Thursday, March 07, 2013

Ed Schultz tackles the Southern Poverty Law Center's report that anti-government groups are at an all time high.

This is the opening of Ed's show so the first minute and a half does not address this topic. If you skip to the 1:30 mark you will start to hear the troubling information.

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You know Ed Schults is one of the MSNBC hosts that I link to the least because he is often bombastic and is not known for delivering the information in the cool and informative way that say Rachel Maddow might. However in THIS case I certainly do not think that Schultz is over the top and I share his concern, and that of the SPLC, that these groups present a clear and present danger to the citizens and law enforcement officials of this country.

Here is a little more from Politico:

The SPLC wrote a letter to the departments of Justice and Homeland Security asking for the creation of a task force to examine the resources devoted to battling domestic terrorism. 

“On October 25, 1994, six months before the Oklahoma City bombing, we wrote Attorney General Janet Reno about the growing threat of domestic terrorism,” SPLC President Richard Cohen wrote in the letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. “Today, we write to express similar concerns. In the last four years, we have seen a tremendous increase in the number of conspiracy-minded, antigovernment groups as well as in the number of domestic terrorist plots. As in the period before the Oklahoma City bombing, we now also are seeing ominous threats from those who believe that the government is poised to take their guns.” 

As somebody who watched the Schaeffer Cox story unfold, and who has some behind the scenes knowledge bout how a number of similar groups currently preparing their own anti-government plots, I will tell you that we CANNOT ignore these lunatics.

They may be comical at times, with their ridiculous training video, and bizarre conspiracy theories, but make no mistake these individuals are heavily armed and, thanks to assholes like Norm Olson, easily agitated into making dangerous mistakes which might very well cost them their lives, the lives of the law enforcement officials sent to deal with them, and any innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire.

22 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:36 AM

    It's only a matter of (not much) time before something like OKC happens again. The bottom line is that they can't abide a government run by a black man. It's absolutely about race and it will happen.

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    1. Anonymous7:00 AM

      Well, let's hope that the racist part dies out as a younger more tolerable generation comes along...

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    2. Anonymous7:49 AM

      Seriously, I never believed that racism was still so extremely prevalent until 2004. My eyes are open now.

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    3. Anonymous8:26 AM

      Hope you are right 7 am, but I worry about that part of the younger generation being home schooled by these lunatics and isolated from diversity. As the song says, " you have to be carefully taught" to hate, be cruel and intolerant. I suspect the far right is grooming its next generatioin to be Xhristian patrirot soldiers - some to fight and some to infiltrate (as best they can with their pissy education) the government and business. These folks are seriously dangerous.

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    4. fromthediagonal11:30 AM

      anon@ 7:00 and 8:26: Hope in humanity springs eternal in some of us, and I belong to that group. However I am reminded of some old saying: Ignorant Is as Ignorant Does... and they breed!

      Check out the Quiverfull and assorted other Dominionist/Racist/7Mountains adherents, the so-called Christian Warrior groups and try to hang on to hope that their offspring will be open minded 21st Century citizens.

      That would pose quite a challenge.

      Yes, they are an ever present and growing danger not only to democracy but to civilized society as a whole.

      Needless to say, that goes for fanatics of all stripes.




      Delete
  2. Anonymous7:03 AM

    NRA official barred from purchasing new guns & his 39 pistols, shotguns and rifles were confiscated due to court order on behalf of wife — who has multiple sclerosis & walks with a cane — who suffered years from domestic violence.

    She called her ex-husband a “bully” who acted at home with the same confrontational behavior that NRA leaders use in politics.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/fight-wife-bars-nra-official-carrying-guns-article-1.1281540#ixzz2Ms1dxCHW

    Carry on

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    1. Anonymous7:58 AM

      Good for her. And for the community.

      Delete
  3. Anonymous7:11 AM


    We need to become more draconian and actually enforce sedition and treason laws. These people don't think they are doing anything wrong.

    One thing I would like to see enforced is a more secular government. We need to make religion a private/personal matter again and make it politically incorrect or even illegal to inject ones religious ideology into legislation.

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    1. Anonymous9:04 AM

      X2 !!!

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    2. fromthediagonal11:34 AM

      anon @7:11... YESSS!
      But how do we make ourselves heard?
      The problem is that those of us who reason will never be heard as will those who spout dogmatic "bumper sticker" phrases.



