Pentagon Attacker
The man who attacked the Pentagon with two 9mm handguns was John Patrick Bedell. Initial reports suggest that he was a very kind and gentle 36 year old man who still lived at home with his parents. A few years ago he was taking a graduate course in electrical engineering, so he may have held a B.S. in electrical engineering.
One of the strangest things about John Patrick Bedell which has been determined early-on is that he was a 911 denier. On the web he referred to the horrible events which brought down the world trade center towers on September 11, 2001 as the “911 demolitions.” This wording implies an involvement by the American authorities, rather than 911 having been solely an attack by foreign Muslim fundamentalists. Conspiracy theories gone wild.
Some people think of the right wing media fanatics like Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and their various wannabe weirdos as simply crude, semi-illiterate, buffoons.
All of these far right wing loonies have one thing in common: They are wildly dishonest. They don't even maintain a pretense of trying to be fair and unbiased. They are openly racially prejudiced. They deny that we landed on the moon or that the holocaust took place. These rabid anti-intellectuals of the right wing claim that the creation stories in the christian bible carry equal scientific validity with the ideas of Charles Darwin. Despite overwhelming consensus among well educated climate scientists worldwide, these neo-fascist climate deniers reject that man has had any impact on the world's climate through his dumping millions of tons of pollutants into the planet's atmosphere.
Until I lived and traveled widely in other countries I thought that Americans were the most well educated and kindest people alive. It took many years to realize that in much of the world the U.S.A. is seen as being a very cruel, brutal, and greedy place. Even among our friends and allies. Watching America's politics evolve since the actor Ronald Rayguns was president, I now see very clearly what these people are talking about.
America has freedom of the press and freedom of speech, but when the lies of the right-wing so badly delude people that they begin flying their Piper Cherokees into IRS offices, and attack the Pentagon with 9mm hand guns, something has to be done. The problem of course is that we still have a large number of elected officials in America who believe that no regulation, no laws, no IRS, and basically no government is the way we need to go. So not taking a stand and regulating this inflammatory hate speech by the right wingers comes easily.
Intentionally spreading inflammatory lies which encourage and motivate violence must not be allowed to continue. The current path eventually leads to a second American civil war.
For a politician to draw a line in the sand takes a certain strength of convictions, integrity, and backbone. After one year in office it has become clear that neither fortitude nor courageousness are words that one would accurately use to describe President Obama or most of America's Democratic politicians. The words wimp, crybaby, and wuss are being used increasingly to describe most of these Democratic elected officials.
Obama's ultra-light version of health care reform has been so watered down and so many of the Republican ideas have been incorporated into it that many progressives are now saying that it would be best to simply toss the Obama plan into the trash can.
A few days ago Michael Moore said, "Here we are guys, we're a year and a half away from the crash. A year and a half since the big crash. Not one single regulation has been put back in place. Not one rule. And for Wall Street, they're back to doing the crazy derivatives. They're back to the credit default swaps. They're back to all the crazy loony bin casino stuff that got us in the mess that we're in. And the Congress has not done one single thing to stop it."
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LINK: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/03/05/pentagon-shooter/
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