loudmouth

I don't know how I missed this when news came out a week ago. Probably I was distracted by all the furor about the Arizona massacre.

Apparently back in December, some rich bozo in Palm Springs was arrested for threatening the life of Seattle's Congressman and my district's representative, Jim McDermott.

In the first call, (Charles) Habermann said he’d seen McDermott on television and was enraged by his comments opposing tax cuts for the rich.

“He’s a piece of human filth. He’s a liar, he’s a communist, he’s a piece of [expletive] garbage,” Habermann said in the recorded message, according to the criminal complaint. Habermann said George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other U.S. founding fathers would “blow his [McDermott's] brains out” if they met him.

Habermann then threatened to kill McDermott as well as his friends and family, the complaint says. In a second call, Habermann said he had “a lot of money” and “a lot of friends” and that McDermott was “going down.”

It's probably not the first time he's received such threats, since McDermott is one of the few members of Congress who possesses a heart, a brain, and a spine, as his public condemnation of Obama's extension of tax cuts for billionaires clearly shows. This particular case consisted of a lot more smoke than fire, though, as a lot of them do.

For one thing, the would-be assassin called McDermott from Palm Springs, 1200 miles from McDermott's district here in Seattle and over 3000 miles from D.C. Great strategy, Charlie, letting them know way in advance you're coming for them.

Secondly, he vented his intentions all over McDermott's voice mail recording. So we're not dealing with the sharpest tool in the shed here. He also bragged about how much money he's got, a universal trait of rich people who are also stupid.

Everybody on God's green earth is assigned a role to play. Jesus said, "I am the door," and this fellow Mr. Charles Turner Habermann could with justification say, "I am the door-stop," which would be fine if he wasn't so noisy about it.