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    3. Anonymous12:03 PM

      We are still at War. In the lead up to our entering WW2, FDR put a lot of people who were rabble-rousers in detention because of the insurrection they wanted to cause. US public opinion was solidly isolationist. Now whether it was right or good was unknown at the time, but the political realities were a known and the foreign intel of the axis powers (and USSR) were unknown, thus, weren't factored into FDR's playbook other than contingencies. But FDR understood risks with foreign propaganda and acted, based on its potential to damage our national security.

      The press was heavily censored, Govt was censored, and still is, to some degree; Hollywood and ent industry was commandeered, unions were controlled, business and industrial production was regulated HEAVILY in order to fight a war that we were not even militarily engaged in until Pearl Harbor. We often forget that there were Nazi rallies fillng up MSG in NY, communists were pressing for power among impoverished groups like blacks, poor whites; the KKK fighting for segregation, for states rights, against immigrants; Birchers didn't have the JBS yet, but the principals and families were fighting for the same agendas against communism but against foreign intervention. Big Biz battled unions and working people by using thugs, police depts, and private security to harrass, agitate, murder, and ultimately crush the unions, all for the benefit of a very few Oligarchs, who ruled the day. Sadly, they still do and always will. We need to remember the lessons of how power diverted by a divide & conquer strategy and by pitting competing groups against one another, ie, "immigrants vs poor & working class", most sharing the same basic needs.
      Folks need to examine the real history of the US, not the sanitized school textbook versions of our day (censored) and not the BS revisionist history of Barton or Beck. Many well-sourced books have been written and are still being written with so many parallels to today. it's a travesty that these facts aren't well known for the lessons we need to learn. Why? Because even today, there are many people who don't know why we are fighting in the Middle East still. They don't know why we invaded Iraq. They believe there were WMD's in Iraq bc their sources of info are limited and corrupt, and they are bombarded with a grain of fact here, a big lie there, faulty analysis from another "trusted" source, totally BS representation of the true facts through spin from their trusted sources who link to one another and grift off the same low-info people.
      Ed Schultz is an unapologetic "homer" for the old -style, hardcore democratic party that once had strong unions, etc. But while Ed might be sarcastic and over-the-top on occasion, he doesn't tell lies and he doesn't report facts that are blatantly wrong. I just don't like his style because it agitates some R's, and I don't agree with all of his policy positions, BUT, I listen to the FACTS that he represents and his rationale for his opinions, and there's usually logic an reason. Lines between commentary/opinion/editorial and facts with analysiis based on verifiable, primary news/data sources---- have been blurred purposely for a few basic reasons that folks need to understand. We'll still have 311M personal opinions on what we need to do to move forward and to set the priorities. But if we can't listen to and learn from one another bc of the agitatiors and shit-stirrers, it hurts us. And if we ALL aren't working off the same set of FACTS, thiose who don't know what they don't know are at a severe disadvantage to be manipulated against their own interests in favor of another individual or group.
      Ed's is a partisan voice of all Americans, with a few exceptions, and they are not you or me or anyone you know regardless of which site you read on the Net or see on any cable or network channel. Oligarchs, Plutocrats, some American some foreign, some dual-nationality.

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    4. fromthediagonal4:44 AM

      Well said! Keep speaking out.

      Delete
  4. I saw the segment last night and I think Ed covered it well. The guy from the California University pissed me off though. Once again, trying to say left wing and right wing extremists are equal. Sorry, but sitting in the top of a giant redwood tree doesn't come close to blowing up a building in Oklahoma and killing 168 people. Left and right are NOT equal and I'm tired of people trying to say "both sides do it." No, they don't.

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  5. Anonymous7:17 AM

    The Southern Poverty Law Center is a great organization to support. They really are watching out for us, all of us, in this increasingly bizarre country.
    Beaglemom

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    1. fromthediagonal11:44 AM

      Beaglemom... You are correct, SPLC is doing excellent work under difficult circumstances. I have support them and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) by renewing my membership annually. It is not much, but...

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    2. Anonymous2:38 PM

      http://catholicism.org/big-expose-of-the-southern-poverty-law-center.html This should tell all.

      Delete
  6. I took the time to watch it all.

    Yes, they’re out there. I worked with a young militia member for a while. It’s easy to dismiss them as bumbling fools who would shoot themselves in the foot, but this kid was smart and gutsy (willing to do Hazmat stuff). He never stepped outside the law, but I suspect he would, given a strong provocation.

