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So it turns out that Contessa Brewer had good reason to see a connection between the rabidly hateful rhetoric spewed by the likes of Pastor Steven Anderson and the angry, gun-toting protesters turning out for presidential events: One of the most prominent of these, an African-American man named "Chris", is in fact a member of Pastor Anderson's congregation.

"Chris" was on Alex Jones' "Prison Planet" radio show late last week and discussed how "my pastor was beaten up" at a Border Patrol checkpoint.

Yes, that pastor is indeed Steven Anderson, who was arrested in April by the Border Patrol for being uncooperative at a patrol checkpoint. Anderson attempted to make himself something of a national martyr to the conspiracists out there by posting a video to YouTube about it that quickly went viral.

Jones took note of the Anderson connection:

Jones: Now I'm starting to get a clearer picture. You go to Pastor Anderson's church, I see.

Chris: Yeah, yes I do. Proudly. I think it's the best church in the world.

The funny thing about these gun-toting protesters is that they like to portray themselves as being simple, honest defenders of their gun rights when they show up for public events, especially those featuring the president, packing heat publicly.

They adamantly deny that they're bringing their guns to intimidate their fellow citizens from speaking out with a contrary view. But this is beyond disingenuous; it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the vast majority of the people who attend a public debate will perceive someone with a gun as someone they should fear -- particularly if they have an opposing view. Most people will see someone with a gun at an event that does not deal with guns as a potential threat. And you can't tell me that most of these gun-toters are not perfectly aware of the intimidation factor they carry with them and are not in fact packing heat for just that reason.

Moreover, these gun-toters want to assure us they pose no threat whatsoever to either the president or his supporters by bringing these guns. They're just ordinary citizens standing up for their rights, right? The Secret Service need have no fear about their motives.

But then we find out that at least one of them ardently admires a pastor who preaches how much he hates Obama and wishes him dead, in order "to save this country."

And we're supposed to tell these "innocent" gun nuts from the people who might actually aim their weapons at the president how?

[H/t to reader jefro3000.]

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Bill O'Reilly did an interesting thing last night when he reran that footage of Barney Frank castigating that woman carrying an Obama-as-Hitler sign at his town-hall meeting on health care: He completely omitted the fact that the woman who Frank was castigating was in fact a member of the far-right Lyndon Larouche cult.

All O'Reilly could muster was to mention that the woman was "a political activist." But that's like calling a Great White Shark a fish.

No, right-wingers like O'Reilly have been eagerly airbrushing out the existence of right-wing extremists from their worldview for some time now, embodied by their reaction to that DHS bulletin. But it's getting harder and harder to do all the time now.

Because, as we've noted, the far-right extremists are bubbling up everywhere in supposedly mainstream conservative circles these days -- particularly at the tea parties and their associated health-care protests.

Most recently, it turns out that the guys who brought those guns to a health-care forum in Arizona in fact were longtime members of the old Arizona Vipers Militia. These were characters who, prior to their arrests in 1996, had stockpiled close to 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and conducted field training exercises, practiced bomb-making, and trained with illegal automatic weapons.

Now, all the Fox talkers have been in heavy denial about extremists showing up for their tea-party protests, even making a regular joke out of it by asking the protesters they have on their show if they're Klan members and the like.

But it's becoming clearer all the time that, while not everyone at these events is an extremist, the percentages of them keep going up and up. And with them, so does the threat to public safety.

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Sean Hannity was evidently distraught about Logan's post last Thursday about the teabagging Glenn Beck fan Katy Abram, who showed up at Arlen Specter's health-care town hall to spout Glenn Beckian nonsense. Logan remarked:

Granted, Abram isn't a professional pundit, but when questioned it became clear that she is the poster child for the entire undereducated, under-informed mob that make up the right wing town hall protesters.

Hannity gulps at this:

Hannity: Lovely. I guess the tone in Washington has really changed.

Of course, it hasn't. It hasn't because Sean Hannity and his Fox compatriots -- particularly Beck, who has even characterized President Obama as an anti-white racist -- as well as the Limbaugh-Coulter sector have seen to that.

