Oh God.. Tea Partier handiwork?

Utterly bizarre. I know that Bachmann will be backtracking like her ass was on fire trying to shake off her previous comments.

That is so incredibly sad. I hope whoever did it gets arrested an put on a very public trial. I think this country needs to hear those words that the infotainment channels love to broadcast coming out of the mouth of a cold blooded killer.

It didn't work when that dim asshole killed two cops because Beck said Obama was coming to take his guns, did it?

One can hope, if this is as it appears to be, that it gets a lot more attention since it's so obviously a product of right wing fearmongering. It's going to take a monumental, horrible event for these fuckers to be marginalized by the MSM. Is this it? Or are we gonna have to wait for a building to explode?

Fuck everyone who has cultivated this climate for their own political ambition. This guy's blood is likely on their hands.

Guys, this isn't going to change shit and no right-wing mouthpiece is going to be held accountable for this. If it happens, I'll buy you a drink. As usual, they're going to run flat the fuck away from this incident and claim "No, we're entertainers, we don't preach this sort of thing, blahblahblah" and people will just pat them on the head and continue to think of them as the innocuous wacky old man up the street who owns a lot of guns, shits in grocery sacks, and stores them in his closet.

This might not, but like I said, something will, even if it takes another Timothy McVeigh. Which is where we're heading if this BS continues to escalate.

If there's another McVeigh-style bombing the Teabaggers will simply refuse to believe anyone other than a Muslim did it and simply start spreading conspiracy theories that it's a coverup. "OMG it's like the Reichstag Fire, and we're the Jews!"

Close... they'll spread conspiracy theories that Obama did it to make them look bad. "The FBI planted that WorldNet Daily link in the terrorist's Favorites folder!"

You mean like the "truthers"? with regard to 9/11?

I'm beginning to get the feeling you guys are due for another civil war to sort this shit out. At the very least it's kinda horrifyingly fascinating watching an entire hyperpower suffer the national equivilant of a nervous breakdown on this level.

Wait. People are having problems with a census? What could possibly be a problem about it? In fact aren't civilized countries supposed to have them regularly?

To nip this Truthers/Teabaggers stuff in the bud, I'm gonna throw it to national treasure (and moderate conservative) Andrew Sullivan:

More Republicans believe [ http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2...am.php?ref=fpa ] that the president is illegitimate and born in Kenya than those who acknowledge reality. A quarter of Dems believe Bush allowed 9/11 to happen. But at least a big majority - 63 percent - are not insane. [ http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.co...her-party.html ]

The Truthers might be just as crazy as the Teabaggers, but these things are on two different levels. The Truthers are a minority of the Democratic Party and were always treated like cooks. The Teabaggers are a majority of the Republican Party and are considered a legitimate mainstream movement.

Out of curiosity, I went over to the Drudge report to look at their comments, and... HOLY FUCK THESE PEOPLE ARE INSANE:

"Probably some democrat trying to frame the tea baggers.

#3 | POSTED BY LIVE_OR_DIE AT 2009-09-23 07:36 PM | REPLY"

"Just for your Wurster:
Was it an Oak tree? Acorns around?


#5 | POSTED BY DAPROF AT 2009-09-23 09:05 PM | REPLY"

"Maybe the so-called census worker was just one of those stupid ACORN people who accidently hanged himself.

#13 | POSTED BY FWTHOM AT 2009-09-23 10:15 PM | REPLY"

"Dont worry, he will be voting for Obama in the next election

#15 | POSTED BY BPH320 AT 2009-09-23 10:51 PM | REPLY"

"The "FED" on his chest is too obvious. It's clear that it is a typical run of the mill democrat trying to frame the tea bagging patriots.

#21 | POSTED BY LIVE_OR_DIE AT 2009-09-23 11:56 PM | REPLY"

"I never heard of anyone writing "FED" on their chest just before they committed suicide . . .
anybody want to take bets??
#2 | Posted by danni

bets? . . OK
a) where was Ben Bernanke?
b) where was Barney Frank?
#9 | POSTED BY MARKH AT 2009-09-23 09:40 PM | REPLY"

This is seriously disgusting... fuck these right wing whack jobs. I've been saying for a while now that it's time we take the fight to them, but apparently I need to rethink that idea; especially since some of them are okay with indiscriminate murder now.

Yes, it's a "typical run of the mill Democrat" who will commit suicide to make the opposing party look bad.

Remember, this is the majority of the Republican Party now.

