Frank Rich: Guns Of August

[Doctor_J]

The protester was a nut. America has never had a shortage of them. But what’s Tom Coburn’s excuse? Coburn is a Republican senator from Oklahoma, where 168 people were murdered by right-wing psychopaths who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Their leader, Timothy McVeigh, had the Jefferson quote on his T-shirt when he committed this act of mass murder. Yet last Sunday, when asked by David Gregory on “Meet the Press” if he was troubled by current threats of “violence against the government,” Coburn blamed not the nuts but the government.

“Well, I’m troubled any time when we stop having confidence in our government,” the senator said, “but we’ve earned it.”

Coburn is nothing if not consistent. In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, he was part of a House contingent that helped delay and soften an antiterrorism bill. This cohort even tried to strip out a provision blocking domestic fund-raising by foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas. Why? The far right, in league with the National Rifle Association, was angry at the federal government for aggressively policing America’s self-appointed militias. In a 1996 floor speech, Coburn conceded that “terrorism obviously poses a serious threat,” but then went on to explain that the nation had worse threats to worry about: “There is a far greater fear that is present in this country, and that is fear of our own government.” As his remarks on “Meet the Press” last week demonstrated, the subsequent intervention of 9/11 has not changed his worldview.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23rich.html?_...

Will we ever fight back???

[Faygo Kid]

1. Brilliant again. A must-read.

Hard to believe anyone on DU can miss this. Awesome.

[Demeter]

2. The Boomer Life Story

"..the sociologist Daniel Bell put it, “What the right as a whole fears is the erosion of its own social position, the collapse of its power, the increasing incomprehensibility of a world — now overwhelmingly technical and complex — that has changed so drastically within a lifetime.”

He wrote that in 1962, just before JFK was assassinated. And we Boomers have lived under this cloud, and been reviled, just as the Kennedys, the Clintons, and the Obamas are reviled, by these paranoid wannabes with delusions of exceptionalism, who think THEY should make all the rules so the rest of us have to squirm and suffer...

Yes, what a torture it is for these sickos, to live in a democracy!

[Wednesdays]

3. K&R

[bermudat]

4. Right again

[Doctor_J]

5. If we wanted this terrorism to end,

all we would have to do is have 500 or so Dems show up at Coburn's office with a semi-automatic weapon in one hand, and a "health care for all" sign in the other, and we'd find out how much this candy-ass Repuke likes the gun-waving under that circumstance.