Republicans: The Doofs Of Haphazard

Let's see, between 2000 and 2006 we kept hearing about the death of the Democratic Party. Looks like the imminent demise of the Republican Party will be a major talking head conversation piece leading up to the 2010 elections. More proof of the "free market of ideas"...as in free to invert the previous talking points and point them at the minority party...

"Anyone who tells you the Republican Party is on its way back is smoking grass. For the party to win, they have to have a broad base. They've lost the broad base."

Frank Luntz
Gop Strategist


"...The conversation dominating Republican politics is how to rebuild. There are no neatly distinct schools of thought in this inchoate debate. In an important sense, though, the argument in Republican circles is the same one that preoccupied Democrats in 2005 — that is, whether the party’s priority should be to retrench ideologically or whether it is more important to fan out in search of a broader message and audience. These aren’t really mutually exclusive schools of thought — most influential Republicans will tell you they need to do both — but which approach you emphasize says a lot about what kind of Republican Party you would like to emerge from the ruins of Bushism.


The retrenchers see the Bush era principally as a cautionary tale in forgetting where you came from. In their view, Bush and the Republican Congress proved to be about as grounded in conservative principle, fiscally and internationally, as Jimmy Carter and Tip O’Neill — spending the nation into debt with patronage projects, going soft on immigration, passing a massive entitlement program for prescription drugs, piling up indictments and mismanaging the military. Republicans lost the public not because their ideology became less relevant or less credible, the retrenchers argue, but because it was twisted in the morass of governing. The only way back, then, is for the party to rededicate itself either to fiscal conservatism or social conservatism or some combination of the two, which means, first and foremost, exposing Obama and Democrats on the Hill for the elitist liberals they really are.


As a broad generalization, most of those talking the loudest about retrenchment and confrontation are in the activist wing of the party; they’re the death-before-taxes conservatives or the picket-abortion-clinics conservatives or the online conservatives who incline, like their liberal counterparts, toward ideological purity..."

by Matt Bai
New York Times
Read Newt Again

"The changing demography is not on the side of the Republican Party. Republicans seen to be waiting for the single to get married and the young to get old."

Kellyanne Conway
Republican Pollster

Did It Really Start In Mexico?

"On Friday, the U.S. disease-tracking blog Biosurveillance published a timeline of the outbreak containing this nugget, dated April 6 (major tip of the hat to Paula Hay, who alerted me to the Smithfield link on the Comfood listserv and has written about it on her blog, Peak Oil Entrepreneur):

'Residents [of Perote] believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to “flu.” However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms. It was unclear whether health officials had identified a suspected pathogen responsible for this outbreak.'

...the possible link to Smithfield has not been reported in the U.S. press. Searches of Google News and the websites of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal all came up empty. The link is being made in the Mexican media, however. “Granjas Carroll, causa de epidemia en La Gloria,” declared a headline in the Vera Cruz-based paper La Marcha. No need to translate that, except to point out that La Gloria is the village where the outbreak seems to have started. Judging from the article, Mexican authorities treat hog CAFOs with just as much if not more indulgence than their peers north of the border, to the detriment of surrounding communities and the general public health."

Read more @ Grist.

Grover Kisses A Newt

It's statements like this that make me a little suspicious about the April 15 TEA Parties being non-partisan...


“If you were going to make a list of 10 potential Republican nominees, Newt would be on any list. He’s probably in most people’s Top 5.”

Grover Norquist

Racist Swines Squeal From The Right

"In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile—and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep."

Hunter S. Thompson
The Great Shark Hunt, 1979



"Illegal aliens are bringing in a deadly new flue strain. Make no mistake about it."
Michael Savage

"I've blogged for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the US as a result of uncontrolled immigration."
Michelle Malkin

"What happens if there's a rash of deaths in Mexico... and if you're a family in Mexico and people are dying and Americans are not, why wouldn't you flood this border?"
Glenn Beck

"What better way to sneak a virus into this country than to give it to Mexicans....then spread a rumor there there are construction jobs here, and there they come."
Neal Boortz


"It's time for Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, to speak out against this virulent strain of looniness. Immigrants aren't responsible for infecting Americans with swine flu — but racist commentators like these are spreading a far more destructive disease: hate!"
Bonnie Fuller

Washington DC -- Fantasy Island 2009

"The Republican fantasy was that tax cuts were the magic elixir that would solve every problem. Now that the public has rejected it, it's disappointing to see Democrats offering up the equally fantastic notion that Americans can have all the government they want while getting someone else to pay for it."