As far as I can tell, Truthers, no matter how out there and batshit they may be, haven't murdered anybody.

This is fucking atrocious. Just an utterly sickening display, and trying to suggest that 'Loose Change' or whatever the fuck is on an equal level to the rhetoric that has at it's inescapable end-point the murder of an innocent man is pitiful, cowardly horseshit. Van Jones was forced to resign because he signed a truther document. Fine. He acted in poor taste and poorer thought. Bachmann has come out spouting incendiary hate-phlegm about census workers coming to 'round you up the FEMA camps.' And now a census worker is dead.

Goddamn fuckstick, these Republicans are cocksuckers on an epic scale. Piece of shit cuntslops. Fuck fuck fuck. Cowards and traitors.

"You don't go poking around the hollers this time of year" is a saying that's been around that country for awhile. Goes back to the moonshine days even. Only now moonshine has been replaced with marijuana and meth. Punji stakes, bear traps, IED's, etc are common up that way.

That poor bastard probably stumbled upon somebody's operation and got himself perished. If they ever find who did it I'll be shocked. I wouldn't automatically jump to the conclusion that it's based on any of this Beck/Bachman nonsense. Some of those mountain people have nothing and the drug trade is how they survive. Parts of that area are like living in the third world. I'm not at all condoning what happened and the people deserve to be punished but like my Great-Grandaddy would say "it's in a bad way up there".

I'll be the first to admit that I was cherry picking when it came to those comments, but out of twenty comments, I can find five that make the stomach turn?

To be fair, there were people there calling these dumbasses out, but they were definitely in the minority.

It makes me sick that things have come to this, and it makes me even more sick that Beck and his hatemongering kind are going to escape unharmed from the bile that they've spread.

In a semi-related note, I am planning on going to New York with my girlfriend over winter break, and doing all kinds of tourist stuff, which will probably include Rockefeller Center. But if I see Beck, that motherfucker is getting punched in the face, no questions asked.

This is national though, and the FBI is helping. They have to find them.

I'm not saying they won't but people around those parts have a way of shutting down and protecting their own. That's not to even mention the backwoods types. Plus, Clay County itself is crooked as shit.

Didn't Fire Down Below teach any of you anything!

I understand the idea that people protect their own, and I am sure whoever did this is known to the community at large and possibly heralded for it (since you know a lot about the area, is it as extremely right wing as I am assuming it is?), but surely sooner or later someone will slip up. I imagine the place is going to be swarming with Feds in the next couple of weeks, as this story is going to only get bigger.

Of course, the right will claim that this is just more proof of a leftist media, but fuck them.

Also, why do you think that there is a possibility a drug dealer did this? It seems to me that any drug dealer worth a shit would know that scrawling "Fed" on a lynched federal employee is only going to bring a shit ton of attention down on their heads, which would be the exact opposite of what they want.

When someone is hung with a word sprawled across his chest, it's usually to send a message.

The modern secessionists are the kids and grandkids of the Kennedy-era John Birch Society. In their model of the world, the civilized western world is the Enemy. The social progress that marked the 20th century is as much a threat as the imaginary schoolteacher agenda to make your children homosexual and the nonexistent black helicopters the UN's going to send any minute now to take your guns away.

The rejection of modernity is a common thread in Fundamentalism from any corner of the world. For reference, check out out Karen Armstrong's The Battle For God for an outsider's clinical study of the history of Fundamentalism, or any right-wing fringe literature from the Clinton presidency, including back issues of Guns & Ammo Magazine, for the view from inside the crazy rabbit hole.

I'm from the western end of the state but my mother's "people" (that's how we roll in Kentucky...we're "people") i.e. her Grandparents were from Leslie Co which is right next to Clay.

It's hard to classify these people as "right wing" in the context that most associate the term with. Those people up in the Mountains have been voting Republican since the Civil War in a state long dominated by the Democratic Party. A lot of them just want to be left alone at this point and get by. Government has failed them for so long (both at the state and the Federal level) that they're automatically inclined to be distrustful of people with badges and appointments asking questions.

I don't think many people realize how bad it is up there. These aren't bad people. These are people who have been abused and mistreated for generations while their land has been ripped apart to build a society, that in many regards, didn't reach them or simply passed them by. And when they didn't have anything left to give? They were left with pollution, a wrecked economy and immense hardship.





Like I said..these people are poor. Drugs are a common source of income. These aren't people doing this for wealth but to put food on their tables so their kids don't starve. The per capita income in Clay County is under 10,000 dollars and over 30% of the people live below the poverty line. A lot of this stuff also dates back to the days of the "Revenue Man" coming up into the mountains, busting up stills and shooting bootleggers without hesitation.

