Why are Americans such Assholes: Part IV

I don't know what it is about southerners, guns, and their inability to conduct themselves in a civil manner in public spaces, but once again I am forced to ask a simple, yet seemingly inexplicable, question: why are Americans such assholes?

Let's turn our attention to the rock star of dipshits; Florida.  Today, a retired police officer, not some greasy convict that just fell out of a state prison, but a former officer of the peace, decided he didn't like his fellow citizens texting activities in a movie theater, so he killed them.

Local News stated

Curtis Reeves Jr., 71, was charged with second-degree homicide in the death of Chad Oulson, 43, Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said late Monday afternoon. The theater was evacuated and remained closed after the shooting, which occurred about 1:20 p.m. ET.

Oulson was shot in the chest after a verbal and physical confrontation with Reeves, and his wife, Nichole Oulson, was shot in the hand. Chad Oulson was pronounced dead at a hospital, and his wife was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

I cede the point that the activity of others talking/ texting/ flashing her tits (although given that this is America there is an equal probability that man-boobs could have been involved) during the commercials prior to an actual movie is an affront to civilized cinema watching behavior.  I also know Florida has the death penalty and more so, that if you are a person of color, a member of a distinct ethnic or social minority, your death is just a routine statistic in America's infatuation with homicide.  However, the attempted murder of two innocent person over such issues is beyond comprehension.

Why are you bringing a loaded gun to a movie Deputy Dog?  Do you think someone is going to steal your popcorn?

Why are you arguing with people at a movie during a matinee?  Could you have used the lesser lethal action of simply moving to another set of seats?

The United States of Honey Boo Boo is a wasteland of semi-literate, small dicked retards, too juvenile to control their emotions and too stupid to realize what detestable human beings they and their nation have become.

Other fine installments to this worthy anthropological collection are:

Part 1 - Murdering a bicyclist and then leaving the scene of the murder to go to a party
Part 2 - Advertising hate after the attempted murder of a congresswoman and civilians
Part 3 - Florida Man attacks random tourists, because they look like potential terrorists

Why are Americans such Assholes? Part-III

Some Americans have a rather an unusual definition of liberty and freedom: you are free to do what you are told.

Say you decide to visit the sunshine state of Florida, like so many Canadians every year.  In fact, it is approximated that as many as 3.1-million Canadians visit the state every year.  According to news sources:

Canada is Florida’s single largest international tourism market, accounting for three per cent of visitors. Americans make up 88 per cent, while other international visitors contribute nine per cent. Tourists spend more than $60 billion in the state each year.

So you would think that the locals would be very keen on making as receptive a welcome to persons from outside the state as possible.  Of course, if you think this, you've never been anywhere in the American south.  Consider the following news bulletin posted about a rather unstable but not unusual character assaulting a set of Canadian tourists.

Floridian sicks police on "terrorist"

"What's that, some kind of foreign licence plate? Yeah, that guy's definitely a terrorist."

That's what Joseph Tarochione thought when he spotted a set of white-and-blue Ontario plates on a car in Florida, apparently.

On January 31, the 73-year-old Homosassa, Florida man dialed police, said he was with the Department of Defense and asked them to inspect a vehicle belonging to a Canadian tourist for bombs, reports News 13.

Tarochione had used his own vehicle to force the Ontario car off the road and into the parking lot of a strip club, where he held the, um, suspects until officers arrived.

Problem is, Tarochione is not actually with the Department of Defense. And the tourists were not terrorists. Just Canadians. No bombs.

That doesn't mean firepower wasn't involved. When police searched Tarochione's car, they found a .22 Magnum handgun, a .22 long rifle revolver, a 16-gauge shotgun and ammunition.

Good thing he didn't try to use any of them during his "arrest." No one was harmed during the incident.

Tarochione was later arrested and jailed for impersonating a law enforcement officer.