Steven Pearlstein
Washington Post
Read more...

Economic "Simpletons" Have Tea Party

"...The Tea Party crowd would have more credibility if they had chanted calls to abolish all farm subsidies and student aid and waved placards to repeal the Medicare drug benefit, to shrink the Army and Air Force to 1938 levels and return the Navy to coastal defense as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson.

What these simpletons are unwilling to acknowledge is that if you don't cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, are not willing to shrink the armed forces drastically, and don't repudiate our contractual commitment to pay interest on the national debt, you could cut all other federal spending to zero and we still would have a substantial budget deficit.

You cannot close the deficit without raising taxes, period.

Other nations, including Canada, Germany and the Netherlands, which all faced similar deficits a decade or so ago, did that and found they could still prosper.

Until the general public is willing to face the facts in the choices we confront, politicians will continue to pander to self-delusion. And we will leave our grandchildren with a poorer nation..."

Read more by Ed Lotterman.

Ludlow: Playing Hardball in 1913

...At a ball game on Sunday between two teams of strikers the militia interfered, preventing the game; the miners resented, and the militia—with a sneer and a laugh—fired the machine guns directly into the tents, knowing at the time that the strikers' wives and children were in them...
---
I just happened to looking through my bookshelf the other night and happened to pull out a book titled "Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman's MOTHER EARTH (1906-1918." Thumbing through the book I ran across a piece titled "Remember Ludlow!" by Julia May Courtney. By coincidence the evening was April 20 and the story told about the Ludlow, Colorado massacre on April 20, 1913. Fifty-five women and children died in the attack by federal militia.

Woody Guthrie wrote a song about it titled "Ludlow Massacre." It is a haunting song that will melt the hardest heart with lyrics like...

It was early springtime when the strike was on,
They drove us miners out of doors,
Out from the houses that the Company owned,
We moved into tents up at old Ludlow.
...
You struck a match and in the blaze that started,
You pulled the triggers of your Gatling guns,
I made a run for the children but the fire wall stopped me.
Thirteen children died from your guns.
...
We took some cement and walled that cave up,
Where you killed these thirteen children inside,
I said, "God bless the Mine Workers' Union,"
And then I hung my head and cried.
---
Below are some excerpts from Remember Ludlow...

"...And the climax came when the first spring winds blew over the hills and the snows melted from the mountain sides. On the 20th of April the cry was heard "Remember Ludlow!"—the battle cry that every workingman in Colorado and in America will not forget. For on that day the men of the tent colony were shot in the back by soft-nosed bullets, and their women and children were offered in burning sacrifice on the field of Ludlow.

The militia had trained the machine guns on the miners' tent colony. At a ball game on Sunday between two teams of strikers the militia interfered, preventing the game; the miners resented, and the militia—with a sneer and a laugh—fired the machine guns directly into the tents, knowing at the time that the strikers' wives and children were in them. Charging the camp, they fired the two largest buildings—the strikers' stores— and going from tent to tent, poured oil on the flimsy structures, setting fire to them.

From the blazing tents rushed the women and children, only to be beaten back into the fire by the rain of bullets from the militia. The men rushed to the assistance of their families; and as they did so, they were dropped as the whirring messengers of death sped surely to the mark. Louis Tikas, leader of the Greek colony, fell a victim to the mine guards' fiendishness, being first clubbed, then shot in the back while he was their prisoner. Fifty-two bullets riddled his body.

Into the cellars—the pits of hell under the blazing tents—crept the women and children, less fearful of the smoke and flames than of the nameless horror of spitting bullets. One man counted the bodies of nine children, taken from one ashy pit, their tiny fingers burned away as they held to the edge in their struggle to escape. As the smoke ruins disclosed the charred and suffocated bodies of the victims of the holocaust, thugs in State uniform hacked at the lifeless forms, in some instances nearly cutting off heads and limbs to show their contempt for the strikers.

Fifty-five women and children perished in the fire of the Ludlow tent colony. Relief parties carrying the Red Cross flag were driven back by the gunmen, and for twenty-four hours the bodies lay crisping in the ashes, while rescuers vainly tried to cross the firing line. And the Militiamen and gunmen when the miners petitioned "Czar Chase" and Governor Ammons for the right to erect their homes and live in them..."


