Monday, August 01, 2011

Teabaggers use intimidation to disrupt Moveon.org meeting in Roseburg, Oregon.



Courtesy of The News Review:

Many members of the Douglas County tea party, including Americans for Prosperity President Rich Raynor, initially defended the party's actions and vowed to use similar tactics to break up future MoveOn meetings.

After the incident was reported, Raynor told The News-Review he received phone calls threatening his family. Raynor said several email accounts and his Facebook account had been hacked. 

Seemingly boastful exchanges between him and tea party member Karen Meier were posted in The News-Review's comment section, allegedly by an email hacker. 

Meier and Raynor said the hackings are being investigated by the FBI. Regional FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele said she was “not aware of any active investigations” involving email hacking.

In a voice mail message, Raynor said he had been “advised not to make any further comment.” 

In a phone interview Tuesday, Meier, who attended the event, extended an apology to the MoveOn group, saying tea partiers got caught up in the moment.

This is a shameful display.  How can people who claim to want to defend the Constitution so callously interrupt someone's attempts to exercise their right to free speech?

They were clearly just being bullies and assholes, and if nobody every stands up to them they will continue acting that way until somebody gets hurt.

Of course it could have been worse for the MoveOn.org people.  When Dennis Zaki and I interviewed Teabaggers in Anchorage two years ago, a number of them were packing guns and wearing shirts that claimed they were members of the 2nd Amendment Patriots. (Later they gathered outside of the Dena'ina Convention Center and dared Senator Mark Begich to come out and talk to them.)




42 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:49 AM

    What assholes.

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  2. AKaurora3:18 AM

    The following site gives a more complete picture of the incident with firsthand accounts. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/24/998133/-Bagged!!!-The-Tea-Party-of-Roseburg,-Oregon

    Embarrassing to find that Rich Raynor was raised in Anchorage.
    http://heritagerealestateoregon.com/About.html

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  3. wakeUpAmerica3:43 AM

    Notice the teabagger group consists of mostly older white men. Geez it's getting so that when I see our flag I only associate it with teabaggers. It has become a disgusting symbol of fascism instead of freedom. Assholes indeed.

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  4. WakeUpAmerica4:10 AM

    Dude, where's my country?

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  5. I'm glad you posted this, Gryphen. This occurred about 30 miles from where my best friend lives, so I heard about it last week. Bullies without a clue. Sad and disgusting.

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  6. Anonymous5:14 AM

    You forgot a to put all the dots up there Gryphen. Your next line should have been and then on.... Jared Laughner, who like almost every other American had heard the vitriol of the Tea "Party," and thanks to Republican Second Amendment fixations, Laughner was able to obtain both guns and ammunition and shoot Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and kill others.

    And more recently, Norwegian Anders Breivart - whose racist tendencies were additionally fueled by right wing rhetoric not only LIKE that spouted by the Tea Party and their de facto spokepersons (Palin, Bachmann, Cain, West, et al) but quite possibly their actual rhetoric as he is said to have visited some of their supporters web sites-
    also silenced his future opposition - by shooting to death over 70 teens and young adults and bombing a downtown government building, killing more.

    Teabaggers are complicit in both of those slaughters - and this article shows they haven't learned. And the conventional Republican Party still embraces them. Time to ostracize the extremists. Or lose EVERY seat you have in the House and Senate in 2012.

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  7. Anonymous5:21 AM

    Disgusting!

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  8. Beldar AK47 Conehead5:31 AM

    "How can people who claim to want to defend the Constitution so callously interrupt someones attempts to exercise their right to free speech?"

    Oh! Oh! Oh! I can answer that!!!

    They can do it because... they're rat bastard hypocrites more interested in playing "soldier" and rubbing automatic weapons against their semi-turgid little wieners (sorry, Anthony...) in public than they are in truly behaving as the Constitution-loving patriots they claim to be.

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  9. Anonymous5:37 AM

    Classic TeaTard behavior .
    "Yup, we're gonna git'r dun an' show those damn commie organizers that the rill Amurucuns know how ta stan' up fer their rights 'n such. We's gonna kick'em right outta that park, 'n also too, show'em the constitushun poster I made, an' they can't just have a meetin' anyplace cuz they ain't duh rill Amurucuns."

