The Anger Blog, Pulling Another Fast and Furious One on Us

Pulling Another Fast and Furious One on Us. No matter what the issue, the conservative propaganda machine will do whatever it takes to gain an advantage in the 2012 election, even stoop so low as to misrepresent actions, events, and people's intentions or to lie. The most recent case in point is Operation Fast and Furious, regarding the purchase of firearms in America that would be allowed to be taken across the border into Mexico. The ultimate goal was to track down those who were supplying guns to the Mexican drug cartels. It was a fiasco in which U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in Arizona and two weapons discovered at the scene were traced back to the Fast and Furious operation. This tragedy occurred in December of 2010, and hearings are now going on with regard to the Justice Department's involvement and whether Attorney General Eric Holder should be held in contempt of Congress.

The legitimacy and intent of these proceedings will be argued by both sides and would require another post herein to do it justice. It is being discussed here only as a lead-in to the issue at hand: the right wing propaganda machine mentioned previously.

Operation Fast and Furious is currently being portrayed as a plot by the Obama administration to take away Americans' Second Amendment Rights to carry arms. We are being told by Representatives Darrell Issa (Republican, California), Representative Ted Poe (Republican, Texas), Representative John Mica (Republican, Florida), Rush Limbaugh and Fox News that Obama's administration wanted to produce gun violence in Mexico that would create an anti-gun frenzy in this country. Interestingly, the fact that this program was initiated in 2006 under the George W. Bush administration and disbanded during the Obama administration does not seem to enter into the reasoning process.

Where and how (we know the why) did this conspiracy theory originate? According to some theories, a militia blogger from Alabama named Michael Vanderboegh gets the credit. You may remember him as the instigator, through his blog, of the window breakers. In 2009, he urged his followers to throw bricks through the office windows of Democratic legislators who supported Obama's health reform initiatives. This blogger appears to receive credibility from Fox News, where he is described as an "authority" and an "online journalist."

This is again another attempt to rile up the base (and anyone who is listening) with a false claim, in order to win votes and avoid having to discuss or lay out any plan to fix the economy, healthcare, immigration, etc. Does it take a rocket scientist to see the drivel that's being fed to the American public? Are you angry that Dan Rather was fired and Fox "News" keeps on misrepresenting the facts?