I don't know what made me pull that book of the shelf and I don't know what made my eyes fall on the words "Remember Ludlow" on the 96th anniversary of this tragic event. That's just how life is sometimes...

Read more...

Is "Populism" In Your Tea Party?

From the Wall Street Journal:

Conservative activists Wednesday sought to put a different twist on populism with a series of "tea parties" to denounce not corporations but government spending and taxes. Supporters and critics bickered over whether the parties amounted to a popular groundswell or false anger stirred up by cable-television hosts.

Tea parties aside, the anti-corporate anger hasn't so far led to a movement with specific demands, let alone a new political party, as in the past.

Read more...

Moldy Nuts...

On The Left Hand...What Comes Around, Etc.

I've been thinking about the striking similarity of the tactics, phrases and comparisons I've been noticing in today's "political debate." "Protest is patriotic" was a slogan on display during the Bush years. I saw pictures from the recent Tea Party rallies with the same phrase on it. Bush and Hitler comparison where big during the Bush years. The post below this post will shows some pictures comparing Obama and Hitler that are from the Tea Party rallies last week. Do you suppose the Right has accidentally come up with these phrases and Obama-Hitler comparisons accidentally? Could it be that protesters in the United States aren't very creative?

Along with the Bush-Hitler pictures below, I've included some comparisons by liberal opinionators comparing Bush and Hitler. Nazis, communists, socialists, whatever...was there ever a time when our President was an American trying to the best to make his vision of America come true? Probably not...



"...Neither Hitler nor Bush could have effected their radical plans without a party full of functionaries and a compliant national media, of course. Hitler relied on his “Nazi” party, a word derived from the name of his National Socialist organization. He had a brilliant individual named Joseph Goebbels to control the Reich Propaganda Ministry and rally the public behind Nazi policies. Bush relied on his “Nozi” party, a word derived from “Zionism,” with the first four letters Z-i-o-n remixed into N-o-z-i. He had a brilliant cartel of Zionists to control the American Mainstream Media and rally the public behind Nozi policies..."

Peter Guenther
Art History Professor
From “Amerika Über Alles” — Our Nazi Nation.



"...From the Third Reich, Bush learned how to exploit "terrorism" to consolidate his dictatorship. Bush is on the Hitler end of the political spectrum opposing the very principles of our founding. What Bush knows he most surely learned by way of his Grandfather's old trading partner --Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Lesson Number he summed up himself in one sentence.

"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death."

--Adolf Hitler

Bush learned how to rule ruthlessly. Hitler never got more than 37 percent of the vote in several elections called over a short period of time ending with an act of terrorism that Hitler would exploit to consolidate his dictatorship. That act was the Reichstag Fire, Hitler's 911..."

Richard Horton
The Guardian
2007



"The 2004 election--which Karl Rove's Nazi thugs stole for Bush II--revealed that many American citizens are as intellectually and morally debased as the Germans in the 1930s. Such incompetence and ignorance always lead to tyranny. The United States is exactly at the same point in national degradation as the German nation in the 1930s when Hitler assumed absolute power and began his regime of mass murder and war crimes against the people of the world.

We've been conditioned to see Germany under Hitler as an unquestionably horrible example of dictatorial tyranny and inhuman barbarity--and to see our present American culture as completely opposite to that of Nazi Germany. And we like to think that if a tyranny such as that in Germany under the Nazi regime were present and growing in America we'd unquestionably be able to see it.

So it's a shock when we realize: most people living in Nazi Germany didn't see the tyranny! They thought it was the best time of their lives!"

Norman D. Livergood
America 2009 Is Germany 1938.

A Different Lincoln...Same Kind of Hate

Recent talk in the news about surveillance of right wing extremists sent me thumbing through a copy of the book "Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell & The American Nazi Party" by William H. Schmaltz. Founder of the American Nazi Party, Rockwell has influenced Neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements in this country. He was assassinated by one of his follower on August 25, 1967.

The pictures below are from Tea Party rallies held across the America last Wednesday, April 15. The quotes are from Rockwell. You don't have to listen to carefully to the arguments around the fringe of these Tea Parties to hear some of the strains of Rockwell's voice. A lot has changed in the 40 years since Rockwell's death...and a lot hasn't changed.



