You know the drill. Republicans hate taxes with a Capital H. They won’t raise taxes to develop and/or upgrade critical infrastructure. They won’t raise taxes to fund two costly foreign wars. So under what circumstances would a Republican ever call for raising taxes (other than taxes on poor people, that is)?
It’s simple: Rebellion! Specifically to fund a civil war if President Obama is re-elected:
Lubbock County Judge Tom Head and Commissioner Mark Heinrich went into great detail Monday night on FOX 34 News @ Nine about why it is necessary to raise the tax rate by 1.7 cents the next fiscal year. […]
Judge Head said he and the county must be prepared for many contingencies, one that he particularly fears, is if President Obama is reelected.
“He’s going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the UN, and what is going to happen when that happens?,” Head asked.
“I’m thinking the worst. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. And we’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations, we’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy.[“]
Yeah. You read that right. The threat of a second term for Obama is the only reason raising taxes is justified, because, you know, Obama plans to hand the country over to the UN. I can’t wait for him to claim he was just making a really funny joke us poor stupid liberals don’t have the intelligence to understand. Then again, he sounds awfully serious to me.
Do you ever get the feeling that there is a not insignificant number of people out there that are itching to declare open season on Democrats, liberals, and any non-white, non-conservative Christians they can put between the cross hairs of their hunting rifles? I think Judge Head qualifies as one of the people who’d love to see a group of his fellow nutcases do just that. Certainly, as an elected Republican official, he has no qualms talking about it.
And isn’t it ironic he wants to justify tax increases that his county obviously needs by waving the bogeyman of Obama in front of the noses of the people who voted to elect him and his fellow Gopers? So, thanks Judge Head for speaking up. Nice to know what you and other Republicans think is a good reason to increase taxes. Lexington and Concord, indeed.
Seems to me the real issue is that a county commissioner make an open threat the kill Obama if he’s reelected. What else does “take up arms and get rid of the guy” mean? Of course he puts it in the mouth of unnamed patriots (what else does Lexington and Concord signify?) who he wants to defend us from.
I just wish, if that goddamn state doesn’t get off its ignorant ass and secede, the rest of us would do it for them.
If they did the NFL would finally have achieved its goal of going international.
In other words: start a war for losing an election.
rebellion? bullshit!
l’m not a legal scholar, but this would appear to be a clear act of sedition…publicly advocating overthrowing a duly elected government.
perhaps a visit from the secret service , homeland security, or any of the myriad federal agencies tasked with dealing with assholes such as mr.head would be in order.
Well, it is an exercise of his free speech rights under the first amendment. One without the annoyance of pepper spray.
it has always been open season on the rest of us:
What’s interesting is that folks don’t seem to think that he, and many others, are dead serious.
They are.
Lexington and Concord, my ass. Try Fort Sumter.
Well, folks…
Do you really think that the possibility of armed uprisings in this country is so unlikely? I mean…this guy’s not the only one on any of the various sides of of this many-fenced republic who is getting ready to rumble. I’ve said it before here and I’ll say it again. One economic, natural or man-made disaster that is serious enough to disrupt fuel and/or food deliveries in this country for more than a week or so and you will see things happening that will look just exactly like what’s going down in Syria only on a much more massive level. The gun owners…rural and urban/suburban and of all races and classes…will come out of the woodwork like rats during a garbage strike. Organized? Some of it, I suppose. But more likely it will be urban riots met with police and federal force that will light the real fire.
What fire?
Which fire?
Where’s the fire?
It’s right here. It’s in this judge’s talk, in the almost weekly nutcase killings, in the ongoing refusal of the government to police the massive white collar crime that is driving the working classes of this country downward in an ever-accelerating spiral, in the continuous meddling with the internal affairs of other countries, in the drone killings of brown people…
Where’s the fire?
Please.
“The Fire Next Time” was the name of a James Baldwin book 50 years ago. “Next time” happened a couple of times fairly soon after its publication and babies, it’s rilin’ up to burn again.
Watch.
Politics?
It’s all talk now. Competing bits and bytes, advertising experts competing for the attention of the hypnomediaed-out middle and working classes. But it ain’t real. It’s not real, people, it’s just talky talk talk talk talk talk. Real? It’s headed this way.
Soon.
Romney or Obama? Either way, the chickens are going to come home to roost.
Watch.
Either way.
A kinder, gentler fire burns just as badly, it just takes a little longer. There is no such thing as a “subtle” third-degree burn.
Bet on it.
The ongoing self-immolation of the U.S. as we know it is now well started.
Bet on that as well.
Too many sins. Sorry, but there it is.
Only a miracle will stop it now.
Let us pray.
AG
Arthur, I don’t altogether disagree with you. In fact I think you are correct. There WILL be major disruptions in the Empty Quarter and the Deep South if/when Obama get re-elected. And the closer the election, the more dramatic the confrontations with law enforcement.
But actual secession? Bringing in actual troops???? Yeah, maybe, I can see it … for about 3 days.
