maybe this is some sort of andy kaufman-esque attempt by glenn beck to be such an out of control wingnut that even fox news has to fire him?

Funny how during Bush and Cheney's frequent abuses of power and shredding of articles of the Constitution, these self-described "patriots" and "defenders of freedom" were nowhere to be found. Unless it was cheering on their glorious leader and his abuses of power.

Generation_D: Funny how during Bush and Cheney's frequent abuses of power and shredding of articles of the Constitution, these self-described "patriots" and "defenders of freedom" were nowhere to be found. Unless it was cheering on their glorious leader and his abuses of power.

Exactly. And now that there's a evil black democrat in the 'black' house they're arming for war.

Nobody said they were logical.

Hey all you Obama loving commies...

I love how the freedom fighters think they could actually win against the US military. Yeah, that shotgun and 12 shells will really hold off a platoon with AK-47s.

Heh, was there ever a question on this one? Jesus Christ, if a few of those militia wackos ever did form a "bubba" militia to take back their "freedoms", all it'd do is eviscerate the Republican party entirely and lead to a decades-long single party rule of the Democrats. And that may happen anyway, which scares the hell out of me. The Democrats, in my opinion, are currently "better" than the Republicans, but considering how horrible the Republicans are, that ain't sayin' much. But long enough with one-party rule...

We need a good third or forth party, something centrist. If the Libertarians could get their asses in gear; alas, they're just like the Democrats, with a multitude of views, issues, etc, and no cohesive discipline. Cohesive discipline is the only strength the Republicans have going for 'em, in fact so maybe that's not a thing to be admired.

eddyatwork: I love how the freedom fighters think they could actually win against the US military. Yeah, that shotgun and 12 shells will really hold off a platoon with AK-47s.

Didn'tcha see TFA? Apparently, the US Military would arbitrarily decide to throw their chips in with the "Bubba militias".

ragekage: Cohesive discipline is the only strength the Republicans have going for 'em, in fact so maybe that's not a thing to be admired.

Observe everything, admire nothing.

ACTUAL WAR GAME FOR THIS SCENARIO:
Rebels: 25 Chubby white guys in their mid-40s and 50's with a few assault rifles and over the counter ammunition.
State: 5 Apache Gunships with 30mm Vulcan Mini-guns and 5k rounds of HE Ammo, Hellfire Missiles, 2.5 Rockets, FLIR, Night Vision, Computer Assisted Navigation and Targeting.
Game: Armed Insurrection against the lawfully elected government.
Scenario: After a 12 Pack of Busch lite and a long talk on the Free Republic, rebels attack NPR radio station antenna outside Boise Idaho, seize transmitter begin broadcasting call to arms.
Govt Response: 5 Ship strike package, weapons hot on IP.
Outcome: 37 seconds after IP, strike complete, 100% Rebel KIA, no government casualties. Strike Package RTB.
Assessment: You got to be farking kidding me?

Approves.

I can't even imagine the number of bricks that the people on FOX would have shiat if MSNBC had brought on similar clowns to discuss civil revolt in the Bush years. But it's OK if they do it.

ragekage: We need a good third or forth party, something centrist. If the Libertarians could get their asses in gear; alas, they're just like the Democrats, with a multitude of views, issues, etc, and no cohesive discipline. Cohesive discipline is the only strength the Republicans have going for 'em, in fact so maybe that's not a thing to be admired.

You'd have to get rid of Plurality voting. Approval, Condorcet, and Range voting would all work to allow centrist parties.

Here is an interesting set of pictures showing how each voting type performs: Yee voting simulation (new window).

Personally, I'd like a form of Proxy voting, where each legislator has a political power equivalent to the number of first-place votes he or she receives. It's as easy for voters as Plurality, but it would seriously weaken party politics, and if applied to a national legislative body (rather than state-by-state), it would almost completely destroy party politics, since every legislator would have a reason to go after every vote.

But it would take a constitutional amendment (sigh) so it's even less likely than something like Approval voting.

Mmmmm. Fear mongering. It smells like...fear mongering.

i would have legalized weed.

-and i would have formed a world space agency.

but you had to vote "obama".

-for change.

our economy is farked and doomed and we are ratcheting up the gears of civil war?

i am not impressed with our government status quo.

we could do better...if we insisted on it.

weed is americas greatest, untapped resource.

and we are fools if we do not get our shiat together, and use it, in it's many uses.

-the war on drugs is a lie, and a sham.

Mong, mong, mong.

I'm thinking this is the essence of "it's ok when we do it".

