Monday, July 19, 2010

I-580 Oakland shooter Byron Williams was Tea Party sympathizer

sfgate.com

According to Bob Egelko and Henry K. Lee of the San Francisco Chronicle, the man who terrorized Oakland (causing Adams Point residents to take to online chat rooms about the helicopter and shooting noise) was a parolee named Byron Williams who hated left-wing politicians and had on a bullet-proof vest. In other words, a Tea Party sympathizer.

That he was on the Oakland stretch of I-580 may have been no accident, considering Oakland's a hot bed of left-wing political activity. Byron Williams also reads like a Tea Party sympathizer, and not exactly the warm and fuzzy kind. More like the kind that wants to harm you if you disagree with him.


Is this what we're coming too? A Northern California man who's mother says was upset by "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items." Another Tea Party-type nut?

Doesn't that sound something like Joe Stack, the man who flew his plane into the Austin, Texas IRS Building earlier this year and who was called a Tea Party sympathizer? Or how about the Tea Party Express' Mark Williams, who just last week wrote a racist blog post against the NAACP? Someone white, male, generally middle-aged, at times not economically successful or comfortable, and angry, and who wants to take a gun or a plane (or a blog) to wreck society? All because they say they don't like the left wing political agenda (whatever that is, since the left can't seem to agree on things), when the real issue is they can't get a good job? Rush Limbaugh, this is your fault.

As I've written before, the USA's got to fix this economy, and the only fast way is with another stimulus package. But I will put a finer point on it: the GOP has two problems: it's becoming known by the company it draws in loony-bin angry older white men like Rush Limbaugh and who want to harm people either mentally or physically, and really because their own economic lot isn't great (except for Rush, who makes a half-billion off hate), and the GOP is not helping President Obama fix the economy. So the GOP and the Tea Party, and its extremist expressions of hate for liberal politics are in a way responsible for encouraging the actions of i-580 Shooter (now he has a title) Byron Williams, and for Joe Stack too.

The GOP better look at itself and start being part of the solution, because it and Fox News are helping to produce domestic terrorists at an alarming rate. Republicans can't just ignore the Tea Party Express, it must totally repudiate it, and the actions of its most hateful members. Fox News has to stop being the place where people like Byron Williams and his Mom get their half-basked anti-American-government ideas, and, I assert, become so riled up they take action against America and its people.

This has to stop.

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