dont believe in IQ or bell curves. right?
btw, that is an empirical observation.” HAHA I’M SO MUCH SMARTER THAN YOU ALL!! THAT MAKES ME RIGHT ON THE INTERNETS!
“the xgames require my prescence.” I’M NOT JUST THE SMARTEST PERSON ON THE INTERWEBS, I’M ALSO EXTREME! WOO! GIVE ME A SK8TER BOI, WOO!
“hav a nice weekend cudlips.” HAHA ARCHAIC ZING!!
goatchowder
Hmm, so it sounds like Lou Dobbs is to be blamed for her– she’s been on his show and received his praise for her work–, not Beck. Sorry, got my Radio Rwanda agitators confused. Carry on.
PhoenixRising
How do I get a pie filter? because this thread had some interesting potential, but it smells like troll pee now.
On topic: Yeah, we GTFO of AZ a decade ago because they were turning the crazy up to 11. Now my NM state legislators (motto: The best laws you can expect from volunteers who work at it 45 days a year!) are trying to bring some crazy East, with bills to redefine marriage and crap on immigrants.
Needless to say, we’re fighting them on the turf ‘But won’t that cut into our tourism revenue? Plus you can’t outcrazy AZ or TX, give up on keeping up with the neighbors.’
Citizen_X
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
And she was still invited onto Lou Dobb’s show.
Look, this is the entire argument about Teabagger rhetoric and the Tucson shooting, and all the other recent right-wing terror attacks. It’s also a major part of Dave Niewart’s work, specifically his thesis that the far right successfully gets their memes injected into “mainstream” discourse through Fox News and all the other RW media. Forde swam in the Minutemen/Teabagger waters. AFAIK, nobody singled her out ahead of her crime to say, “No, she’s beyond the pale. We in the Tea Party movement are not associated with her ilk.” We can argue about how much the whole RW is responsible, but you and Thymezone cannot claim there is no connection whatsoever.
Tim Cooper
This all reminds me of another post on slacktivist. The rhetoric of the right has gotten to the point where if they really believe what they say they believe they should be committing acts of violence. But they don’t, and they don’t. But a few nutjobs do.
http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2011/01/dont-you-know-that-you-can-count-me-out.html
Benjamin Cisco
Since everyone’s mentioning pie…the filter does not appear to be working.
Thymezone
@PhoenixRising:
Yeah, like everyone knows that crazy is a states issue. The mastermind of the subject crime, Ms. Forde, is from the West Coast and Northwest. What does that have to do with AZ? Her crazy and criminal background apparently started long before she came here.
Cut the crap. Why don’t you write a stupid screed about how Washington state is a breeding ground for crazy home invasion robbers?
Smedley
@Ash Can:
You mean somebody reads that nut job?