Rush and Roseanne, BFF!

What do Rush "Phony Troops" Limbaugh and Roseanne "Obama's Jewish Problem" Barr have in common? Besides being loudmouth fatsos, they both are seeking to incite political violence at the DNC in Denver. Disaffected has a good post on Rush's idiocy when he's "dreaming of riots", while Roseanne's boneheaded remarks can be found at Equalizer:

But you know, we have a lot of power and there is a Democratic Convention in Denver in just a short time and we should a bunch of us go there and repeat the Democratic Convention from Chicago. Like, let’s just cause a bunch of trouble. Let's wrest back our government from what, six or seven you know guys like McCain and Romney and Bush from the top. Let’s just go take it.

I actually was present at the Los Angeles DNC protests in 2000, but merely as an interested observer (that and my boss gave me a couple of days off work). You've never seen so many yahoos congregated in one place with a hodge-podge of causes. The people who wanted to free cop killer Mumia, union thugs wanting more free handouts from the government, black block kids with upside-down flags (I bet their parents didn't approve, hardcore!), some crazy dude named Vermin Supreme who asked me to come by the downtown Kinko's to help him photocopy leaflets about why he should be emperor (I politely declined), and other various maoist/ anti-abortionists/ anti-frankefoodists/ etc. It all ended quite badly when people began throwing rocks at the LAPD, which in turn resulted in a huge crowd of people getting teargassed and whipped in the head by sticks from police on horseback. A total bad scene, and it didn't contribute one bit to advancing any causes besides these people looking like imbeciles. With the DNC protests coming up in 2008, there isn't any reason to expect different.

So the only reason I can see why people like Rush and Roseanne would want to incite violence for the upcoming convention is strictly for shenanigans and to toot their own horns on the public airwaves. Perhaps they should swing by Iraq, where criticism of politics is often met, not with attack ads, but rather mortars raining down on the Green Zone or the assassination of Iraqi officials. The rule of law and proper political discourse is a good thing. You come to appreciate it after spending 11 months in this place, while having to scramble like an asshole for cover during your afternoon smoke break, because some group didn't like the pension law that just got passed in Parliament. To summarize this rambling post, political violence is no bueno.

The glory of political violence, the Green Zone gets mortared again (photo from WSJ)