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  10. Anonymous6:06 AM

    That's why I and many Alaskans I spoke with were ill, just ill about the sorry state of the state we were put in all those years ago when our grappling, out-of-her-league, winking, non-blinking little shop of horrors Governor was plucked from obscurity to 'progress' the GOP POTUS 2008 ticket desiring to shove down our throats unprecedented erosions of our civil liberties in favor or a Christian spun constitutional form of rule.

    Any of us and all of us that practiced our "God-given right" to question, criticize or outright laugh a little maniacally about having a freshman, know-nothing Governor co-parent the country were viciously attacked by other Alaskans saying we should just shut up about it and support her - as if it were good for Alaska and the country just because she was 'from' Alaska.

    The tide of intimidation has ebbed, but it was a surprisingly hostile environment for which we regular, sane citizens were bullied by Second Amendment patriots into supporting a woman who no more proved she could run a State, much less her family or country.

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  11. Gasman6:11 AM

    The teabaggers are nothing more than inbred fascist assholes. They want a dictator not democracy. If they don't get their way, then they are prepared to shout down any opposing view. These morons are enemies of democracy.

    It sounds like the alleged hacking and FBI investigation are nothing more than ham fisted teabagger lies to deflect attention away from their black shirt tactics and try and make them the victims.

    No sale, assholes.

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  12. Anonymous6:15 AM

    Sarah Palin started this environment of hostility toward a distinction of Americans. She made teabaggers feel special, exceptional and Real and gave them license to adopt threatening tactics against fellow citizens that didn't fit their narrow world-view of patriotism.

    I for one am proud that I live in a country where I don't have to cite the pledge of allegiance. I don't have to go to church. I can have sex before marriage, chose to have a baby or not. I pay taxes and believe that is our responsibility to our country's health.

    And I can say these people are hateful assholes and their leadership are gutless, hypocritical and lying wonders.

    But I would never threaten them, I would never lift a hand in violence against them. I would never round them up and let them rot in prison. I would not take their churches, leaders or guns away from them unless they use it against us.

    There is a thin red line, and they are threatening to cross it every day. It is frightening.

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  13. Anonymous6:36 AM

    You know 6:06, I wonder how McCain is feeling about now. He successfully covered up so many of his mistakes, so much of his bastardy for years. His POW status helped that a lot. So did his occasionally not toeing the party line in the Senate. Now, he will be remembered forever as the desperate idiot who projected his own sexual peccadillos (loyalty and intelligence don't count, it's all about the pretty face and how the sex appeal plays out that counts) on the voting public by picking Plain as a running mate, and opening the door to pseudo legitimacy of the Teabaggers. Benedict Arnold and JOhn McCain - forever together.

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  14. Anonymous6:41 AM

    6:15 - threatening? No, they have crossed it.

    Murder of George Tiller
    Tucson
    Utoyo/Oslo

    They fight to put matches in the hands of known pyromaniacs, to make the kerosene available to them, to paint descriptions of how pretty the fire will be.

    Then, they claim to not have anything to do with the ensuing conflagration.

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  15. Anonymous7:27 AM

    How far away are these people from what those losers in Fairbanks were doing? Shutting down streets turning people away attempting to control situations by force. These people are a bunch of assholes with a real potential to be dangerous.

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  16. Anonymous7:47 AM

    Douglas County would be a hotbed for this behavior. Consider the age of the teapartiers in this video. The county has had huge unemployment (logging) for decades. We used to drive through there in the '80s and '90s on our way to the coast. A pre-teaparty group was running local politics then. Major redneck anger that has obviously fomented beyond rational thinking is being displayed in this video.

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  17. Smirnonn8:01 AM

    I'd put big money on the fact that those fucknut bagtards don't even know the fundamental differences between communism, marxism and socialism. Just a bunch of morons parroting the hate filled xenophobic drivel that spews forth from the likes of limpy and paylump.

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  18. Anonymous8:12 AM

    And let's not forget the Tea Party guy pushed the MoveOn protestor's head into a concrete curb at a Rand Paul event.

    These people think THEY'RE the ones who are oppressed?