This is what a decade of bogus furore and incendiary political machinations aimed at those who happen not to pray to ole' glory and pontificate on a daily basis the virtues of the American hedgemon produces. Given that only one third of Americans even own a passport, it isn't surprising that the nation is filled with xenophobes.  What I find appalling about these assholes, is their use of violence against anyone they consider remotely different than themselves.

Again, it's just another example of how Americans view themselves and rest of the world.

Andrew Sullivan on "The Rhetoric of the Right"

I am not horrified by the rhetoric and love of violence on the far right because I have some attachment to the Democrats. I am horrified because it is horrifying, because for years now, this kind of thing has become commonplace at the very top of the conservative political apparatus, and because the invocation of violence in a political context is inherently corrosive of democratic values. When you add to this a party committed to the use of military force as almost a first option, and to torture as a legal method of interrogation, it is irresponsible not to worry about where this is headed.

- Andrew Sullivan, "The Rhetoric of the Right"

I profoundly agree with his analysis. 

Paid partisans in the corporate media, want us to accept the incredulous claim that the right-wing is simply engaging in vociferous arguments to further democracy and freedom of speech.  They make the equally absurd claim that this hatred and climate of intolerance is bi-directional and Mr. Obama, himself, has been a conduit for the current atmosphere.  Their immediate response was to call all criticism of their daily vitriol "stupid." Their second act was to feign victimization and demand that all further insinuations stop, because it's starting to hurt their feelings that people may actually see them for the depraved and immoral sociopaths they are.

For the greater part of two decades, there has been proclivity on the right to dehumanize their opponents and marginalize any criticism of their complicity in debasing the public sphere. I have listed numerous cases (here, here, and here) arising in the past two years, where America's right-wing, in a petulant hissy-fit, demands that the world conform with their unstable worldview. The ultimate result will be that the nation will continue its current decline, will eventually falter in a fatal manner, and will end up as every empire that has existed before it.

Personal Accountability, the American right wing edition.

So this is what's left of the American political landscape?

Six dead, including a federal judge, a Pastor, three senior citizens, and a nine year old child.  A member of congress in critical condition, recovering from an attack that sent a bullet through her head and across her brain.  And another fourteen wounded.

Unlike those members of the mainstream media (MSM), who profit from the endless vitriol of the Republican party and unbalanced right-wing demagoguery as illustrated above in Caribou Barbie (aka Sarah Palin), reasonable and educated people are aware of the diminution of decency in the theater of American politics and the impact of that endless stream of vituperative speech on the nation as a whole.  Consider what Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, had to say on this matter.

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government... The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on this country is getting to be outrageous and unfortunately Arizona has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

He did not say that this was the act of one deranged lunatic.  Rather, he cast a wide net on the media, the vast array of bigoted and self-serving members of the political establishment, and those who support these debased opportunists in the general public.

The vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business ... This has not become the nice United States that most of us grew up in.

As others have pointed out, this is the standard model for conservatives when they are not in power.  Kevin Drum of MotherJones magazine describes the counter-cyclical response of the conservative electoral base during these periods:

If you elect a liberal Democratic president, you get this kind of reaction from middle class conservatives. In FDR's day you got the Liberty League. JFK inspired the growth of the John Birch Society. Clinton got the conspiracy-minded talk radio crowd. And Obama has the tea parties...

In the 30s it was opposition to the New Deal. For the Birchers it was communism. For the Clinton-haters it was the culture wars... while today's is the deficits/socialism message.

While it is true that in each period there was a distinct reaction to the policies of liberals and the Democratic party, the current regularity and pervasiveness of these attacks, which do not emanate from fringe groups, but from mainstream corporate sponsors, Republican party members across the nation, and prominent media personalities, indicates that the nation has moved into a political atmosphere that so toxic with rancor and lies, that it cannot be dismissed or quelled.

Let's review a few of those hyper-patriots who are so fond of  invoking Jefferson's "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" quote.

• Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano (D), recently was the recipient of an incendiary package
• Governor Martin O'Malley (D) of Maryland, was also the intended recipient of two packages that detonated at a federal postal center injuring some workers.
• Nevada Senatorial candidate and Tea Party favorite, Sharron Angle, stated that the public had the option of dealing with an out-of-control Congress through "Second Amendment remedies."  The terminology is right-wing code for the assassination and murder of federal officials.
• Several other Republican candidates declared that the "violent overthrow" of the US government may be necessary in the event that they did not win the 2010 midterm elections.
• Byron Williams, a former felon, planned "to target individuals at liberal nonprofit the Tides Foundation and the ACLU."    He injured two police officers in a highway shoot-out, when police attempted to apprehend him for erratic driving.  In interviews after his arrest, Williams claims that he was directly inspired by Glenn Beck, Fox news celebrity, to seek retribution.
• Gregory Giusti pleaded guilty to repeatedly threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- including threatening to destroy her California home -- because he was "upset with her passing the health care law."  The perpetrator's mother indicates that he was motivated by friends and Fox News.
• President Obama has seen a 400% increase in death threats from the public compared to George W. Bush. According to reports, America's first black President "is the target of more than 30 potential death threats a day and is being protected by an increasingly over-stretched and under-resourced Secret Service"
• July 2009, Neo-Nazi James von Brunn, launched an attack on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum that killed security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns
• May 2009, Minuteman off-shoot group leader, Shawna Forde, murdered a 9-year old girl and her father in Arizona, in an attempt to finance their militia operations.
• May 2009, Abortion provider, Dr. George Tiller was murdered at his Church by an anti-abortion activist, who had belonged to an anti-government militia group that believed that virtually all existing modalities of government in the USA were illegitimate.  Dr. Tiller was shot point-blank in the head.  He had been a subject of violent militant and religious fanaticism since 1998.
• April 2009, a local Florida man killed and wounded several Chilean students involved in a foreign exchange program.  The killer was an active member of the Republican party who had espoused murdering immigrants to his neighbours.
• February 2009, in a suicide attack aimed directly against the IRS, a Texan man flew a single engine plane into the side of an Austin, Texas IRS building.  The incident led to the killing a of a single IRS employee and injury of several others.
• Tennessee white supremacists planned to murder then Presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 and engage in the mass murder of black people.
• July 2008, a lone gunman attacked Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church in Tennessee, killing two patrons and injuring another seven.  The gunman, Jim David Adkisson, stated: "he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of major media outlets."
• Eric Robert Rudolph, a right-wing Christian militant was responsible for the 1996 Atlantic Olympic bombings, the bombing of a Georgia abortion clinic, the bombing of lesbian nightclub in Atlanta, and a second abortion clinic bombing in Alabama, which killed a policeman working as a security guard and seriously injured nurse Emily Lyons.  Rudolph was assisted by like-minded sympathizers, who facilitated his evasion of police for more than five years.
• April 1995, the Oklahoma city bombing was conducted by right-wing militants Timoty McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and Michael Fortier, who were seeking retribution against the federal government for their involvement in the 1990's FBI sieges of Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas. According to Wikipedia, the blast claimed 168 lives and injured more than 680 people. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings. The bomb was estimated to have caused at least $652 million worth of damage.

When it comes to the demented actions and words of right-wingers, they can never be held responsible, because in their mind they are the victims.  Like Palin and the propagandists at Fox news, they are never to blame for the climate of fear, hate, and ignorance that has arisen.  It's those dirty, hippie liberals, who are out to undermine the "real Americans," which are to blame.

***

UPDATE: Conservatives have already criticized and asked for the resignation of Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for his castigation of conservative rhetoric and theatrics.  As usual, the right-wing is ramping up the propaganda by saying that it is the amoral liberal press that is painting them - the same people who have been marching around the country attending presidential speeches, congressional rallies, and health care debates with handguns and publicly attacking anyone who may disagree with them for the past two years- as the bad guys!