But of course, on Planet Wingnuttia, it's been the liberals who are mean and nasty:

Hannity: Now what do you make of -- now we've watched all these politicians attacked. We've seen how Gov. Palin was treated, we saw how George W. Bush was treated. This is the first time, though, American citizens are being attacked by a party. Are you part of a mob? Are you a political terrorist? Do you like Tim McVeigh? Uh, any sympathies toward the Nazi Party?

Abram: No! [giggles]

Hannity: No racist views in your life?

Abram: No.

Hannity: No. What do you think when prominent Democrats have been making these charges?

Abram: I think it's ridiculous. I have heard Nancy Pelosi say, you know, we're a mob, swastikas, and all that stuff. I'm sorry. I'm a stay-at-home mom. I take care of my kids. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. And you've got these people that are in charge of the country calling the people of this country ... awful names. Awful names! I mean, my original question to Arlen Specter was going to be, "I want you to denounce what Nancy Pelosi has said about the people of this country. It's ridiculous! It's ridiculous!

Yep, that's what we mean when we say "undereducated and under-informed." Pelosi didn't "call the people of this country" Nazis; she called out the morons who bring signs with swastikas -- comparing Obama to Hitler, as has been done frequently by prominent figures on the right in recent weeks, from Beck to Limbaugh. You know, awful names!

Of course, you can go back and look at what she said on Donnell's show for more evidence of this kind of blithering idiocy:

...You know, yeah, I mean, there are programs in place that the founders did not want to have here. I know there are people out there that can't afford health insurance, that can't afford a lot of different things, and, you know, with the founders, they thought and hoped that the goodness of the people would allow the people to take care of those who are doing without. And I know that may seem naive in today's, you know, world...

Ouch. My head hurts. Another wingnut who has read Glenn Beck but hasn't read Thomas Paine.

Continue reading »

(video courtesy of Think Progress)

CNN's Don Lemon interviewed two astroturf town hall protesters in Atlanta Monday, and when one of them claimed that no "real Americans" spoke at Obama's town hall meetings, Don shut him down instantly -- and didn't let up:

Lemon:...At least the president is trying to reform health care, so where did the outrage suddenly come from?

Hardage: Don, this is the second town hall he's done in the last week that I actually saw real Americans get up and ask questions, it wasn't a pre-selected group or a -

Lemon: Hang on, before you do that - Real Americans - that's another term that sets people off. We're ALL real Americans, everybody.

Hardage: Anybody can get in, anybody can ask questions, you've seen a completely different tenor in the town hall he held on Tuesday and today than townhalls we've been seeing so far in this debate. That's what I mean by real Americans.

Lemon: You know what, that whole real Americans thing, can we lose that real Americans? Because everybody in the country who is a citizen is a real American. We're all real Americans and that's part of the issue that really sets people off and divides people, so let's get rid of that "real American." I'm a real American, you're a real American, conservative, liberals, independents, we're all real Americans."

How refreshing to see on a corporate news channel.

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Chris Matthews had on the Ron Paul supporter who showed up with a handgun to the New Hampshire town hall on health care led by President Obama. On Hardball yesterday, he really laid into the man -- a Kramer lookalike named William Kostric -- with some tough questions about just what the hell he hoped to accomplish:

Matthews: Why did you bring a gun to a meeting with the President of the United States, given the violent history of this country with regard to presidents and assassinations? Why did you bring a gun to a public event with the president? You know the history of this country. If you love this country and its history, you know we've had a problem with people with guns and presidential events. Why did you bring a gun to an event with the president?

... OK, you brought a sign that says, 'The tree of liberty has to be watered with the blood of tyrants,' and you're carrying a goddamn gun at a presidential event. I think those things make people wonder what you're about.

Matthews gets to the core point eventually:

Matthews: I'm gonna ask you: What do you bring to this discussion about health care? By bringing a gun, and that sign that you quote Jefferson from, what does that bring to a debate that this country's engaged in -- and we're looking at your gun right now, and your sign on there -- what did you -- and it's loaded, you pointed that out -- what are you doing to help this debate?

The best that Kostric can do is babble incoherently -- rather Kramerlike, actually -- about "showing the other end of it" so you can "pull people in your direction." He manages to finally blurt out that he actually thinks everyone would have been safer at the Town Hall event if everyone there had been packing heat.