Fact is, the country is too goddamn big for "the military" to control it. That being said, what "insurrectionists" have to worry about is THE COPS. The state police, the county sheriffs, even the local city cops. They're used to being in power, they're heavily armed, and thanks to some short-sighted thinking, most of them have military-trained-and-equipped SWAT teams. Sure, the military will secure the big things, the symbols of America and so forth, but the malls and local banks will be guarded by your local cops, who have no interest in letting anarchy reign.

Funny how during the Bush Administration, mainly after 2003, I was starting to see the strong possibility of a civil war against what I saw was an increasingly worrisome trend for this country to become some sort of fascist theocracy.

The prevailing attitude by the administration and it's die hard followers of needing to purge the country of godless atheists and a general intolerance of everyone or anything that was "different" from the lifestyle of your average Bible-thumping Walmart shopper seemed very much a corrosive influence against the very tenets of this nation.

Now that we no longer have a government that espouses divisive slogans such as "with us or against us" or calls dissenters "terrorists sympathizers", I find it quite ironic that we see the MSM bring about fears of civil war.

Well fark you FOX and fark your viewers. Bring on your farking Civil War. Let's divide this country, you can have your 3rd world Jesusland and stay the fark out of my country where technology, progress and diversity in beliefs and opinion will continue.

This is just a revival of the "militias" from the 1990s. Under democratic presidents Real Americans take up arms. Under republican presidents they turn to bootlicking.

JacksBlack: TITOR

That's a fantastic starting point for a Wikitrip.

Now I want to learn APL...

Lionel Mandrake: I can't even imagine the number of bricks that the people on FOX would have shiat if MSNBC had brought on similar clowns to discuss civil revolt in the Bush years. But it's OK if they do it.

Of course. Fox News is the opium of the people. We just love it and want more of it. Just like we loved it and wanted 8 more years of Reagan's policies under McCain...

hah Gleen Greenwald is freaking hilarious:

Bill Clinton's election in 1992 gave rise to the American "militia movement": hordes of overwhelmingly white, middle-aged men from suburban and rural areas who convinced themselves they were defending the American way of life from the "liberals" and "leftists" running the country by dressing up in military costumes on weekends, wobbling around together with guns, and play-acting the role of patriot-warriors. Those theater groups -- the cultural precursor to George Bush's prancing 2003 performance dressed in a fighter pilot outfit on Mission Accomplished Day -- spawned the decade of the so-called "Angry White Male," the movement behind the 1994 takeover of the U.S. Congress by Newt Gingrich and his band of federal-government-cursing, play-acting-tough-guy, pseudo-revolutionaries.

I just pictured GaryPDX and the rest of the right wing loons on fark while reading this.

OH NOES!!!!! FOX NEWS FOX NEWS FOX NEWS!

SeismicJizzer: While I don't completely agree with the Greenwald's assessment, the book "The Unfinished Bombing" chronicles the rise of militias in the US quite nicely in the context of the Oklahoma City bombing. As a public historian, I'd recommend the book to anyone interested in where these backwater groups came from and what their aims are.

fascism

eddyatwork: I love how the freedom fighters think they could actually win against the US military. Yeah, that shotgun and 12 shells will really hold off a platoon with AK-47s.

I hope the US Military is using something other than AK-47s. :D

GIS for War Games:



Also, why can't we just play some chess?

SeismicJizzer: hah Gleen Greenwald is freaking hilarious:

Bill Clinton's election in 1992 gave rise to the American "militia movement": hordes of overwhelmingly white, middle-aged men from suburban and rural areas who convinced themselves they were defending the American way of life from the "liberals" and "leftists" running the country by dressing up in military costumes on weekends, wobbling around together with guns, and play-acting the role of patriot-warriors. Those theater groups -- the cultural precursor to George Bush's prancing 2003 performance dressed in a fighter pilot outfit on Mission Accomplished Day -- spawned the decade of the so-called "Angry White Male," the movement behind the 1994 takeover of the U.S. Congress by Newt Gingrich and his band of federal-government-cursing, play-acting-tough-guy, pseudo-revolutionaries.

I just pictured GaryPDX and the rest of the right wing loons on fark while reading this.

fap, fap, fap

I don't know what everyone is worried about. Fox News doesn't hold the majority of peoples opinions. The last election was proof of that.

Hell, people said there would be "race wars" if Obama was elected. Yeah well they're about 3 months overdue...

Just more fear mongering. Business as usual...

eddyatwork: I love how the freedom fighters think they could actually win against the US military. Yeah, that shotgun and 12 shells will really hold off a platoon with AK-47s.

Pretty sure the US doesn't issue AK-47s to its troops . . .

SeismicJizzer: I just pictured GaryPDX and the rest of the right wing loons on fark while reading this.