Bankers Prepare for Open Revolution

Bloomberg has an article today on what may be the most interesting story of the year. The invertebrate vampire-squids of Goldman Sachs have been quietly seeking gun permits to protect themselves from the restless mobs and death-mail sending public. How is it that the proletarians could want to liquidate the robber-Barron's of the 21st Century? Surely, the masses know that Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs' CEO, and the squids are as Blanky said, "Doing God's work!"

The article reveals that Blanky and Company were fortifying their residences a year prior to the meltdown, by placing enhanced security fences and armed guards around their lavish estates, in excess to the norm. More importantly though, it blows the whistle on what the bailout was really about: saving the greedheads of casino-capitalism. As you see, this bullshit about efficient markets, innovative investing, and all that other gibberish spouted by the dunces on CNBC and virtually every financial bobble-head network, is just meant as high-fructose Kool-Aid for the cult-members as the real thieves take your money. Consider the following excerpt from the same Bloomberg article:

Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary during the bailout and a former Goldman Sachs CEO, let it slip during testimony to Congress last summer when he explained why it was so critical to bail out Goldman Sachs, and -- oh yes -- the other banks. People “were unhappy with the big discrepancies in wealth, but they at least believed in the system and in some form of market-driven capitalism. But if we had a complete meltdown, it could lead to people questioning the basis of the system.”

There you have it. The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one. Goldman Sachs blew its cover when the firm’s revenue from trading reached a record $27 billion in the first nine months of this year, and a public that was writhing in financial agony caught on that the profits earned on taxpayer capital were going to pay employee bonuses.

I have long said, if the people want to live free of the incompetent rule of plutocrats and their moneyed trolls, then they need to have the guillotine brought out in public and let the heads roll. Its all happened before and will happen again. We only have to remember the New Testament to know the solution:

Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. (Matthew 21:12)

Save Me… from organized Charlatans!

This week’s examination of faith-based lunacy comes in a family-friendly ‘value’ package of three.

A) National Baptist Convention USA, the oldest and largest African American religious convention in America, with an estimated membership of 7.5 million, is holding its convention in Detroit this weekend. What is unique about this particular gathering is that the former leader of this group, Rev. Henry Lyons, who was convicted of, “Racketeering and grand theft and sentenced to prison for bilking nearly $4 million from corporations seeking business with the convention and stealing nearly $250,000 donated by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith for burned Black churches in the South” has returned and is once again seeking the organization’s leadership.

Maybe its just Detroit, which persistently fields politicians like former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was found guilty of obstruction of justice, or Councilwoman Monica Conyers, wife of Congressmen John Conyers Jr. (D-MI), who recently pled guilty to bribery and conspiracy charges. Regardless, what I find so luminating is how so many conservative black Americans are willing to endorse and accommodate the rise of these predators in both their spiritual and political lives. Apparently God does work in mysterious ways…

B) Turning from crooked black theologians to crazy-train riding black parishioners is the following case of a Gay-Exorcism in Connecticut. Having enjoyed the cinematic release of ”A Haunting in Connecticut” the locals went looking for and found some juicy gay-demon ass to kick (albeit in the form of a sixteen year old boy). The accompaning youtube video shows the child to be writhing in pain on the floor and vomiting. A church elder shouts, “Right now in the name of Jesus, I call the homosexuality, right now in the name of Jesus.”

C) The final story shows that religious quackery knows no racial barrier is of a Louisville, Kentucky pastor who is encouraging his flock to come lock n’ loaded to his holy house of worship. Obviously, he has been in touch with the folks in Connecticut, who know them Damn’ Gay Demons could be lurking everywhere, even under a church pew. Chris W. Cox, legislative director of the NRA proudly states, “We have right-to-carry laws in over 40 states; 20 years ago, it was in just six.”

These right-wing half-wits, have been responsible over the years for fire-bombing black attended churches, shooting “liberal” congregationists, and most recently murdering an abortion doctor, while he was in his own church. So it makes complete sense, why these people need guns at their churches. Obviously they have to defend themselves against the black-helicopter owning liberal swine that are relentlessly hunting them down to eliminate their cherished gun-totting liberties. What else could it be?

God bless America.