Michael Folk is a pilot for United Airways and a Republican member of West Virginia’s House of Delegates. He got upset on Friday night while watching the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, questioning the inspector general of the Intelligence Community, Charles McCullough, about Hillary Clinton’s emails. In fact, Mr. Folk got so upset that he sent out a Tweet that said that Clinton should be hanged on the Mall in Washington, DC.
Pretty quickly, United Airways was confronted with angry petitioners who wanted Folks suspended from flying a commercial aircraft, and they complied. The West Virginia Democratic Party is calling on Folk to resign from the House of Delegates, which so far he has not done.
Obviously, though, Folk has already been stung by the swift reaction and immediate consequences of his intemperance. But, if you look at the comments in the article, you’ll see that Folk has a lot of support for his position. So many people have been marinating their brains in this anti-Hillary craziness, and not just on the right.
She’s become far more of a caricature of a fictional person than the fairly mainstream Democratic candidate for president that she actually is.
The full tweet read: “Hillary Clinton, you should be tried for treason, murder, and crimes against the US Constitution… then hung on the Mall in Washington, DC.”
I don’t know how long you have to soak your brain in right-wing media before it’s marinated enough to believe that Hillary Clinton is guilty of murder and treason, but it’s tad more tinfoil-hatted than thinking that Barack Obama was secretly born in a foreign country.
All I know is that Mr. Folk distinguished himself less by what he said then by being an elected official and someone entrusted to fly jets full of private citizens. What he said appears to be approaching mainstream common wisdom in certain parts of West Virginia and much of the rest of the country.
If it’s true that Roger Ailes is getting sacked at Fox News, maybe we’ll soon be able to do a rough estimate of how much brain damage he caused to our Republic. I’d like to see a final accounting.
Ailes has done a lot of damage, but he’s not to blame for all of this. I’ve seen stuff just as unhinged from some Bernie supporters, including folks who definitely should know better.
I heard someone at my club yesterday, out loud, saying Hillary should be tried for treason and murder. This is eating the reich wing up with an endless rot.
Ailes will be replaced with another asshole who is probably worse (assuming that’s possible).
Easy to find someone worse, but not so easy to find someone as effective.
Lost control of his audience and helplessly officiated at the transfer of Republican power to the usurper; original sin from king-maker Murdoch’s perspective.
If it’s true that Roger Ailes is getting sacked at Fox News, maybe we’ll soon be able to do a rough estimate of how much brain damage he caused to our Republic.
And who unleashed him upon the American public? Rupert Murdoch!! How much damage has the NY Times and the Bezos Post, through out their history, done? Both have done a lot of damage. Judy Miller, Fred Hiatt and the NY Times pulling that spying story right before the 2004 election. That’s just for starters.
you’re the worst blame shifter I’ve ever seen.
and the irony is that you complain more than anyone about Both-Siders.
Maybe I’m just pointing out the root of the problem. The MSM sucks. Why was Rush Limbaugh propped up all this time? Thankfully, he seems to have been reduced to Glenn Beck-esque advertisers now.
Rush made people money.
It’s been pointed out elsewhere–sorry, cannot retrieve a citation right off the bat–that the existence of such over-the-top deranged comments has made legitimate criticism of Hillary Clinton damn near impossible.
The entire Democratic Senatorial contingent are the moral equivalent of HRC. You can quibble on some of them, but ALL of them share 95% of the positions and DNA of Hillary. And I do include the independents in that statement.
If you really wish to criticize HRC, merely replace Hillary with <any sitting democrat from the Senate>. You can then have a substantive (at least part of the time) discussion about the relative merits or demerits of the actual effects of those policys and beliefs.
Good Luck.
Your comments are more boring than Davis’. At least his snark differs from post to post and is witty at times. Have you even made any substantive comments in the past two weeks?
Although for once it can actually be considered on topic, as the post is directed to it.
Great substantive comment, champ!
It’s an endless attack on the left by attempted to bait and troll commenters into talking about Clinton is the devil — even when no one was talking about it! That’s exactly what it means to “troll”, and this commenter has been doing it nonstop, and then goes on to talk about how it’s the LEFT’s fault we can’t discuss Clinton’s poison rationally?
I guess you haven’t been reading the comments here very often if you think the only “attacks” are on people who criticize HRC. Go visit recent posts and the archives to see what is said in threads that aren’t remotely about Clinton.
Unless those don’t matter one bit, because, NeoliberalTM.