For a long time I just thought that mostly they were uninformed. That they got all their news from FOX and Rush Limbaugh and if they were shown the full information that these biased sources leave out that they would at least soften their views.

What I believe to be the truth is they are actually delusional paranoids. Many times they are shown facts but they will keep disagreeing with them no matter how much proof is shown and still cling to talking points that have been debunked multiple times.

Basically they want to live in a world where the "left is out to get them and and destroy America", they enjoy getting angry about it. So no matter what reality is they will make things up to fit into their persecuted mind view.

It's not they are dumb, it's that they are insane.

AR55: Hell, people said there would be "race wars" if Obama was elected. Yeah well they're about 3 months overdue...

I'm pretty sure that was the plan if Obama lost, not if he won...

heinekenftw: Pretty sure the US doesn't issue AK-47s to its troops . . .

They will when Chairman Obama announces that the country will now be called the U.S.S.A.

Beck also said in Bush's final days "a job well done Mr. President". He was referring to George W. Bush's efforts in keeping America safe in the last seven years of his presidency.

From Wikipedia.

Is it too late to buy options on "Red Dawn?"

The funny part is that most of the most fervent future Freedom Fighters are pasty basement dwellers. This non-hard-right-therefore-commie-lib would have no problem picking them off.

Good grief.

The lefties are taking the exact same about-face.

They were just as disgruntled while bush was president,

Just as certain that the world as we knew it was now officially over.

Just as satisfied when the "right" man was elected.

you, who have been flinging poo for the last eight years, brace yourselves to have some poo flung on you.

mmm...begun the partisan civil wars have

burndtdan: maybe this is some sort of andy kaufman-esque attempt by glenn beck to be such an out of control wingnut that even fox news has to fire him?

I'm pretty sure the whole extreme-right wingnut thing is an act. He was on the local talk station in Tampa before going national, and back then, he was much more of a center-right moderate, and not at all a knee-jerk extreme righty. It's like he's a caricature of his former self.

This actually made me sick to my stomach.

Have they been asleep for the past 8 years? Did they just wake up? Why are they saying all of this now? God, the loyal partisanship shines though.

Fox is no longer just useless. It's dangerous.

Bill Clinton's election in 1992 gave rise . . to white, middle-aged men. . . play-acting the role of patriot-warriors.


Uh huh. Play-acting.


The Right will do this kind of thing again. (new window)

eddyatwork: I love how the freedom fighters think they could actually win against the US military. Yeah, that shotgun and 12 shells will really hold off a platoon with AK-47s.

Hey, I managed just fine doing that in Doom and FarCry, so it must be true in the real world, too.

Pro Zack: Good grief.

The lefties are taking the exact same about-face.

They were just as disgruntled while bush was president,

Just as certain that the world as we knew it was now officially over.

Just as satisfied when the "right" man was elected.

you, who have been flinging poo for the last eight years, brace yourselves to have some poo flung on you.

NOt at all true. No policital commentator EVER talked on the air about even the possibility of overthrowing the government by force.

AR55: I don't know what everyone is worried about. Fox News doesn't hold the majority of peoples opinions. The last election was proof of that.

Hell, people said there would be "race wars" if Obama was elected. Yeah well they're about 3 months overdue...

Just more fear mongering. Business as usual...

Gods damned dittoheads, he's only been in office a month! You can't change the country into a Helter Skelter, brother eating brother, anarchist uprising, Muslin theocratic, communist, Nazi appeasing regime unless you give him a chance to do his job. We didn't jump on Bush like this in his first month and look at what a good job he did ruining the country. Give the man a second to get his bearings.

/ducks and runs from all corners

heinekenftw: Pretty sure the US doesn't issue AK-47s to its troops . . .

Funny, I was about to post this too... I think only in the most nightmarish fantasies of the would-be militias they would be facing AK-47's.

Pro Zack: They were just as disgruntled while bush was president,

Just as certain that the world as we knew it was now officially over.

Just as satisfied when the "right" man was elected.

you, who have been flinging poo for the last eight years, brace yourselves to have some p

Hold up: I don't remember anyone predicting armed insurrection and I don't see any lefty now claiming that "we patriots must protect the country!"

Pro Zack:

you, who have been flinging poo for the last eight years, brace yourselves to have some poo flung on you.

And you poo-flingers will have no problem being called out on it.

Right after the unicorns farting rainbows, I should think.

Pro Zack: Good grief.

The lefties are taking the exact same about-face.

They were just as disgruntled while bush was president,

Just as certain that the world as we knew it was now officially over.

Just as satisfied when the "right" man was elected.

you, who have been flinging poo for the last eight years, brace yourselves to have some poo flung on you.

Yes, because the last guy deserved absolutely no criticism at all in his 8 years...