So Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean and John Edwards, goes on FOX and says liberals would be threatening violence if health care reform had not passed.
What the HELL, Joe? Yes, we'd be demonstrating. Yes, we'd be trying to shut down the Capitol. Yes, we'd be big with the primaries and the phone calls and the complaints. But violence? Based on what evidence, exactly? Where the hell do you get off?
Trippi, one of the most aggravating aspects of dealing with the explosion of right-wing domestic terrorism, and threats thereof, is that idiots try to draw some sort of bogus false equivalency, claiming "liberals do it too" (or "would" do it too).
These morons have to go back to the 60's to find examples of left-wing violence, and even in those cases, few "targets" were ever harmed, and left-wing movements in general never embraced violence. Nobody on the left embraced or defended Ted Kazinsky. Nobody on the left embraced or defended the SLA. Few people defended the Weather Underground, and the only people they ever hurt (and accidentally) were their own! (Same with the Earth Liberation Front.)
We didn't threaten or carry out violence when we were lied into war, when W wouldn't testify on the record or under oath or alone, when the Patriot Act was nudged into passage with anthrax, when we were wiretapped, forced to sign loyalty oaths, when people were dragged out of audiences by Capitol police for inoffensive t-shirts, when we were arrested at town halls for our bumper stickers, when we were forced into fenced-off "free speech zones," when we became a torturing nation, when citizens were seized, tortured and held without recourse, when we were arrested and manhandled for demonstrating peacefully, when our massive protests were ignored completely by the media, or when we had to bail out the bastards who blew a 12-trillion dollar hole in the economy.
So now you go on Fox News [sic] and say this shit:
if health care reform had failed, "progressives and liberals" would be engaging in the same kind of "fringe" activity...
"These are fringe actors who are doing this," Trippi insisted. "They're not representative of conservatives, the Republican Party, or Tea Parties. These are individuals who are acting badly, taking the passion and energy and using it in the wrong way."
"That would have existed in the same way in progressives and liberals," Trippi claimed. "Had this bill gone down. I think you would have seen some of the same activity. Everybody should abolish it."
Are you freaking kidding me, Joe? NOBODY on the left has supported or suggested violence. Meanwhile, the Congressional GOP's and the pundits that own them were egging on the roiling TeaBaggers with their spitting and their guns, using language like "beat them to a pulp," "run them down," that they should "reload" and "target" Democrats in crosshairs. How on earth can you say it's "fringe"? The incendiary rhetoric and the lies that inspire terror and violence are coming straight from the GOP Congress!
Go Cheney yourself, Joe.