“You have been brainwashed by the liberals, the peace creeps, you must hear both sides of the story. You do not hear both sides, look at the radio and TV – they are completely owned by three companies – ABC, CBS, and NBC. This wouldn’t be so bad, but these companies are controlled to the man, by Russian Jews.”

George Lincoln Rockwell
Colorado State College
May 14, 1964



“I am making an effort to do everything legal to stop the Communist-Negro Revolution now going on in our Country…We are almost all veterans who are simply sick and tired of communism and race-mixing – and the gang of Jews who are trying to force these filthy things down America’s throat.”

George Lincoln Rockwell
Virginia
August 25, 1963



“You’re working every day to pay taxes to breed little black bastards…You’re subsidizing Negro mothers who produce this little black scum for pay, and then when they don’t have any place to live, they want to come and take your house and neighborhood.”

George Lincoln Rockwell
Marquette Park, Chicago
1966

Stamp Recall Notice

The Post Office just recalled their latest stamps. They had pictures of politicians on them, and people couldn't figure out which side to spit on.

Not So Non-Partisan Tea Parties In NR & Hudson

Looks like Campaign 2010 officially kicked off today in New Richmond, North Hudson and across the country as the "grassroots" Tea Parties kicked off. I noticed that the only names getting the blame on the "non-partisan" signs where those of Democrats. I also noticed the same signs and sign holders appeared in both NR and North Hudson. I also noticed more than a few Bush stickers on bumpers of those taking time out to protest against taxes.

I'm all for lower taxes, but I'm wondering where these people were between 2000 and 2008? I noticed that you really didn't start hearing from these people till the Democrats took over the House in November of 2006.

Maybe if these people paid more attention to the facts, they'd finally peel off those Bush bumper stickers and quit being sucker by the Republicans. Of course, will be seeing Obama stickers on cars for the next 10 years -- regardless of the outcome of the 2012 election.

Maybe national politics has been dumbed down to where people are just pulling for the Red or Blue team. The electorate has morphed into two packs of junkyard dogs. They bark and they bite but they don't know why. They just know they like Blue and hate Red and visa versa.

I only made the last half hour of the North Hudson Tea Party, but I didn't learn much more than people where pissed off about their taxes. Would somebody tell me what level of taxes people think is fair and equitable? Do these people think that large business contribute hundreds of millions of dollars via employee surrogate to politician to keep the little guys taxes down? Don't these people realise that these contributions are aimed at mucking up the "free market" so certain competitiors gain advantage over their direct competitors or indirect competitors?

Maybe they could study the graphs below and understand why their children and grandchildren will be paying of the interest and principle of the national debt. Actually, looks like President Clinton was the last President to pay more than just interest on the debt.

Taxing The Rich 1929 Style

Income: $600,640,846
Federal Tax: $ 98,657,237
% Taxed: 16.4%

Twenty-million-dollar assets produce million-dollar incomes. Last week the Treasury's Bureau of Internal Revenue reported some facts about U. S. millionaires gathered during the 1927 tax year:

¶Two hundred ninety citizens (including 23 married women, three spinsters) had million-dollar-or-more incomes. (In 1922 there were 67; in 1926, 231.) From their combined income of $600,640,846,, the U. S. took $98,657,237 as taxes. New York had 136 million-dollar-income-tax-payers, Pennsylvania 34, Illinois 25, Michigan 18. Million-a-year men were lacking in 23 states.

Eleven taxpayers had incomes of five million or more per year— seven in New York, one each in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin. By some twist the Michigan Fords, Henry and Edsel, dropped out of the topmost income bracket. Possible explanation: reduced income due to bringing out Model A.

Incomes by states showed New York, No. 1 (net: $5,398,451,005; tax paid: $305,210,059). North Dakota, No. 48 (net: $33,252,341; tax paid: $187,635).

From the 11/11/1929 issue of Time

She Got Us Into This Mess, Can She Get Us Out?

"Restoration of normal bank lending will require a very large capital infusion from private or public sources."

Alan Greenspan (2009)

"It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring."

Alan Greenspan (2009)

"To stabilize the American banking system and restore normal lending, additional TARP funds will be required."

Alan Greenspan (2009)

"...At one of the preliminary conferences leading to this week's summit on inflation, John Kenneth Galbraith looked over the 28 other economists who had gathered in the White House and quipped that the remedies for inflation would be about the same for 'Bolsheviks and the devoted supporters of Ayn Rand, if there are any present.' Then Alan Greenspan smiled and spoke up: 'There's at least one.'"


