News you probably didn't hear about - Right winger goes on killing spree, kills 2, and injures 3

[ck4829]

With long, frosted hair and a sweet smile, Racine Balbontín-Aragondona was a natural cover girl. The 22-year-old college student studied hotel management and also worked as a model in her native Chile. She planned to marry in April.

Nicolás Pablo Corp Torres was studying engineering and had been a star basketball player. His coach and friends described the 23-year-old as a ``good student and a gentleman.''

Their lives were snuffed out by a madman on a rampage with a rifle in Miramar Beach, a sleepy town in Florida's Panhandle.

Dannie Baker, 60, looks menacing in his mugshot. He allegedly grabbed a rifle and walked past the pool complex to a town house where the students were gathered. At 1:45 a.m. Thursday, Baker opened fire through a window, according to the Walton County Sheriff's Office. Three others were injured, including Balbontín-Aragondona's fiancé, Francisco Javier Cofré-Fernández, 24, who was in critical condition.

After a standdown, deputies arrested Baker, who had fled to his town house near the rental home where the students were shot. The get-together of about 20 friends, deputies said, was not rowdy.

So what caused such savagery?

Baker had shown signs of emotional instability, sending disturbing e-mails to fellow Republicans during the presidential election. Baker's messages, friends said, were ''radical'' and ''inappropriate,'' the Northwest Florida Daily News reported.

So disturbing were the e-mails that the sheriff's office was notified last summer. For now, investigators won't say what he wrote.

Baker wasn't happy with the get-togethers by the Chilean students. Neighbor Crystal Lynn told a TV station that Baker asked him ``if I was ready for the revolution to begin and if I had any immigrants in my house to get them out.''

Was this a hate crime based on the presumption that the Chileans, who were in Florida for a six-month work/study program, were illegal immigrants?

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes, released a report last week noting a 54 percent jump in hate groups in 2008 to 926 active groups, including 56 in Florida. Among them: black separatist groups -- which believe Jews are the devil and President Barack Obama is in cohoots, doing Israel's bidding -- and the skinheads, Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazi groups that seek white purity.

''As in recent years, hate groups were animated by fears of Latino immigration. This rise in hate groups has coincided with a 40 percent growth in hate crimes against Latinos between 2003 and 2007, according to FBI statistics,'' notes the law center's study entitled ``The Year in Hate.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/1299/story/927081.html

[wtmusic]

1. Murdered

[zeemike]

12. God that pisses me off when beautiful young people like that

Are murdered by some old white fat assed bastard like that.
What a waste.

[bertman]

13. Or even by anybody.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

14. It pisses me off when anyone murders anyone.

[mwb970]

2. This guy has a real future in the republican party.

Maybe Dannie the Murderer will become another right-wing spokesman a la JTP.

[morningglory]

6. In 2004 he worked for Cheney/*bush and was an upstanding member

of the republic party in the county.

[Kip Humphrey]

3. "sending disturbing e-mails to fellow Republicans" ...Just your typical Freeper.

[1776Forever]

4. I just posted about the fight against hate speech on Radio & TV by the Hispanic Coalition>>

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5160776&mesg_id=5160776

I encourage everyone to read this!

[lonestarnot]

5. I wonder why Crystal Lynn didn't turn the nutjob into the local police before he went off onto his

spree. :shrug:

[gratuitous]

7. There was a thread about this yesterday

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5155348

I figured that if Mr. Baker uses a defense of feeling like he was in mortal danger, the Florida law that says it's okay to blaze away until you're not scared anymore would be airtight. Clean him up, trim the beard, and voila! a new friend for the Fox and Friends program. "And now, here's Dannie Baker for what you should do when scared by the Democrat party. Dannie?" Blam, blam blam!

[lurky]

8. Another Lou Dobbs viewer at work... n/t

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

9. Ladies and gentlemen, next year's CPAC keynote speaker!

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. "radical" and "inappropriate"

We should compare what he wrote to what Rush Limbaugh spouts every day.

[The Doctor.]

11. More RW bred domestic terrorism.

The families should sue the living fuck out of the Limbaughs, Savages, and Becks to make the message clear; "Inciting hatred is a crime."

Those fuckers encourage domestic terrorism... when will they be dealt with by the law?

[northofdenali]

15. I'm a strong supporter of the SPLC and have been since 1981 -

the year my daughter was born and the SPLC was very, very active in Alabama.

They are usually right.

This is frightening, and not just in the South. In states with small, Libertarian-leaning populations (such as Alaska, my home) we are seeing more and more of this type of activity; a 2nd Amendment "protest" this week includes anyone licensed to do so openly carrying a handgun on their persons.

What happens when a resident sidewalk sleeper goes to grab one, "just for a look"? Most of our sidewalk sleepers are Native Alaskans; this is NOT a prejudicial statement, as I work with them on a volunteer basis with Unity, a homeless advocacy group. Most of the gunslingers are white right-wingers.

Prayer don't work in situations like these.