    He was nice, if I had the time to hear about war all day (he knew everything!), but he was wary of Clinton taking his guns, and especially afraid of the UN. I tried to convince him otherwise, but he thought I was naive.

    Regarding an earlier post; he would take unwanted dogs to Grandma’s Farm. They never returned. He thought of himself as a good guy.

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  7. Anonymous7:40 AM

    Whoops...more of the quashed CDC report on gun ownership & gun deaths has been revealed:

    "states with the most gun laws saw a 40% reduction in firearm-related homicides and a 37% reduction in firearm-related suicides"

    '...For example, there was a three-fold difference in firearm-related suicide between Massachusetts and Louisiana, which has few laws limiting the use of firearms."

    http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/06/us/guns-laws-mortality/index.html?hpt=us_c2

    "When you're talking about 300 million people, you're talking about thousands of deaths that would not otherwise have occurred,"

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    1. Anonymous8:45 AM

      Texas gun murder that would not have occurred otherwise:
      Dr. Deidra Blackmon <--- designated driver for girls night out fatally shot after friend vomited near suspect's car in store parking lot.

      She had been shot in the head while driving car load of friends.

      http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/03/04/4659927/veterinarian-fatally-shot-after.html#storylink=cpy

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  8. Oh if only Obama had accepted Sarah Palin's pledge to help him out with advice and whatnot, everything would be so much better, wouldn't it?

    See, Obama didn't know he was REALLY supposed to pal around with terrorists like the ones that got Sarah elected to City Council and Mayor. But Savvy, Stupendous, Slippery, Salacious Sarah, utilizing all of her executive experience and superior education, pulled the ole Barracuda Quitter Mind Patty-Melt Trick on Obama, by making him deny that he knew any real present-day patriotic good Mercun domestic terrorists. BOOM goes the nightstick with Adavntage -Palin!!!

    So Sarah Palin CLEARLY proved that she was more qualified than Barak Obama, and if elected, McCain would've recognized that she was much more informed on foreign policy and teabagging stuff than John (plus the baggers hated McCain), so he would've had Sarah make all of the decisions, and McCain would've just gone to funerals and played solitaire on the VP's Govt-issued laptop, and kept quiet on issues other than maybe sending a tweet if a Democrat said something stupid or give updates on Friends of Hamas taking Hillary Clinton to dinner like it said on Breitbart's sites.

    And of course, Sarah obviously did run with the Apple Dumpling Gang of Patriotic Domestic Terrorists, Alaska-Russia Chapter, so not only did Palin have more executive experience and a better education and a better Facebook page, but she also had great connections because of her Love for Her Country and Live for Her Flage (the yellow one with the snake on it cuz Rev Muthee told her it was good luck against witches and the LSM). Plus Sarah has Love for All the Good Mercun Patriotic Domestic Terrorist Freedom Warriors, the ones with with the big cache of guns, ammo and explosives.

    How can Obama help in the War on Terror when he don't even know none of the GOOD terrorists that hate blahs, gays, teachers (especially English and Science, but for different reasons), Libruls and Taxes??? These are the good pals of Sarah that want to shoot judges and state policemen that are taking away all of their freedoms to blow up shit and shoot guns in the neighborhood just for funsies? Hell, Sarah was a damn busy gubner and couldn't make all the little klan meeting when she was getting massages, tanning, mani-pedis, and doing trade policy with the Russians (SEE, gubners do a LOT of important executive shit all the time)

    This proves that Sarah would've been a greater president than Obama or McCain or Lincoln, probably #1A to Washington's #1 (only bc Wasington was first bc he was a man. Sexism against momma grizzlies even back in late 1700's. You betcha. BOOM!

    Palin/West 2016------> Because Sarah's list of achievements and executive shit she's done gets longer every day and she knows the domestic terrorists that can help her get the Tea Party Real Mericun agents passed. Plus, bc she needs a job.
    And West? Well, he needs a job, also, too, and has said nice things about Sarah in the past.

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    1. Anonymous10:25 AM

      >>Barracuda Quitter Mind Patty-Melt Trick

      You had me with Patty Melt...LOL!

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  9. I guess that was a dead give-away that my tummy was telling me what a jerk I was for offering my chicken biscuit to someohe else this morning. I'm usually like a dog with his favorite bone. I might not want it at this particular moment,, but I've claimed it, I kniw where it is, and I'll be back for it.

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