"They are appeasers, compromisers and pragmatists. They do not have one long-range idea."

Ayn Rand on American Businessmen (1974)

"They claim that their sole purpose is to serve the public, which is a vicious statement of altruism and collectivism. What they should say is that they're working for their own profit. And that incidentally, as a consequence, they are serving the public."

Ayn Rand on Oilmen (1974)



"...So there was. The new chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers is a longtime friend and disciple of Ayn Rand, the Russian-born author whose novels of rebellious achiever-heroes (We the Living, The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) and nonfiction books have sold at least 12 million copies in 38 years. Greenspan, who is 48, makes no secret of his admiration for Rand, who is now a vigorous 69. His admiration extends to Rand's work and her philosophy of Objectivism, which she describes as advocating "reason, individualism and capitalism." It rejects altruism and embraces, says Rand, "rational selfishness." As John Galt, the hero of Atlas Shrugged, puts it at the climax of a 57-page speech that explains Objectivism: "I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." Indeed, the title of one of Rand's nonfiction books is The Virtue of Selfishness. Rand does not like to be compared with earlier thinkers of any stripe, but her beliefs are not too far from the 18th century philosophers who held that if every man were out for himself, society would ultimately benefit. She has long been indignant over the consistent fire she has drawn from hostile critics, who view her as an impractical, closed-minded ideologue rather than a serious philosopher.

No Taxes. Ayn (as in "mine") Rand is openly pleased over her real-life achiever-hero's rise to the White House. She traveled from her midtown Manhattan apartment to Washington, D.C., this month to watch Greenspan's swearing-in, then was introduced to President Ford. "I'm very proud of Alan," she says. "His is a heroic undertaking."

Greenspan is the first known follower of Objectivism to be tapped for a major Government policy-making position. When the appointment was announced, critics wondered only half jokingly if Greenspan's rise would lead to Rand's becoming the Administration's primary behind-the-scenes economics adviser. That sort of speculation is dismissed by both Rand and Greenspan. He says he has little contact with Rand now, and even before the CEA job came, meetings were limited to dinners every month or so with her and her husband of 45 years, Artist Frank O'Connor. On these occasions, Greenspan adds, conversation is just "what old friends talk about." Suspending a policy of shunning press interviews, Rand told TIME'S Sarah Button: "I am a philosopher, not an economist. Alan doesn't seek my advice on these matters. He can tell me more than I can tell him, and knows more about the day-to-day events..."

Read more about Greenspan and his favorite author from the /30/1974 issue of Time.


"...Democrats want to use this crisis to move America toward the sort of Europeanized economy that runs counter to the freedom and entrepreneurial spirit of our people: To usher in an era of greater government control and micro-management of our economy.

It's an audacious scheme: Set off a series of regulatory blunders and congressional meddling, blame the free market for the financial crisis that follows - then use this excuse to impose a more intrusive state. Sounds like something right out of an Ayn Rand novel..."

Congressman Paul Ryan
"Our Founding Principles: The Conservative Roadmap for America's Future"
CPAC Keynote Address
February 26, 2009

Western Wis. Tea Parties On April 15

Here's a couple of Tea Parties scheduled for April 15 in western Wisconsin. Apparently these are non-partisan events where everybody can bitch about their taxes with the fear of getting a spit shower from your local anti-government, reactionary objectivist. I'm going to try and make both of them. I want to be there for the riots that are sure to take place.

North Hudson at Mud-And-Suds from 4-6 PM

For more information, click here.

New Richmond at the City Hall from Noon-1 PM

For more information, click here.

Can Government Run Things As Bad As The Private Sector?

"...There is every reason to believe that a temporarily nationalized bank will behave much better--even if most of the employees are still the same--simply because we will have changed the perverse incentives. Besides, a government-run bank might spend some time and money teaching its employees about risk management, good lending practices, social responsibility and ethics. The experience elsewhere, including in the Scandinavian countries, shows that the whole process can be done well--and when the economy is eventually restored to prosperity, the profitable banks can be returned to the private sector. What is required is not rocket science. Banks simply need to get back to what they were supposed to do: lending money, on a prudent basis, to businesses and households, based not just on collateral but on a good assessment of the use to which borrowers will put the money and their ability to repay it.

