The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Richard Day's picture

    NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON, Except For Good Old Joe Klein

    File:Stag2wi.jpg
                                                             THE AR15

                                          You that never done nothin'
                                          But build to destroy
                                          You play with my world
                                           Like it's your little toy
                                          You put a gun in my hand
                                          And you hide from my eyes
                                          And you turn and run farther
                                          When the fast bullets fly.

                                                                                   B DYLAN

    Chris Mathews hosts his weekend show which is taped on Friday--I think--and aired way up in the north woods on an independent station Sunday Morn. There is lots of winking and good laughs while the world sinks further and further into barbarism. But I end up less angry than when I watch monkey-faced Gregory or whoever is doing Poopandopolos This Week on ABC. Fox is out of the question of course. You know Wallace does have a natural paralysis of the face which is a permanent sneer as Wild Bill pointed out recently.

    Joe Klein was sitting on the panel this week, a panel which is really just a bunch of folding chairs filled with know-nothings. I think the entire half hour is filmed in some hotel lobby just off the mezzanine.

    Mathews has been on a 'hate speech' rant lately; which is good for him. During the discussion that covered the hate speech of Bachmann and palin and rush and so many others, Joe rose up and managed to squeeze in a couple sentences describing such talk as rising to the level, or almost to the level of sedition.  I saw it as one of those ad libs that are so few and far between on our scripted screens.

    Well MSM was all abuzz concerning this off the cuff remark so old Joe just had to respond:

    On the Chris Mathews Show Sunday, I said that some of the right-wing infotainment gasbags--people like Glenn Beck etc.--were nudging up close to the edge of sedition. This has caused a bit of a self-righteous ruckus on the right. Let me be clear: dissent isn't sedition. Questioning an Administration's policies isn't sedition. But questioning an Administration's legitimacy in a manner intended to undermine or overthrow it certainly is. A rally like this yesterday in South Carolina is a good example of seditious speech. It's not illegal--unless actions are taken to overthrow the government in question--but it is disgraceful and the precise opposite of patriotism in a democracy.

    On a related note, my phone's been ringing with requests from cable news shows--left and right--to discuss Tea Party extremism. The same phone was silent last week when my cover story about the difficulties facing our troops in Afghanistan was published. I won't be appearing on any cable shows to discuss the Tea Party extremists this week. I said what I said, and stand by it. But I do find the "news" judgment of the cable networks nauseating...and I can understand why, despite the yellow ribbons and "We Support Our Troops" blather, our young people in uniform feel abandoned by a bored, ignorant and self-involved public back home http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/04/19/sedition/#ixzz0la3G63fM

    This is the first time since the Civil War that every day citizens have risen up. Limbaugh http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201004190043

    The second violent American revolution is just about -- I got my fingers about a quarter of an inch apart -- is just about that far away.  Because these people are sick and tired of a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington driving into town and telling them what they can and can't do with their land..."   Limbaugh 1995 after Oklahoma City bombing. http://mediamatters.org/blog/201004190021

    This country is going to be brought down to violence. Beck http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201004190013

     

    We're on to this gangster government, I say it's time for these little piggies to go home. Palin. http://www.theeagle.com/texas/Palin-attacks--gangster-government-

    I wont waste your time with a hundred other incendiary quotes right now from the right but I think they have demonstrated real results:

    Not only have the number of radical-right extremist groups exploded in the wake of President Obama's election (more than 500 today, as compared to just 200 during the 1990s), but these militia members now have a proud sponsor in the person of Fox News' Glenn Beck, who has done more than any other person to amplify and mainstream the movement's hateful and foreboding anti-government message. Beck continues to give a voice, and national platform, to the same deranged, hard-core militia haters and self-style "patriots" who hounded the new, young Democratic president in the early 1990s in the wake of Waco.  http://mediamatters.org/columns/201004060005

     

    Mathews was dumb enough to invite Larry Pratt on his show today. A guy who is too far right for even Pat Buchanan:

    Larry Pratt, a gun rights absolutist whose Gun Owners of America (GOA) has been described as "eight lanes to the right" of the National Rifle Association, may well be the person who brought the concept of citizen militias to the radical right.