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  19. Anonymous8:13 AM

    Welcome to ORYGUN!!!!!!!! These Tea Baggers are holed up in the southern part of the state. Thank God we have Portland to put some sanity in the election process.

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  20. Anonymous8:13 AM

    akeUpAmerica said: "Notice the teabagger group consists of mostly older white men."

    That's true of the militia movement, too. A good deal of them probably never signed up for military service in their youth and are trying to make up for it now. And many of them that were in the military either served undistinguishedly or were dishonorably discharged.

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  21. I just called Rich Raynor (he answered the telephone by stating his name). After only four or five words from me regarding the Douglas County Tea Party disruption of a MoveOn.org event, he hung up on me. He quickly determined that he'd be unable to hold up his end of the conversation, so he just decided to hang up. It's hard to show any regard for people like this. Barbara

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  22. Anonymous8:15 AM

    Anon said: "Jared Laughner, who like almost every other American had heard the vitriol of the Tea "Party," and thanks to Republican Second Amendment fixations, Laughner was able to obtain both guns and ammunition and shoot Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and kill others."

    Yes, and why has the media stopped covering this man? His mugshot clearly looked like that of a rightwing skinhead. Crazy, my ass. I read that searches of his computer showed he was looking up information about the insanity pleas before he went on his rampage. Which by the way, wasn't someone wildly firing shots. He methodically picked off those poor people.

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  23. Anonymous8:19 AM

    Anon 7:47: "A pre-teaparty group was running local politics then."

    An actual tea party group is running our county politics now. First thing they did was fire the county manager, who has kept this county afloat for years and insured we kept a top notch investment rating. One of the Tea Party commissioners then proceeded to install himself as the interim county manager, drawing in an extra salary while doing so.

    They also elected a Tea Party state rep to office. I've heard he has a personal bankruptcy in his past and left a lot of creditors high and dry. He is now currently trying to pass a law that would make the unemployed have to take drug testing if they want to collect their unemployment insurance.

    Don't tell me the solution to our problems isn't getting involved on the local level! People, I'm serious, you need to stop worrying so much what's happening at the national level, because they're stealing your communities right out from underneath you.

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  24. Anonymous8:26 AM

    These people are weak and pathetic. Fear is the fuel that runs their engines. Perhaps if we hold that reflection up to them it might register, and again it may not. The only thing I know is by ignoring it we enable and embolden them.....I for one am tired of these belligerent hypocrites and their attempts to infringe upon and control what is not within their rights.

    The last weeks, the debacle in the Congress, that is a manufactured and wholly unnecessary crisis has demonstrated clearly to me that Republicans, now with the convienent obsfucation that is the Tea Party are in violation of their sworn oath of duty to protect and serve our Constitution and the people it protects. It is up to the people to either remove these people from elected office or suffer the consequence of their limited and extreme agenda. I hope America can regain it's sanity long enough to derail this dangerous movement.

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  25. I agree Anon! I'm from Eugene and I've watched Roseburg and Douglas County during the years following the diminished logging activity there. Perhaps the county was "ripe" for the tea party movement. But it's not too late to turn the train around and prevent the wreck that is on the horizon.

    Start something! Write articles. Hold meetings. Run for office. Stand up to the bullies!

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  26. Anonymous8:44 AM

    Bastards! You know I had a guy who I went to high school with confront me on my FB page because I posted an article that was critical of the tea party. The idiot proceeded to post on my page that Obama was a socialist. Of course I have not seen him in many years. I think I will defriend him. Even on FB you can't say what you want without being harassed. The tea partiers are asshats. I know too many people that are in with them from my past and I find it thoroughly appalling. The stupid assholes are playing right into the Koch brothers hands. How moronic are they? We see what they've done to this country already with the debt ceiling crisis. I may have to eventually leave this country if things don't change.

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  27. Don't they sell air horns anymore?

    I suggest the next time MoveOn.org wants a meeting, every member buy an air horn. When the 'baggers show up, you form a circle facing out. And every time a 'bagger shouts you blow the horn. Buy two or three if you suspect it will be a long meeting.

    Eventually they'll give up and go home.