Meanwhile, there needs to be an orderly plan for disposing of the old bad assets. There is no magic in moving them around from one owner to another. In some countries, government agencies (often hiring private subcontractors) have done a good job of selling off the assets. Other countries (including some hit in the East Asia crisis a decade ago) have had an unfortunate experience, bringing in investment banks and hedge funds to dispose of their assets. These institutions simply held them for the short time it took the economy to recover and made a huge capital gain at the expense of the country's taxpayers. To add insult to injury, some even took advantage of tax havens to avoid paying taxes on those huge profits. These experiences suggest caution in turning to hedge funds and other investment firms..."

Joseph E. Stiglitz

Read more @ The Nation.

Ayn Rand RIP...Please

“Ayn Rand died more than a quarter of a century ago, yet her name appears regularly in discussions of our current economic turmoil. Pundits including Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli urge listeners to read her books, and her magnum opus, ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ is selling at a faster rate today than at any time during its 51-year history.”

The Wall Street Journal

Read more...



"Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selfishness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egoist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self."

Ayn Rand
The Soul of an Individualist

"I've met a huge number of conservatives whose world view is what everyone selling a get rich quick scheme is just praying for: "Poor people are poor because they're lazy and stupid. I'm going up. Up. Up!" Unfortunately, like a lot of us, they get a crappy job that pays for shit and they don't go up. Up. Up!

Our would be revolutionaries have gone a step or three down the trail. Clearly anyone who disagrees with them and is doing better than them is part of a conspiracy to hold them back, and anyone doing worse, who is being supported in some way by the state is part of Ayn Rand's great unwashed that would fall into barbarism if not for their continued contribution to society. It's us vs. them! (Well, it's them vs. me, since I work in the sciences and my wife grows arugula and deer tongue in the back yard, but you know.)

Personally, I'm waiting for enough liberal types to get frightened by these guys, followed by the absolute hand waving freak-outery when FOX reports a poll that suggests that a lot more liberals are buying guns."

Kid Charlemagne

Maybe We Should Ban Guns In Commercials...

Maybe it's just me...Maybe I don't watch enough TV...

Here I am watching the NCAA Men's Basketball semi finals and they cut to a commercial. I thought it was a preview for some upcoming show, but it was a commercial for Jimmy John's sandwiches. In the commercial posted below, guns are blazing, people were being terrorized, etc. After the game, the news ran the story on the shooting and killing of three police officers in Pittsburgh.

Maybe it's time to ban guns in commercials. Below is a link to the commercial of which I speak:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00f2Ac9e98g&feature=player_embedded

Three officers die in US shooting



Police say N.Y. immigrant shooter's act no surprise

Another 1st & 2nd Amendment Defender...

Richard Andrew Poplawski was a young man convinced the nation was secretly controlled by a cabal that would eradicate freedom of speech, take away his guns and use the military to enslave the citizenry…

Pittsburgh police Officers Paul Sciullo III and Stephen Mayhle were about an hour short of ending their overnight shifts yesterday when 911 dispatched them to 1016 Fairfield St. in Stanton Heights at 7:05 a.m. The call, described as a domestic argument between a mother and son with no weapons involved, was also heard by Officer Eric Kelly, who had just finished his 11 p.m.-to-7 a.m. shift.

Still in uniform but driving his own white SUV to his Stanton Heights home, he decided to swing by Fairfield to back up his fellow officers from the Zone 5 station in East Liberty.

With 14 years on the force, Officer Kelly knew domestic calls can be the most dangerous an officer faces. This call would underscore that sad truth.

Within minutes, all three officers were fatally shot by the subject of the domestic call, later identified as Richard "Pop" Poplawski, 22. A discharged Marine, he adhered to a number of right-wing conspiracy theories and expressed fears of a "Zionist nation" revoking his right to own guns...

Read more @ the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.



"He was really into politics and really into the First and Second amendment. One thing he feared was he feared the gun ban because he thought that was going to take away peoples' right to defend themselves. He never spoke of going out to murder or to kill."

Edward Perkovic
Richard Andrew Poplawski's lifelong best friend


“Crazy to me is going through the motions. Crazy to me is letting each day slip past you. Crazy is being insignificant. Crazy is being obscure, pointless."

Richard Andrew Poplawski
Killer of three Pittsburgh policemen on 4/4/2009