    In 1990, Pratt wrote a book, Armed People Victorious, based on his study of "citizen defense patrols" used in Guatemala and the Philippines against Communist rebels -- patrols that came to be known as death squads for their murderous brutality.

    Picturing these groups in rosy terms, Pratt advocated similar militias in the United States -- an idea that finally caught on when he was invited for a meeting of 160 extremists, including many famous white supremacists, in 1992.

    It was at that meeting, hosted in Colorado by white supremacist minister Pete Peters,  that the contours of the militia movement were laid out.

    Pratt, whose GOA has grown since its 1975 founding to some 150,000 members today, hit the headlines in a big way when his associations with Peters and other professional racists were revealed, convincing arch-conservative Pat Buchanan to eject him as a national co-chair of Buchanan's 1996 presidential campaign.

    The same year, it emerged that Pratt was a contributing editor to a periodical of the anti-Semitic United Sovereigns of America, and that his GOA had donated money to a white supremacist attorney's group.

    Pratt is today close to the extremist Constitution Party and its radical theology.

    http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2001/summer/false-patriots?page=0,8

    I went to this site: United Sovereigns of America. USA, get it? Ha

    American Patriots for border security and comprehensive interior enforcement of federal immigration laws. USA meets on the 1st & 3rd Thursdays at 6pm. The American Legion, Christopher J. Lapka Post 105, 3534 West Calavar Rd., Phoenix, AZ 85053, 602-938-1811. www.immigrationbuzz.com.  http://immigrationcontrol.meetup.com/98/

    Pratt noted on Hardball that the since some law enacted in 1792 authorized everyone to have a musket, the Second Amendment to the Constitution authorizes all our citizens to have AR15's. 

    Do you like apples? Well how do you like them apples?

    I then found a slew of sites selling military weapons to the public:

    Welcome to Brownells' AR15Builder.com information page. AR15builder.com allows you to design your dream AR15 rifle just by clicking or dragging images of parts and accessories to the build area. It couldn't be easier!

    There are many ways to use AR15Builder.com.

    1. Popular prebuilt models have been provided; select a prebuilt from the selection area at the top of the screen; then modify it with different parts.
    2. To build one from scratch, begin by selecting your receiver(s) -- uppers or lowers -- stripped or complete -- from the appropriate drop-down box and allow the images to load across the top selection bar. Then, click or drag the accessories you want.
    3. For the maximum level of customization you can select stripped upper and lower receivers then choose from our huge selection of components and parts kits to build a customized AR15. With so many combinations, you're sure to find the rifle that suits you best.
    4. Already have an AR15 you're looking to customize? No problem. Simply build a replica of your rifle(s) and customize from there.

    Once you have an AR15 built, you can save it for future reference to your Brownells.com account. Simply login, or create a new account, then name & save your build in the lower left-hand corner. On your next visit to AR15Builder.com, log into your account -- all of your previously saved builds will appear in a drop down box. Build and save as many as you wish!

    When you're ready to order your build, click the "Send to Cart" button in the lower right of screen. Your build will be transferred to Brownells.com for checkout.

    http://www.brownells.com/aspx/builders/ar15builder/builder.aspx

     

    And check out these sites:

    http://www.atlanticfirearms.com/

    http://www.dpmsinc.com/

    There are scores of these sites. I swear you can purchase anything on the internet. These ads just got to me somehow. I was watching Lord of War where Nicolas Cage plays this armament dealer. We are supposed to be pissed off because the 'bad' people have arms; AND WE SELL TO BOTH SIDES OF ANY CONFLICT.  And these are true weapons of mass destruction.

    But it would not take the chutzpah of Cage's character to arm the world. Just get me my a couple credit cards and I can get a militia going up here in the northern woods in no time. And our Supreme Court appears to have put the Good Housekeeping  Seal of approval on all of this!!!