It really is complicated.

Yep and it wouldn't be the first time it happened in Kentucky either.

That's an excellent point. We view the anger as a partisan phenomenon because semantics wizards frame in it terms of political parties. A large part of what seems to be going on with the Republican Party is a cynical exploitation and misdirection of (appropriate as well as inappropriate) anger and distrust at a system that chews people up and shits them out regardless of which party is best positioned to receive the lobby money. We've seen Republican politicians get booed off the stage at some of the midsummer rallies.

The reelection of George Bush dulls my sense of sympathy, though. I've really wrestled with the question of how to forgive my fellow countrymen who watched him open gulags, torture prisoners, and hold men - including at least one American citizen - outside the Constitutional judicial system, and reward him with four more years.

Princess Kate, I am saying this in the nicest, most polite and gentle way possible: please don't try and make this about the South again. Just don't. Been there, done that. (Besides, Kentucky is really a border state.) There, now this is me backing away and I'm not going to comment on this matter again.


This is an unthinkable tragedy, and I'd like to see Beck strapped to the outside of a shuttle and launched into deep space. Or dropped into the middle of the Pacific. Either works for me.

"Hmmm... if you take a C from Communism, E from Elitism, N from Nazism, S from Socialism, U from Underground (Weather Underground! Get it?! Get it!?), and throw in another S for Socialism one more time for good measure you get HO MY GOD WE GOTTA KILL THE WHOLE CENSUS BUREAU!"

According to the TIME article, that fucker is loaded now - apparently spreading hate, fear, bile, and stupidity is very lucrative. How 'bout we make him pay for his own rocket.

Still though, it lacks something. I'd like for his demise to be served with a heaping side of irony. Like his insurance company finds that being a shithead is not only terminal, but also a pre-existing condition and therefore not covered.

Limbaugh got caught trying carry enough Prozac to kill a whale on a flight to the child prostitution capital of the solar system without it putting a dent in his career. If facts mattered, we wouldn't know the names of these guys. They could find Beck and his gay lover dead in an autoerotic asphyxiation suicide pact and some other bottom feeder would just pick up where he left off.

Sad but true.

And I fail at meaningful responses tonight. Eh.

I fail at recreational pharmaceuticals. It wasn't Prozac, it was Viagra.

Okay, now I can go to sleep.

It's not like there are no hate crimes on the other side of the pond, let's not get carried away. You know, like angry mobs chasing around and beating up random Indians, no?

There's also the possibility that this is another type of crime and the "Fed" thing is misdirection. At least from that article, it seems like the investigation is in its very early stages at this point.

I was actually thinking the same thing. Last night I was remembering when the census worker came to my house in 2000 and all the intrusive questions he was asking... maybe whomever he was visiting said something incriminating? or the guy saw something he shouldn't have (It is Kentucky .. we're in a recession .. meth? moonshine? 14 underage Honduran girls?.

Christ, the excuses some people will fucking make.

Who's excusing what?

"Now hold on you guys, maybe the people that hanged and scrawled FED on the chest of a government worker weren't politically motivated after all! It COULD just be a wacky conspiracy!"

Give me a fucking break.

He was standing on a block of ice.

I did not read that in the AP story... if that's the case, oh yea... total hate crime and fucked.

While I was looking around at other sites about this story, it said that the body was found on 9/12, which means that the murder was committed the week before the fucking hate rally in DC. I truly hope that this is what breaks the back of the crazies; one death is obviously too many, but hopefully this shocks some people back into reality.

Jake, where did you read about the block of ice? I haven't seen that reported anywhere.

So it is completely unreasonable to say we need more information before declaring we're on the brink of racial civil war (like the poster I was replying to)? I also assume right off the bat you backed up the story of that girl that scrawled an "O" last year to smear Obama supporters?

I'm not making any conspiracy theories here, just saying that it doesn't seem like there's a lot of info and it is not inconceivable that the "Fed" thing could be misdirection by the attacker.

What the fuck does race have to do with it? The census guy was white. Please tell me what I'm missing here. And what point are you trying to make about the "O" girl? Don't forget, she was a right wing nut job too. And please tell me your sig is supposed to be ironic, because it stinks of disingenuousness.

Did you bother to read the post I was replying to? The racial part I added was because the Tea Party nonsense has a racial undertone to it?

Geez man, get a grip!