I WON'T TRY TO PIGEONHOLE JOSEPH STACK POLITICALLY -- BUT I'M AFRAID I KNOW WHO WILL
(updated a few times)

I'm just getting up to speed on the story of Joseph Stack, who died after crashing a small plane into a building housing some federal offices in Austin. I've read his suicide note. (UPDATE: That link is now offline; try this one or this one.)

Matthew Vadum of The American Spectator has already leapt in with a post titled "The Left Will Claim Austin Plane Crash Is Right-Wing Terrorism":

I'm guessing that long before the facts are known accusations will fly against the tea party movement, Sarah Palin, George W. Bush and who knows who or what else for creating a climate of anti-government "hate."

Brace yourself for a vomit-inducing onslaught of indignation and self-righteousness from the usual crew of leftist reprobates like Max Blumenthal, Jon Conason, Adam Serwer, Dave Neiwert, Markos Moulitsas, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow.

Well, not me. The suicide note describes years of career struggle on Stack's part and an ongoing frustration with tax authorities.

But the tax problems started "back in the early ‘80s," according to the note -- during the Reagan years, in other words. Stack says 9/11 made it hard for him to get work -- but at that time "the Government came to the aid of the airlines with billions of our tax dollars … as usual they left me to rot and die while they bailed out their rich, incompetent cronies" (Stack calls George W. Bush a "presidential puppet"). The note says no one in the government ever cut Stack a break, yet "plunderers ... commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours."

Oh, and Stack denounces the Catholic Church -- "vulgar, corrupt" -- and "the monsters of organized religion."

So how do you think the more shameless howler monkeys of the right blogosphere and punditocracy are going to react?

They're going to accuse Stack of "class warfare." They're going to say he hated God. In other words, they're going to call him "Liberal Terrorist Joseph Stack" -- probably before the day is out, and for weeks to come.

Me, I think he's just a guy who couldn't keep body and soul together, a guy whose problems were compounded by the fact that his work (as a contract worker rather than a clock-punching employee) put him under the more byzantine parts of the tax code, a circumstance he couldn't handle. It sounds as if he was a desperate guy who just lost all hope -- and all consideration for others. But I don't put him anywhere on the political spectrum.

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UPDATE: And so it begins:

... Andrew Wilcow of the Sirius XM Conservative Talk Radio Show - The Wilcow Majority, was able to pull down a copy of Joseph Stack’s "manifesto," before the FBI pulled it off the web. It proves Joseph Stack was anti-Bush, anti-founding fathers, anti-constitution, pro-Obama and pro-communist. The left wing will get their ass handed to them on a platter when they suggest that he was an anti-establishment "tea bagger." He was in fact a left wing radical domestic terrorist.


... The left wing Harvard professor who murdered her brother and two university staff members because she didn't get tenure was a devout Obama supporter and a true progressive liberal, just like this nut who flew his airplane in to the IRS building in Austin....

Although a lot of lefties clearly want to tie this to right-wing political currents. Me, I'm not going there.

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MORE A few topics at Yahoo Answers: "Will Joe Stack soon be revered along with other Liberal Hero's like Mao, Che Guevara and Sean Penn?"; "Was Joe Stack's suicide note littered with liberal talking points?"; "Now that we know Joe Stack was a liberal, will this terror act be the downfall of the Democrats and Obama?"; "Isn't it obvious that Joe Stack was a Liberal? I mean if he was a Conservative he would have quoted Hitler....?"

More in the same vein at Free Republic.

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UPDATE, FRIDAY: Now it's really beginning. From David Freddoso at the Washington Examiner:

MSM denial over IRS bomber's left-wing discontent

Before crashing his plane into an IRS office building, Joe Stack wrote and posted online a diatribe against insurance and drug companies, private health care, George W. Bush, and the Catholic Church. Subtract out the subtle hints at his planned terror act, and a similar rant could have appeared in some form on any of several left-wing message boards....

More to come, I'm sure -- to be accompanied by the endless recycling of the same few quotes from the "MSM" suggesting that Stack was a teabagger.

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UPDATE, FRIDAY P.M.: Limbaugh says Stack "sounds just like any liberal Democrat."