Middle-Aged White Terrorist In Austin

Betcha’ missed that headline, didn’t you?  Why is it we have such a hard time in this country pointing out that terrorists are just that – terrorists?  The problem is, the corporate media has solidified in our minds that terrorists can only be brown-skinned and non-Christian.  A middle-aged white guy from Austin?  There’s no way he could be a terrorist, is there?  Yes, yes there is.

Joseph Stack can be identified as a typical anti-tax extremist who committed an act of terrorism against the U.S.

You know what else you’re not hearing?  The right-wing screaming that his friends and family should be tortured for whatever information they have so that we can make sure none of them are planning similar terrorist acts against our country.  What about all the other anti-tax extremists?  According to the so-called terrorist-haters’ ridiculous sense of logic, they should all be tortured too, shouldn’t they?

The right-wing has committed crimes against this country.  The fact that they’re not being called out for it every day is an indication of how far to the right this country has been pushed.

T-shirts vs. Guns

Back when Bush was busy running the country into the ground, he had events around the country, kind of like what President Obama is doing today.  There are some important differences, not that the corporate media is going to get into them.  Among them:

Democrats couldn’t attend Bush events if they wore the “wrong” t-shirt.  On more than one occasion, they were removed from the area.  Sometimes, they were removed by people who didn’t have the legal authority to remove them.  More than one spent time in jail.  That’s what “free speech” amounted to in the Bush years: agree with Bush or go to jail.

Right-wing cranks are protesting near Obama events with guns on their hips.  Yes, you read the right: a civilian (not a law enforcement person), with a gun on the hip in a holster.  Are you freaking kidding me?!  Right-wing shock jocks will insist that this person had the undeniable right to exercise his 2nd amendment rights – possibly his 1st amendment rights if they strain really hard.  Um, that’s great.  What about those Democrats who didn’t show up to Bush’s events with anything but a t-shirt?  The Cons didn’t stand up for their rights, did they?  I know what would have happened if a Democratic civilian had showed up to a Bush event with a gun in a holster on their hip, and you should too: they’d have been carted off to Gitmo and withheld indefinitely.  Such is the hypocrisy of the Cons.

[Update]: Cenk Uygur sums it up quicker than I did.  Think a Muslim-American could have been anywhere near a Bush rally with a gun on his hip and a weapons permit?

Bush events were carefully screened so that the Cowardly Boy King didn’t have to face opposition to his bat-shit insane policies.  Every single event for years was screened very carefully.

Dr. George Tiller & Right-Wing Terrorism

I’m going to try to make this as short as possible.  I have a lot to write on the subject, but at some point ranting for the sake of ranting takes away from some critical points.  First – the actual news report: a Kansas doctor, Dr. George Tiller, was assassinated while performing usher duties at his church Sunday.  The assassin was later identified as 51 year-old terrorist Scott Roeder, who was apprehended by Kansas City area law enforcement later in the day Sunday.

I don’t normally do this, but I’m going to very deliberately point out the language I’m using: assassin and terrorist.  Roeder has a history and a record of being a bomb-maker, a tax protester, a member of a “sovereignity” movement (anti-government), and anti-abortion extremist.  By killing a doctor in his church, Roeder is desperately trying to terrorize liberals and pro-rights supporters across the country with a simpleton’s message: if you don’t agree with my extremist views, I’ll kill you. This viewpoint and this heinous act will not sway me on this issue. I hope it doesn’t sway anybody else who supports a woman’s right to make decisions about herself and her body.

Roeder is an assassin: he pre-meditatively murdered a politically prominent person for fanatical purposes.  Dr. George Tiller was one of three doctors nationwide that perform late-term abortions.  Despite the hate-speech of extremists like Bill O’Reilly, there is no way Dr. Tiller or the other two doctors have performed thousands of late-term abortions.  A bare handful occur in any given year.  It would take hundreds of years to accumulate the numbers O’Reilly has claimed.

In 1996, Roeder made an obvious and direct threat to another doctor. According to one of his fellow terrorists:

“I know that he believed in justifiable homicide,” said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist.  [...] Dinwiddie said she met Roeder while picketing outside the Kansas City Planned Parenthood clinic in 1996.

Justifiable homicide?!  These people are textbook definitions of extremists.  Planned Parenthood does more to prevent unwanted pregnancies than they do to terminate them, a fact never cited by anti-abortion terrorists.  That means Dr. Tiller and others pro-actively work to encourage the health and lives of all their patients.  There is no justification for the assassination of these doctors.

These people are operating as terror-cells inside the United States.  They are trying to establish their own government on U.S. land outside of the current system that is in place.  They are targeting and assassinating law-abiding U.S. citizens – Americans.  Yet the hard-on-terror blowhards on corporate-owned media, especially the right-wing outlets, are supporting these terrorists; they’re providing cover for them, trying to rationalize and justify their existence.  As a result, Americans are dying on our own soil.

That’s correct: Bill O’Reilly and dozens of cowards just like him are inciting anti-U.S. terrorists to assassinate Americans.  They’ll rail against anyone who doesn’t match their fringe concept of what an American should look like.  If Roeder wasn’t white and he had assassinated someone who was anti-choice, the right-wing media would be screaming 24 hours a day about it.  But they’re not calling Roeder and his fellow terrorists out.  What will it take to stop these terrorists?  What will it take to stop their sympathizers?  How many Americans have to die before these terrorists are identified as what they are by the corporate media and the appropriate amount of attention by law enforcement at all levels is levied?  Lastly, will Scott Roeder be charged as a terrorist or will he be charged as just another murderer?

Cross-posted at SquareState.