Eric Cantor Has Been Primaried!

This just in

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated Tuesday by a little-known economics professor in Virginia’s Republican primary, a stunning upset and major victory for the tea party.

Cantor is the second-most powerful member of the U.S. House and was seen by some as a possible successor to the House speaker.

His loss to Dave Brat, a political novice with little money marks a huge victory for the tea party movement, which supported Cantor just a few years ago.

What can one say but …

I don’t know who the Democratic nominee may be. And of course if the baggers prefer this guy Brat to Cantor, Brat’s got to be downright frightening. Still …

HOO-yah.

Five Things I Learned Today

1. Nixon kept the Vietnam War going for his own political ends. OK, I already knew this, but now there is stronger evidence he de-railed peace talks in 1968 so that the war wouldn’t end before the elections.

2. Joe Nocera reports that the wingnuts are making dissolution of the Export-Import Bank their next “pinata.” The Export-Import bank costs the taxpayers no money and protects jobs by promoting exports, but it’s still too much like socialism, or something, to appease the baggers.

3. There is astonishing silence (well, with some exceptions) on the Right about Sunday’s mass shooting in Las Vegas. However, there is some pushback against Paul Waldmans’ carefully reasoned argument that right-wing rhetoric incited the shooting. See Digby and Steve M for pushback on the pushback.

4. This is a terribly sad story about two people who fell in love and got married — in Pakistan.

5. The rightie hate swarm goons have been attacking Bowe Bergdahl’s home town with a vengeance. John Cole writes,

And where do these warpigs think they are going to find their next warm bodies to run through a meat grinder? Small towns like Hailey, Bethany, and every other town like us in the country. You can be damned sure people are going to be thinking twice after watching this reaction to bringing one of ours home. Who the fuck is going to sign up to get blown up in some meatgrinder when you know the Republicans sending you there under a lie aren’t going to fund the medical care you need and will then shit all over you, your family, and your town if it helps their political agenda?

I used to think that if I had kids, I would want all of them to go into the military. Do a stint in the Air Force or Navy, see the world. Fuck that noise. I’m not having any kids, but I would tell any kid from 17-21 to stay as far away from the military as is humanly possible. If me from 1989 was thinking about the military and watched what has happened the last decade, my attitude would be “Fuck that shit. My shit’s fucked up but I want all my limbs and don’t want my parents being called traitors.” Not to mention, we used to believe in not leaving people behind, even if Sean Hannity didn’t like their dad’s beard. The only possible outcome to military service is negative, these days, unless you are higher level brass.

BONUS: Two Things I Already Knew

George Will
and Tucker Carlson are assholes.

Being the Hero Isn’t Always What It’s Cracked Up to Be

Some clarifications:

They draped one officer’s body in a swastika and a yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag that has been adopted as a symbol of the Tea Party. On the other, they pinned a note warning of “the beginning of the revolution,” a phrase they also shouted, the police said.

They promptly crossed the street to a Walmart, where Mr. Miller fired a single shot and continued shouting about revolution to terrified shoppers. One man at the checkout area who was carrying a handgun tried to stop Mr. Miller, but did not notice that Ms. Miller was working in concert with her husband; she shot the man dead. The couple proceeded to maraud through the store until the police trapped them at the back. There, Ms. Miller fatally shot her husband before shooting herself in the head.

So the other victim beside the cops was not a random woman shopper but a man with a concealed weapon. I am sincerely sorry he died, but all those weenies law-abiding good-guy citizens who imagine that if there only had been someone at hand with a gun, etc., might want to reflect on this.

Amid the pandemonium, Joseph Wilcox, 31, who had been in the checkout line, approached Mr. Miller brandishing a weapon, the police said. Ms. Miller pulled a pistol out of her purse and fatally shot him in the midsection, the police said.

Other tidbits — It appears the pair really did spend time with the Cliven Bundy militia. The woman shooter actually quit her job at Hobby Lobby (of course) to head toward the ranch. There’s some indication the Bundy militia found the two shooters a little fringe-y even for them, and persuaded the pair to go back to Las Vegas.

According to documents found in their apartment, the pair had planned to take over a courthouse and execute pubic officials.

They’d been talking about the evils of the government and their own desire for violence against it as fast as they could flap their lips.

In only a few months in the modest apartment building where they lived here, they made little secret of their distaste for government and their desire to foment revolution.

Their posts on Facebook sometimes threatened violence, and last month, Mr. Miller used the website to ask people to send him “a rifle to help stand against tyranny.” Neighbors said Mr. Miller talked incessantly to anyone who would listen about the evils of welfare or President Obama.

No one reported this. See also “How much does right-wing rhetoric contribute to right-wing terrorism?”