    It's either that or have your meeting at someone's private residence in a fenced in back yard surrounded by other houses. The 'baggers can shout from the street but they'll hardly be heard. If they try using bullhorns, call the cops and complain about noise. I believe using bullhorns in a residential neighborhood violates most codes for noise abatement.

    Discipline. It is time to discipline the children.

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  28. Brown Shirts. Typical Nazi bullying tactics in the name of Country. Disgusting.

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  29. Brown Shirts. Typical Nazi bullying tactics in the name of Country. Disgusting.

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  30. Anonymous10:30 AM

    That Tea Party crowd is a bunch of elementary school bullies, only with guns. It's like the First Amendment doesn't count because they have the Second Amendment. I hope that video makes the round on the internet. Vile disgusting and frightening.

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  31. Anonymous10:41 AM

    I called the number at the end of the vidoe 541-643-6292 and told him he was a bully and should be arrested

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  32. Anonymous10:42 AM

    Rightwing violence and intimidation isn't anything new, though. You all might be interested in a NPR Point of View video called "The Fire Next Time" about the Flathead Valley outside of Glacier Park in Montana.

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  33. Anonymous11:11 AM

    I'm not suggesting anything, but if anyone would like the private emails of Mr. Raynor and the rest of the harassing teabaggers, somebody posted them online:

    http://pastebin.com/ESUwYvAn

    How scary that they view their fellow Americans in this manner: "I too will wait and watch the enemy organize an effective counter attack, although I already know the attack is coming. Then we can respond, if we will have the zeal, unity of thought and if it isn't too late."

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  34. Anonymous11:36 AM

    I know Dean and Sara Byers, the couple who were followed to their home by these "teahadists". They are hardworking honorable progressives. I'm from Portland but I have worked with them over the years in crafting the Democratic Party platform and articulating progressive values. Sara ran for state legislature against the Republican caucus leader and lost, but did better than previous Democrats against Bruce Hanna. Dean has led the environmentalist fight against the siting of LNG terminals on the Oregon coast. The Byerses don't back down easily so if they say they felt threatened and intimidated I believe them.

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  35. Anonymous11:36 AM

    I know Dean and Sara Byers, the couple who were followed to their home by these "teahadists". They are hardworking honorable progressives. I'm from Portland but I have worked with them over the years in crafting the Democratic Party platform and articulating progressive values. Sara ran for state legislature against the Republican caucus leader and lost, but did better than previous Democrats against Bruce Hanna. Dean has led the environmentalist fight against the siting of LNG terminals on the Oregon coast. The Byerses don't back down easily so if they say they felt threatened and intimidated I believe them.

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  36. Anonymous12:07 PM

    I think the asshole teabaggers are going to get their clocks cleaned in the upcoming election cycle.

    Americans are to blame for electing them this last election. Pay attention folks that are going to the polls. If you have Sarah Palin backing them, you should have known what they were and were not.

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  37. Anonymous12:11 PM

    Oregon is only three hours away. I will happily take these jerks on. These people were having a frigging picnic! This is sweet little Oregon? I am so disappointed in Oregon for this. I hope the Sheriff is FIRED. And Tea Party? You do this in Seattle and woe unto you because Seattle will not be so kind as to give up a picnic on a nice day because you came over to bully them. Awful awful awful.

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  38. Anonymous12:39 PM

    I posted a link to this and the Daily Kos article on my facebook page. Shine a light on these roaches.
    M from MD

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  39. Anonymous1:58 PM

    To Anon @12:11 PM:

    Portland is three hours away from Seattle -- but Roseberg is three hours beyond PDX. Roseberg might as well be another planet from Portland -- it was settled by a lot of folks from the South -- Georgia, Mississippi and so on -- and they brought their redneck attitudes with them. Dean and Sara are very brave for taking these folks on.

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  40. Anonymous2:53 PM

    They aren't ass holes they are brown shirt doing what they have been told to do by their local or state leader.

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  41. Thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love learning more on this topic.

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  42. Anonymous4:52 PM

    I called 541-643-6292 a woman answered and played dumb with me. Notice how the police did not do there job but if someone did something back to the man in leather, there be police all over them.

    ReplyDelete

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