Yeah, that's the answer [updated]

AP: Bricks have been hurled through Democrats' windows, a propane line was cut at the home of a congressman's brother and lawmakers who voted for a federal health care bill have received obscenity-laced phone threats in the days before and after passage of the sweeping legislation.

Yeah, guys, that's doing a lot for your image as reasonable people who should ever be listened to, there.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said in a statement that while many Americans are angry over passage of the health care bill, "violence and threats are unacceptable.

"That's not the American way," Boehner said. "We need to take that anger and channel it into positive change."

Okay, so, that's one Republican who I think has responded appropriately. Anyone else wanna step up?

Update: Add a few more to the list, including one from my home state. That's better. A little slow out of the gate, but in this case I'll go with "better late than never".

But a big thumbs-down to Eric Cantor, who used the incidents to actually complain about Democrats politicizing the incidents, in a press conference he held to... politicize the incidents.

Gun-toting delusional people

I don't really like to discuss politics much. It tends to start fights I just don't have the energy for. But there are just some things that I can't ignore.

See, here's the thing. I don't mind if you don't really like Obama, if you disagree with his policies, if you think he's the wrong guy to be the President. I probably won't agree with you much if you think that—I don't think he's by any means the perfect President but so far I don't really dislike him, either—but if you're just expressing your opinion in terms of, well, your opinion, that's fine.

But if you start doing things like talking about some conspiracy to elect a foreign-born President or faking his birth certificate or insisting he took his oath of office on the Quran or how he's going to march your grandmother and your disabled cousin to death camps, I'm going to think you're a loon or a liar.

And even if somehow you convince me you're not, that you're just misled, I'm going to know you hang out in the company of loons and liars. Dangerous loons and liars, seeing as how the same people who believe that sorta thing (or who pretend they do) are showing up to the so-called 'town hall' meetings about health care with guns, and thinking that's okay.

It ain't okay.

I admit I don't like guns, but even if I did, I'd know there's a time and a place for them, and an allegedly civilized discussion meeting (and they haven't really been, but that's not the point here) is neither of those. The only threat at those meetings is the one the people with the guns represent, a threat that they themselves made. A bunch of loons and liars with guns is not a discussion group; it's a mob. Next it'll be pitchforks and torches.

I'm not even going to get into how I don't understand how anyone could be against the idea of everyone having access to health care, or how people just don't seem to get the idea that providing basic health care to the population is likely to result in costs going down what with the number of ED visits for conditions left untreated until dangerous it'll cut down on, or all the other reasons why I can't see how anyone could be opposed to the notion. Because that doesn't really matter. What matters if that you do oppose it for whatever reason, you aren't going to convince people by spreading lies and misinformation and waving guns around. That's what crazy people do, and no one wants to be on the side of the loons.