Dude, this specific commenter for the past few weeks has in almost any thread he has commented on, in an attempt to bait people here who do not like Clinton, into turning threads about her…even when there was no mention of her whatsoever. I’m not the only one who recognizes it, and so I said something.
Go look in that archive. There’s even a comment from Booman himself saying something on the order of “stop poking a beehive if you don’t want to be stung” in reply to this person.
JoelDanWalls, You are perfectly free to criticise HRC legitimately right here on the blog where you have posted. I would be pleasantly surprised to hear your legitimately critical points.
I have made that very point here several times.
For example, when you try to research historical connections between the Clintons and the Rockefeller interests, you will be deluged by stories on how Bill Clinton is supposedly the illegitimate great-grandson, grandson, or son, of one or another Rockefeller. Sometimes it is Hillary that is a secret offspring of some Rockefeller or other. Some of these accounts are liberally mixed with truths about the Rockefellers and the Clintons. The result is to discredit it all. Works every time.
Most of the Republican stuff is of this nature. Hillary is not responsible for Benghazi, which has been investigated ad infinitum. But she may bear some responsibility, as SoS, for getting us involved in Libya. Yet somehow Republicans never broach that question.
I dont see how its more unhinged than birtherism. Seems about the same to me.
I agree. Birtherism is WAY more tinfoil hat.
Wait a minute. You agree? But he said they are about the same. You said one is way more tinfoil than the other. So you don’t agree.
Heh. You are correct! I was moving too fast. I agree with the first half of his post. I think building a Birther case against the President takes much much more craziness than building a case against HRC (which still requires much tinfoil).
But I’ve been assured that negatives don’t really matter in presidential elections.
Sounds like you’re inferring that we should accommodate this type of unhinged right-wing lunacy. I know — or at least I think I know — that’s not what you’re trying to say, but you’re implying it all the same.
that would be you doing any “inferring”. The inference is the act/process of you perceiving what you perceive him to have “implied”.
The source of a notion (not clearly, specifically stated) “implies” it. The perceiver of the notion “infers” it.
Oddly, you corrected this in your final clause, while leaving it backwards in your opening one.
I have a friend on FB who likes to use it like a blog. He is very conservative and he can’t find anything redeeming about HRC. He is not a bad fellow outside of the political ring. Anyway he attracts a bird of a feather and while no one got so far out as this Folk fella but pretty close. You can point out all the fallacies of what they say about the e mails but it means nothing, nothing at all. She is guilty. Period.
Guilty of what? Treason? Violating the espionage act? Overdue library books?
First and foremost, guilty of being Hillary Clinton.
Overdue library books? Hadn’t heard that one. Tell me more.
While the First Lady of Arkansas she checked out some books from their state assembly library, mainly on the use of poisons, and how those poisons were used in several criminal cases, some of those cases murders that were mis-investigated as suicides. After the death of Vince Foster, those books were found by the Secret Service in her White House dressing room, under the accounting ledgers for the Whitewater development. The Secret Service supposedly turned those books over to Karl Rove, who then used them to blackmail her into voting for the Iraq war while she was in the senate. Apparently some of the emails she deleted from the server the Russians set up for her in her basement discussed those books, and how Ambassador Stevens took evidence of them to Libya, and thus had to be eliminated.
.
They’re just regurgitating all the 90’s-era Vince Foster/Mena Airport crap they’ve been peddling for 30 years; If Hillary had won in ’08 we’d have had eight years of this instead of ‘evil kenyan usurper’ bullshit.
They’ve waited a long time to get their “Hitlery Hate” on…
entire time.
find random comments on the internet that are offensive
Write about them, suggesting that some meaning can be derived from random comments on the internet
Ignore random comments on the internet that are equally vile but that support your general point of view.
both sides do it, amirite?
At least he’s willing to give Hillary a trial. Would that our guests in Guantanamo were extended the same courtesy.
(i.e., hung on the Mall) is not a trial, it’s what’s historically known as a “show trial”.
OMG!
there’re consequences for being a big mouthed, repugnant ratpublican asshole……who’d a thunk.
obvously, not Herr Folk.
wonder what the over-under is on his ever flying for UAL again.
Just a moment ago, I spoke out loud a similar sentiment (although not about Clinton). Since no one was in earshot, there is no one to complain about me. If pre-internet, I said those same things around family, they might have looked at me funny and either agreed, ignored me, or told me to shut up. If I say these things around friends or at work I might lose some friends (or gain some more!)