Of course, that begs the questions of whether President Obama would have been safer, doesn't it?

Especially with crackpots like this in the crowd.

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Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin were all worked up yesterday on Beck's Fox News show about the media's treatment of the town-hall protests. They agreed that the media were ignoring all the "union thuggery" caused by rank-and-file health-care-reform supporters from the SEIU who were showing up at the town halls to counter the right's angry mobs:

Malkin: I think there's a purposeful whitewashing, and a narrative that somehow these unions represent blue-collar workers. That has never been the case. They have never represented the best interest of their dues-paying, card-carrying members. It's always been about enriching and enhancing and aggrandizing the management.

And people need to know what they're up against. You need to know your enemy. The SEIU is 1.8 million members strong. And the dues that they have coerced and squeezed from those members have been poured into Democrats' coffers. Andy Stern, who is the radical social worker turned union heavy, bragged that $80 million of SEIU union dues went to the Democrats in independent expenditures, and a huge chunk of that, of course, directly into Obama's campaign treasury.

Right. Because, of course, Malkin's corporate friends in Republicanland would do so much more to protect the interests of working-class people than unions would.

Malkin's claim that unions have "never" been about helping working-class people is of course grotesquely ahistorical, but fairly typical of corporate shills like Malkin. Indeed, if anyone's doing whitewashing, it's Malkin, who like Beck has airbrushed out of their realities the facts about progressives and unions and the central role they have played in creating the great American middle class upon which these two parasites feast.

But most hilarious is the charge that it's the unions who have introduced violence into this scenario, when in fact the entire tone of these protests from the right has been ugly and violent. The presence of SEIU regulars is essentially in response to the threats fomented by the right. After all, it isn't SEIU members who are calling up teabaggers and threatening them with gun violence -- it's the other way around.

This is underscored by the strange coda that Beck gives at the end of the segment:

Beck: You know, um, I have to tell you I think the clock is ticking, gang. I think everybody needs to back away -- not from your passions, not from what you believe in. You believe in health care, you keep going. You believe it's wrong, you keep going.

But we need to be very, very careful. I fear for the future. Somebody's going to do something stupid and it will change the Republic -- [snaps] -- overnight.

One can only assume that he's referencing his previous plea to his audience not to indulge in acts of violence. And as we can see, he has real reason to be concerned.

But just whose side is it with the propensity for violence and thuggery, Glenn and Michelle?

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Kenneth Gladney is doing his best to cash in on his 15 seconds of fame, following his fake "brutal assault" at the hands of SEIU supporters outside a St. Louis "town hall" on health care. Today he went on Fox and Friends with his attorney, Dave Brown, who announced that he wanted local prosecutors to pursue the case as a "hate crime."

Mr. Brown appears to be confused about just what constitutes a "hate crime". Namely, it take more than merely the matter of Gladney being a black man to qualify as such a crime; indeed, the main qualification has to be that a bias motivation has to be present. That is, prosecutors would have to establish that the people being charged were motivated by the victim's race.

Gladney claims that he was called the N-word -- but the man using that word was another black man. Proving a motivation of bias against blacks will be pretty difficult under those circumstances.

Moreover, if you go back and look at the tape, a couple of other things are worth noting:

-- It's the black man with whom Gladney apparently first had a verbal altercation who we see lying on his back on the street when the tape opens. If anyone can claim to be assaulted here, it's this man.

-- It's not clear that any actual assault occurred here at all. Gladney is pushed to the ground by someone trying to clear space for his friend. Certainly, given that Gladney appears to be just fine for most of the rest of the video, there's no evidence that he suffered any harm whatsoever in the incident.

And in order to file a hate-crime charge, any prosecutor will have to prove first that a crime was committed -- well before he can even look into the question of whether it was committed with a bias motivation. Considering that both appear extremely unlikely, Brown and Gladney are clearly both just grandstanding.

Besides ... aren't conservatives opposed to hate-crimes laws as a matter of principle?

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You had to figure that the moment you saw that "concerned father" harassing John Dingell at the town-hall meeting on health care in Michigan, he'd be showing up eventually on Fox News. After all, it's what they do.

