I have no doubt that most, if not all of the GOP leadership actually believe the lies they keep telling to stir up the hatred to energize their base. What makes it all the more despicable is that they continue to do so knowing that some of the people they are stirring up are not stable, people like Jasen Bruce.
Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.
That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.
What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.
Police say Bruce offered several reasons to explain his actions:
The man tried to rob him.
The man grabbed Bruce's crotch and made an overt sexual advance in perfect English.
The man yelled "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," the same words some witnesses said the Fort Hood shooting suspect uttered last week.
"That's what they tell you right before they blow you up," police say Bruce told them.
Bruce ended up in jail, accused of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. He was released Tuesday on $7,500 bail. Marakis ended up at the hospital with stitches. He told the police he didn't want to press charges, espousing biblical forgiveness.
But Tuesday, Bruce wasn't saying sorry.
The two men are a year apart in age, and a world apart in life experiences.
Father Michael Eaccarino of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Tarpon Springs says Marakis, 29, entered a Greek monastery as a teenager and became a priest nine years ago. He is studying theology at Holy Cross, a Greek Orthodox school in Massachusetts, and traveled to Tarpon Springs two months ago to work on his master's thesis. He has taken a vow of celibacy.
Eaccarino says the visiting priest got lost Monday after ministering to the elderly in a nursing home.
Jasen Bruce, 28, enlisted as a reserve Marine as a teenager, was discharged honorably when he finished his contract, and enlisted again this March. He has never been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, a Marine Corps spokesman said. He got married last month in full dress uniform.
Bruce is a sales manager for APS Pharmacy in Palm Harbor. His blog entries tout the benefits of increasing testosterone and human growth hormones. He was charged with misdemeanor battery in 2007 for hopping over the bed of a tow truck and shoving its driver. He pleaded no contest.
Online photo galleries depict him flexing big muscles wearing little clothing…
Inserted from <St. Petersburg Times>
This is what happens when people who are five cans short of a six pack are fed too much tea party Kool-Aid. The GOP leadership exacerbates the violence by supporting the movement. Shame!!
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