Bobby Kennedy lays down the truth in his April 1968 speech on "the mindless menace of violence"

Like many of Senator Kennedy's speeches those last months, this is just beautiful and heartfelt, I wish they had not used music or some of the partisan images, but this is well worth listening to, as almost all his speeches from that spring are. . . [posted by Jack]

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Similarities between the Austin plane bomber and the Tea Party Movement

 

By Pablo Fanque

All This Is That National Affairs Editor

It's hard to swallow the hand-wringing over Andrew Joseph Stack (another triple-name psycho) and whatever mental illness led him to fly his Piper Cub into a building and murder at least one (and possibly more) people. It's heartbreaking when anyone commits suicide, but Stack's disjointed, rambling diatribe (you can't really call it a manifesto) would have never made these pages on The Smoking Gun, or the headlines of most 'papers, if he had merely committed suicide. "I have had all I can stand," he wrote. He then decided to make a splash by killing some innocent people, although no one in that building probably had anything to do with his woes.

He wrote and posted a deranged and muddy screed, lit his house on fire, and flew his plane into an Austin building that housed the IRS, who went after Stack for not filing tax returns or paying taxes he owed. He owned a house, he owned an airplane, he played bass in a rock band. He doesn't exactly sound like he had been ground down into poverty.

He, earlier, ran two of his businesses into the ground. In 1985, he incorporated Prowess Engineering Inc. in Corona CA. Its business license was suspended by California two years later. He started Software Systems Service Corp. in Lincoln, CA in 1995 and that entity was suspended in 2001. Stack listed himself as chief executive officer of both companies. He then moved to Austin to save them from themselves (according to his screed) with his development/programming prowess.

His web site was removed by its host this afternoon and in its place his ISP posted the following:

"This web site has been taken offline due to the sensitive nature of the events that transpired in Texas this morning and in compliance with a request from the FBI."

His rant, at various points, attacks the rich, the Catholic Church, Austin--one of the great hotbeds of art, food, music, technology, and film in the world), and the American People, or as he pegged us, "zombies." It is full of half-baked conspiracies against him, and builds up to him finally striking a blow against tyranny.




What strikes me most about his rants are the themes and keynotes--very similar to those of the Tea Party people--similar muddy logic, paranoia, disenfranchisement, pent-up rage, and a nearly identical sense of victimization. No doubt some of the Tea Bagger's twisted rhetoric resonated with Andrew Joseph Stack.

Had Stack been a Moslem/Muslim that flew into the building, we would now witness a national debate on The President's policies and about our "war on terror." That was not the case, and we now face up to the grim fact that, as Pogo once said, "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us."
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The last playground ditty: "On top of spaghetti"

Interestingly, the last playground rhyme I can remember is probably the most violent one. And it's always the teachers and principals who get the harshest treatment. I can't say I'm proud we sang these songs, but that's life; we did. And of all the people I went to school with, I don't recall any of them committing an act of violence (except the occasional knuckle-head fight in a bar or in the alley). Like I said earlier, I think these songs now would be cause for suspension or even expulsion. Back then, the songs were sick fantasies. Today, they could well be scripts or dress-rehearsals. . .

[to the tune of "On Top Of Old Smokey"]

On top of spaghetti, all covered in blood,
I shot my poor teacher with a 40 foot stud.

I shot her with glory, i shot her with pride,
I couldn't have missed her she was 40 feet wide.

I went to her funeral, I went to her grave,
Some people threw flowers, I threw a grenade.

I opened her coffin--she wasn't quite dead,
So I took a bazooka and blew off her head!
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Woman blows away panhandler who asked her for a quarter - more ammo for repealing the 2nd amendment

Geraldine Beasley has been charged with murder after blowing away a homeless man who asked her for a quarter. Donald Francis, who police think was homeless, stood outside the Marathon station at Eighth and Linn streets in Cincinnati Monday night, panhandling.

Chief Tom Streicher said "he asked her for a quarter," and that annoyed Geraldine Beasley so much, she shot and killed Francis.

Beasley, 62, of Walnut Hills, complained to someone else at the scene about the panhandling, Streicher said. Then, according to Chief Streicher, when Francis asked Beasley for money, she pulled out a gun and fired. "That's apparently all there was to it," the chief said.

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32 killed by shooter on Virginia Tech campus (+ editorial comment)

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