Apr 17 2009
Conservatives Fail To Engage Brain Before Emoting On DHS Report
Well, as an ex-conservative I can see I jumped the sinking ship just in time. A key issue with the DHS report (my initial posts here and here) is that it was clearly aimed at potentially violent groups. At the time the DHS report broke and the right went mad, I noted mainstream conservatism is not a potentially violent group. While some complained the report was vague, there were some names included, including the traitorous murderer Timothy McVeigh.
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After Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991, some returning military veterans—including Timothy McVeigh—joined or associated with rightwing extremist groups.
Anyone from the mainstream who had their brain engaged should be able to tell the difference between themselves and the focus of the DHS report – people like McVeigh or could potentially be like McVeigh. There was no reason for the drama queens to claim they could be or were being confused with a known problem segment of our population. All the wailing aside from the right, we as a nation need to face up and deal with this cancer. There are established labels for these groups, like rightwing extremists. It is also a fact far left liberals attempt to smear mainstream conservatives with these labels (of course, the far right does the same thing against democrats, like calling them fascists, and centrists, like calling them traitors).
How can anyone seriously think the GOP is a supporter, ally or enabler of the kinds of horror Timothy McVeigh inflicted on this nation?
But to show how truly insane they are, many far right conservatives have been out claiming brotherhood with the rightwing extremists, claiming publicly they are of the same cast, accepting the label and all its conations.Â
What has me floored is the inane hypocrisy of all this, as many conservatives rightly questioned Obama’s links to another American terrorist Bill Ayers. The only difference between Ayers and McVeigh was the decade in which they attacked this country and the fact McVeigh has a massively larger body count to his name.
Because conservatives hypocritically accepted the blurring of what were clear lines of distinction between real American traitors and mainstream conservative political movements and groups I had to end any association with this ever shrinking, shrill and marginal group. Instead of simply stating with confidence and pride conservatism is not a violent and extreme ideology, these knuckleheads have embraced the dangerous cancer by stating their acceptance with this cast of ghouls.
Not only is this political suicide, it gave credibility to the lunatic fringe when they claim  the conservative movement is nothing more than an out of control and potentially violent hate group:
Liberal actress and political activist Janeane Garofalo, in all seriousness, said activists who attended tea parties are racists with dysfunctional brains in a recent prime-time television appearance.
“Let’s be very honest about what this is about. This is not about bashing Democrats. It’s not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea party was about. They don’t know their history at all. It’s about hating a black man in the White House,” she said on MSNBC’s “The Countdown” with Keith Olbermann Thursday evening. “This is racism straight up and is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. There is no way around that.”
“No way around that”. Especially when Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham and others have stated publicly they are righwing extremists – in clear reference to a DHS report, which was focused on the likes of McVeigh. No longer can conservatives complain about liberal ties to Ayers now that they have stated they are fine with being tied to McVeigh and others like him. Now they have stated allegiance to the extreme rightwing, they have donned their mantle.
This is why people need to engage their brains before emoting in full drama queen mode. The conservatives, especially the far right, are angry they have lost the support of the people. All their current woes are the fault of oppressive democrats and traitorous centrists. I can say with confidence two things: Obama is not nearly as bad as the far right fringe claim (i.e., a fascist modern day nazi), and the far right is not as pure and morally great as they like to pretend.
What this country needs to do is stay out of the fringes. We don’t need the leftwing or rightwing extremists, violent or otherwise. We need the cool head of the center. Obama and the Democrats are making huge mistakes, but the conservative movement, now distilled down to its unruly core, is not offering any sane options. This provides the nation an opportunity to start a ground swell of support in the center, rejecting anyone from either fringe.
For example, Governor Rick Perry has been hinting that the answer to conservative frustration with being tossed from power, rejected and marginalized is for his state of Texas to secede from the nation (that’s a really twisted way to show patriotic support for this country, its democratic process and its elected leaders). Â By nearly 3-1 this idea is being rejected, just as the conservative movement is being rejected (75% of Texans oppose this radical idea). The conservatives are all for carving out a little fantasy island from reality, but the voters are not.
When the disaster of the recovery plans regarding unemployment hit over the next few months, there will a desire to find a centrist alternative to the liberals and conservatives. Now is the time to start thinking about what this could mean to getting this nation off the pendulum and on a forward, rational path.
Civil liberties officials at DHS expressed concerns about the wording of the report in question prior to its’ release, but the report was released anyway.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D97JU0881&show_article=1
Those darned drama queens are everywhere.