Sure enough, he was on Fox's America's Newsroom this morning with Megyn Kelly. He was a bit nervous, but he managed to still say some extraordinarily incendiary things -- not to mention reveal that he's a "deather":

Sola: The harm that is being done is being done by this administration and the Congress. They want to foist on us a health-care plan that they themselves will not take. I challenge Barack Obama, members of Congress -- of both parties -- if you believe so much in this plan, then you use it on your family before you put it on our families. What you are doing is sentencing our families to death.

We lose the right to life. Old people are discarded. Those who cannot fend for themselves are discarded. There is no liberty under your plan. And that's the problem -- the people have seen it, the people know it, you can't hide it from the American people anymore.

If I'm a thug, fine. Don't call my son a thug, and don't call those old ladies and old men that are senior citizens like I am, thugs, and a mob. We are not. We are American citizens who want one thing: To be heard before you put us down.

If you want a good example of why we are where we are on this health-care debate, this one is prime: It shows just how deeply a segment of the American population is willing to believe things that simply are not true, provably so.

These are people who believe it's objectively true that the Obama administration's health-care reforms will lead to a mass killing of the elderly and denial of treatment for Obama's opponents. If you want to know why teabaggers are so worked up, this is why: They really believe this stuff.

This kind of alienation from fact-based reality was a significant component of the dynamic behind the "Patriot"/militia movement of the 1990s. It's embodied by the selective "skepticism" of such folks: Anything the runs counter to their belief system is dismissed as "the official story" which is only believed by "gullible" folks (and indeed is more evidence of the ongoing conspiracy), while any kind of outrageous nonsense that supports their belief system is seized up on as "secret truth".

It was a decidedly unhealthy trait when manifested among a relatively small group of people like the Patriots, because these beliefs formed the foundation for a broad range of radical extremism, including violence and armed standoffs with federal authorities.

The prospects of it now becoming a common pathology among the general conservative-movement population -- thanks to its open support from folks like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich (not to mention Fox News) -- are very disturbing indeed.

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This weekend the righties got all worked up about the supposed "brutality" of union thugs in St. Louis who they say beat up a black conservative tea partier named Kenneth Gladney who came out to protest the Obama health-care plan on Thursday. They even had a big protest the next day, along with a press conference featuring Gladney in a wheelchair.

But take a look at the video of the supposed assault. It enters the scene a bit late -- an SEIU member is already on the ground and appears to be injured, but we can't tell what the cause was. As he's laying there, other SEIU members come to his protection, and one of them pulls down Gladney; both men fall to the pavement. Both quickly get back up. There appears to be little to it. [A section of the video showing the supposed assault is in slow motion.]

Indeed, it's readily apparent that Gladney seems completely unhurt. He wanders out to the crowd, chats with the cameraman, flags down a cop, and saunters back to where police decide to handcuff the man who knocked him down. As you can hear, the man protests that he was just keeping Gladney away from his fallen friend.

The next day, Gladney is at the press conference in a wheelchair. He claims to be too medicated to speak, so his lawyers and fellow tea partiers do it for him.

Does this seem real to you? Sure looks fake to me.

Right-wingers love to bring up cases of fake hate crimes and overblown racial-profiling claims as proof that these phenomena don't really exist to the extent that their victims claim. (See Ann Coulter for the most recent example, but Michelle Malkin has made a minor cottage industry out of this specious narrative.) But they sure do love it when a minority conservative can make a reverse-the-charges accusation (usually involving race) against liberals -- no matter how dubious the claims.

We can see, moreover, that the right-wing teabaggers intend to create as much physical provocation as possible and then claim victimhood when something erupts -- even when there's nothing. (See yesterday's history lesson for more on this.)

Even worse, this kind of nonsense creates permission for right-wingers to then indulge in the "defensive" violence we've read them fantasizing about on right-wing gun forums. You know, that "Second Amendment" threat we've been hearing.

At the end of the video, I've added a snip from a friend of Gladney's, who remarks: "I wish I'd been there with you, bro, it'd have turned out a lot different, I promise you."

That's what worries the rest of us.