These things go on every day and no one ever pays a price one way or the other.
Write it in a tweet and there is hell to pay. Why is that? Why is that forum suddenly a place where people use inflammatory language and are punished for it?
Shout “fire” in your own house to scare the shit out of your family, and you’re an asshole.
Do it in a theatre, and you’re a criminal.
Everyone has a right to freedom of speech. That freedom doesn’t also mean freedom from consequences of saying absolutely vile shit out loud and in front of people.
I suppose I consider trying to get someone fired is just as vile, but that’s me. In any event, your analogy with the crowded theater is not persuasive. There is a reason we want to discourage that sort of thing. Saying some politician is guilty of a crime on twitter doesn’t even seem close.
When someone says, out loud, for the entire world to see, that they think Hillary Clinton should be murdered in the streets, do you think they would stop there if their suggestion was listened to?
Now, the guy who said it isn’t just an air conditioner installer. He is a pilot, meaning, he’s in charge of hundreds of people’s lives.
Being willing and able to tell the entire world that you want someone you disagree with on politics murdered implies that something may just be wrong with your psychological state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
The number of people who wish that criminals are punished for their crimes is pretty long. I imagine we can find some posts by our host doing much the same thing.
There is a story about Twitter harassment in the news today. Apparently some actress in the ghostbusters movie has gotten some nasty tweets and quit. Another right winger has been banned due to his harassment.
It ought to be clear by now that Twitter is a sewer. I think decent people ought to leave the service. That would do more to deprive these nasty people of their power than the constant feuding.
Yes, and people should stop drinking alcohol as it is a shit-tier drug for pretty much any situation.
Write it in a tweet and thousands upon thousands of people can see it; thousands of people who could/would have been customers for your employer but who may/will now find another provider of goods/services and will let said employer know, with angry passion.
Sure, you have the right to speak your mind in that sort of public forum. But anyone who encounters it there has an equal right to express their disapproval just as vociferously. And while the First Amendment protects you from the government punishing you for it, you have no such protection from whatever consequences your employer sees fit to impose; nor does your right to be an asshole in public come with any right to insulation from being excoriated for it by any and every witness to said assholery.
tl;dr: Don’t be an ass on social media if you don’t want social media blowback.
Is the blowback just as much asinine behavior as the original? In this case, I think so. I don’t use twitter so there is no risk of any blowback for me. I am content to see that forum collapse in a vile heap of hatred so I suppose I shouldn’t be too critical of this. Still, as this sort of thing continues to happen, I lose interest in politics. At some point, keeping my opinions to myself also means leaving the rest of you to swing in the wind if push comes to shove. Good luck.
I was always taught that it is “hanged” and not “hung”.
Ayup, but it’s a losing battle.
Yes, “hanged” is the preterite and past passive participle of “hang” as a method of execution. For all other meanings, like hanging a picture, use “hung”.
Lurita Alexis Doan — nominated to head the United States General Services Administration on April 6, 2006 and sworn into office on May 31, 2006.
Julian Castro:
Getting Doan on a Hatch Act violation was like getting Al Capone for income tax evasion. However, for neither was lack of intent relevant.
Bush II killed the Hatch Act deader than the dodo. It became a feature of his civil servant appointees.
If that were true, Doan would have remained in office. The spirit of the Hatch Act took major hits by the Bush Admin, but Doan may have been the only one that actually violated it.
Prosecutorial discretion. The Achilles heel of effective regulation. You don’t expect to see Castro charged, do you?
http://themoderatevoice.com/widspread-hatch-act-violation-by-bush-aides/
LOL Wonder if it’s gotten any better?
Obama administration slow to adapt Hatch Act standards on electioneering laws, report says.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/25/AR2011012505872.html
No. It’s the slippery slope of an imperial presidency. Each one accepts the additional perqs that his predecessor obtained, either overtly or covertly, and adds some additional ones of his/her own. Republicans and Democratic voters only seem to be conscious of what the other guy does (and often screaming about it), but fail to recognize what their own guy does. It’s part of why IMHO history won’t be half as kind to Obama as all his devoted fans who can’t even imagine better than Obama.
In Castro’s case, if he resigned they could skip any criminal action. For ordinary folks, losing one’s job for a violation, as long as it’s not too egregious, is viewed as adequate punishment. Clinton’s email stunt would have played out very differently had it been discovered by an authority during her tenure. Might have led to securing her server before the stuff she intended to hide was deleted.
Well, he won’t be resigning either. lol