Well, one thing that we learned from this report, is that the word “terrorist” is reserved for only Americans that might attack other Americans….now that’s a good thing, for our image is really important, to those say in France. When Republicans realize that Obama and his administration is about politics all the time they will stop biting. We, they just have to get past, the Obama makes my blood boil thing…….and it’s not because he’s black.
Yeah BGG, they are everywhere and Obama and the GOP have the poll numbers to prove it.
AJ – the point where I go from being interested in someone’s opinion, or presentation of fact to not interested is when they are dishonest about the material they present.
Your statements about Gov. Perry are dishonest. The evidence is that you don’t quote what he actually says. Instead, you project a position which you oppose onto him.
It simply isn’t honest.
NED
Thank God we can finally move beyond the darkness that was America, brought on by the Bush administration, to the brilliant light of our new America given to us by Mr. Obama.
For example, Governor Rick Perry has been hinting that the answer to conservative frustration with being tossed from power, rejected and marginalized is for his state of Texas to secede from the nation (that’s a really twisted way to show patriotic support for this country, its democratic process and its elected leaders).
Would you please provide a link, I can’t find any evidence that he has hinted that, maybe my search engine is just inadequate. I did hear and see him say he thinks some Texans may be for it but he specifically said he didn’t.
I can’t believe you are quoting Jeanene Garopolo on anything. She is clearly a fruitcake.
Redteam,
I believe I said she was a kook. My point is she can pull this off because the drama queens on DHS gave her credibility.
This site jumped those tracks awhile back.
I’m sure Jeanene Garopolo speaks for a wide group of Dems, maybe even for most of those in the White House. When Obama is not holding a news conference, she can get a word in edgewise perhaps, to fill the empty space if there is any after CNN, MSMBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, are on.
What bugs me is why they keep dragging McVeigh into things. McVeigh was not trained in demolitions and did not use any skills he learned in the military to blow that building up. He learned how to make that bomb after he got out of the military.
He was a nutjob for sure but having served didn’t make him any deadlier than anyone else.
AJ, the problem is that we now know that career personnel in DHS had concerns about this report and that they were overridden. This is not the first time – career officials in the OLC had said the DC statehood bill was unconstitutional, but Attorney General Holder overrode their objects to release a report saying it was.
Just as there was a pattern of Obama supporters trying to brand dissent as not being reasonable, but instead warranting criminal investigations, we now have a pattern of career officials being overridden when their concerns get in the way of the political objectives.
Has there been right-wing violent extremism? Yes. I do not deny that. But sources as varied as Bennie Thompson (a very liberal Democrat) and Ralph Peters have been condemning this report.
From a centrist: “Here, hereâ€.
Owing to some level of prescience, I had moved all my assets [2 houses – a primary residence and a multi-family rental – and all my stocks and mutual funds – including my 401K] into cash by the end of 2006.
In October 2008, I was laid off [after 20 yrs of contiguous bus. operations mgt employment] and decided to get into day trading. So, since then I have spent most of my days reading economic/business news and watching CNBC or Bloomberg [recently, I have started reading political blogs owing to the craziness that is creeping into the mainstream political discourse].
I do not believe in absolutes. Almost everything has a probability of happening [however remote].
That said, after probably thousands of hours of researching the WW economy since last October, I am convinced that these thoughts have the highest probability of being correct:
– Some form of stimulus package was essential owing to the cratering of consumer and business spending; the package that was passed was probably too small and poorly constructed [i.e., requiring future State obligations and including tax cuts should not have been part of the package]. Doing nothing would have probably increased the severity and length of this downturn.
– Failing to bail out AIG would probably have led to a systemic collapse of WW credit markets. In laymen’s terms, within a week or 2 after AIG’s collapse, ATMs probably would not have worked, payroll checks may not have cleared banks and the general results could have been dystopian.
– Another stimulus package is probably going to be needed in the 2nd half of 2009 and Obama may not have the political capital to get it passed.
– The current rally in the stock market is probably going to fall apart when non-financial firms begin to report earnings for Q1 at the end of April. In Nov ’08, I predicted 7500 for the Dow in Feb [it actually went to 6500] and 6500 in May … I hope I was wrong.