I spent 3 years in the Marines during ‘Nam. Other commenters on this blog have undoubtedly spent time in the armed forces since and before that. I would be extraordinarily surprised and shocked if any of the “patriot militia” or paranoid lone wolf types of Montana thru Texas survived more than 3 hours of actual combat with trained ground troops. I guarandamntee you that I wouldn’t.
For all the braggadocio of these IDIOTS most of them have never served in an armed force, and the almost all of the remainder did not serve in a combat unit. These kids of todays armed forces are hardened and tested and take no shit or prisoners. This revolution will be over with about 3 days after the real patriots (the army and marines) take to the fields.
It will, however, be hell on wheels for law enforcement until the backup arrives. You’re right there.
But…what if things got went bad in a number of places simultaneously while a huge proportion of the real “trained ground troops” were busy busy busy dealing with our economic imperialist necessities in countries weak enough to be moderately likely targets?
What then?
And what if it didn’t just go down in minority-populated big city ghettos or gene-sink rural areas full of 5th generation losers with guns? How effective would the reserve troops be, really? How many of them would be loathe to fire on their own relatives?
What if the disturbances happened not only in urban ghettoes but in the new breed ghettos? You know. (Or maybe you don’t.) The ghettos that have formed in smaller cities and devolved suburban developments, poor minority neighborhoods that are populated by people who were forced out of their urban neighborhoods by front-man-for-the-real-estate-mayors like Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. Neighborhoods that exist cheek-to-jowl with stolid older middle class and upper middle class areas. What then? Troops bivouacked in Great Neck and Scarsdale? Chevy Chase and Beverly Hills?
You do realize that you couldn’t get a good, old-fashioned riot going in much of Harlem anymore unless there was a severe latté shortage, right. It’s that “gentrified”. Meanwhile, in Newburgh NY…up the Hudson 90 miles in each direction from NYC and Albany…there is a scuffling urban ghetto that look and feel amazingly like that of Detroit just before the 1967 riots. (I was in Detroit, playing music in those neighborhoods around that time and when I recently got involved with some people from Newburgh, the feel was incredibly similar. (Newburgh, home of the bumbling, Fed-entrapped so-called “Synagogue bombers” in the spring of 2009 ) And there are literally hundreds of Newburghs across the U.S. How many little fires would it take before the U.S. emergency forces were too scattered to be as unable to squash the emergencies as are the fire “emergency forces” unable to control the results of global warming that are burning our forests as we speak, DerFarm? And what rough beast would emerge at that point? Think about it. You can be damned sure the Feds are thinking about it, thus the jive political dance going on now. Bet on it.
This culture is balanced very precariously at present. One unexpected shock and it could tumble just like a house of cards. What then? “Bring home the troops?” Please. A military dictatorship in the midst of the raging economic catastrophe that would ensue once the U.S. could no longer enforce its worldwide economic “exceptionalism” with the most lethal military system to have ever existed?
Please.
AG
Arthur, the sky is still up there, and the National Guard is still at home.
Yeah, a large part of it is elsewhere, but sheesh!!! do you REALLY think the fatass, narcoladen, redneck assholes of this country are organized enough to carry thru a real revolt in the face of ANY trained response? Who are you thinking of, the Michigan Militia?
Give me a break.
Old Russian Proverb: When 4 people plot revolution, one is a fool and 3 are police agents.
Old American proverb: When it rains, it pours.
I am not talking about a classic “rebellion” on the American Revolution model; I am talking about viral uprisings on the Tahrir Square-to-Who-Knows-Where model. Which..,.as can be plainluy seen in Syria now, just for starters…are quite often seized upon by individuals with a little pull, some followers and access to weaponry.
What’s that you say? No weaponry here? Please. No heavy weaponry, at least not much that is known to exist. But…what if some U.S. military people switched sides? What if “interested parties”…Koch Brothers types, Adelson types, China, Russia, the Islamists…got involved.
“Impossible,” you say?
It can’t happen here?
Bullshit.
You are still living in the Post-WWII/Marine era, bro’. And not that far into it. Not even into the Vietnam/fragging part. Today we have American armed forces members and recent vets “going crazy” and shooting lots of their fellow soldiers. Committing suicide at an ever-accelerating pace. And these are just the relatively unbalanced ones. Who’s laying low in the military, waiting for a chance to blow things up real good instead of just take out a few people in the mess hall? Who’s sitting in the Pentagon or Langley or any of the other seats of military power in the U.S., just itching for a chance to stop the slide of this country into a multiracial hellhole (their words, not mine) with whatever it takes to do so.
Collateral damage?
it doesn’t seem to bother them in Afghanistan or Iraq. Why not a false flag op on some mostly brownish American city? Like McVeigh’s act, only bigger.
We are an over-ripe fruit hanging by a splinter from a drooping branch.
Ripe for the pickin’.
If not today?
Soon, unless we get out shit together. And I don’t see it happening, that “getting it together” thing. Do you? I just see two sides of the same coin competing to see which side lands heads up this time.
It’s no longer an “if,” DerFarm.
It’s a “How soon?”
Bet on it.
AG
Title Card from Dr. Strangelove:
As you say Arthur, interesting times.
Dr. Strangelove would have lioved the drone thing.
AG.