– I hold stakes in Citigroup and Bank of America [my current paper losses, as I look at the ticker, are about 6K; my wife has 2 lots of C, one at $5 and the other at $7 so I think she is down 4K]. Those are my bona fides for this opinion: I believe that banks that are insolvent should be nationalized right now; the share holders wiped out and the banks recapitalized at their correct values and sold back to private investors. Doing otherwise is too risky to the future economy. Granted, I did not have this opinion when I was getting in and out of these stocks a couple of times a day through early January [I did not see that particular train wreck coming].
All that said, IMHO, there is probably a 16.67% chance the WW economy will recover nicely from this point fwd. Pick a number and roll a 6 sided die.
Strange what you can find out with a little research:
from the DHS report as quoted in this post:
After Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991, some returning military veterans—including Timothy McVeigh—joined or associated with rightwing extremist groups.
–joined or associated with—
There is zero evidence that Timothy McVeigh joined or associated with any rightwing extremist group.
So I’d say their whole damn premise is wrong. McVeigh was a loner and did the bombing with Nichols, another loner. No ‘groups’ were involved.
I remember during the whole Michigan Militia/Timothy McVeigh days of reading that the stories offered up by the Clinton Administration and news media didn’t ring true. Then I found this:
“Never mind that leaders of two different militia groups in Michigan insisted that the suspects were not members of any militia group, and that indeed, they had been ejected from a meeting because of their extreme and violent talk. The media told us with lots of film clips of Americans training in the woods that the militia movement represents a threat to American society every bit as serious as Middle Eastern terrorists.”
http://www.reason.com/news/show/29723.html
I find it disturbing that the national govt. can’t get the story straight. As Crosspatch observed, TM was a trained gunner not a bomb maker.
“ph2llon 17 Apr 2009 at 2:19 pm”
Funny thing is you might have a group of “militia” numbering some dozen with maybe a handful of recent veterans. The rest are probably things like farmers, plumbers, electricians, mechanics, etc. Nobody points out how dangerous farmers might be.
A point I would like to make is that when the government takes extreme actions in one direction, it tends to validate and energize those with extreme ideas in the other direction. If a government makes extreme right decisions, the extreme left gets active and the opposite is also true.
The more radically this government swings to the left, the more likely it is to encourage the radical right and validate their message. The actions of the government are, in my opinion, precipitating the very things they are warning about.
This is a more valid threat to our domestic security than goose-stepping militias marching up Main Street blowing up government buildings.
For what it’s worth I think Jeanene Garopolo would make the same comments about Conservatives meeting at the Rotary Club as she had about the Tea Parties last Wednesday. It seems to be an uncontrollable impulsive act by some of those on the far left, which seems to include many Democrats including those in leadership positions calling the parties “Neo-Nazis.”
With retoric like this it doesn’t suprise me that many on the right would read into the DHS report as a swipe against them. It is true as CP states that the extremes feed more extremism. What ever happened to Statesmen in Congress?
IMHO, most statesmanship in politics died before 1960.
As I recall: today, one needs to have a couple million to win a seat in congress, tens of millions to win a seat in the senate and a couple of hundred million to win the presidency [a billion in 2012, IMHO].
We do not appear to have states-people anymore … we have people plagued with hyper-narcissism that can, and want, to endure the hot lights of the politics we have today.
IMHO, this is a recipe for eventual, societal, disaster.
I am presently a student in intelligence studies program with concentrations in terrorism, analytical processes, and information operations. I can tell you the process in which the DHS intelligence team used is a nonpartism and timely analysis. Some points I would like to make in the arugments being made here are these:
1. Right Wing Extremist are terrorist. Now, the right wing extremism the DHS is speaking of are those groups such as, the KKK, Skinheads, NeoNazis, etc not the right wing conservative element of the GOP. Perhaps analyst should had been more specific in their terminolgoy; however, the analytical report was not intended on public viewing.
2. For intelligence analyst to summize that there could possibly be a problem with a rise in extremist Vets is not coming from the desire to slander American soldiers. For them to surmize as such, there would be evidence gathered to base that statement on. Analyst do not make up information. They take an accumaltion of evidence some facts, and some circumstantial and go through a process called the ACH process. This process is done on just about every imaginable threat in the world. However, I feel a case could be made towards the rewording or better specifics used in the report.
Lastly, my own husband is active duty military and a vet of the Afghan War. When I heard the news about the statements made by the DHS I was not offended BECAUSE I understood these processes. However, the layman would not and well when it says on those email, official use only, well perhaps one can see why.
The shocking thing about the poll in Texas wasn’t that 75% oppose secession – it was the fact that 25% surveyed were actually in favor!
5 years ago that number would have been close to zero.