Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) has been sentenced to three years in prison, the AP and the Austin-American Statesman are reporting.
"Git this new Winchester repeatin' rahfle for only fahr-nanty-nan'. Git it today wit' Val-U-Pay, sev'nty two payments on yer credit card. And today only on the Gun Show Channel, no background check. By golly, y'all kin be Ted Bundy and we don't care, we'll even throw in fahve hunnert rounds of full metal jacketed, 150 grain, Manstoppers feh-ree if y'all order in the next ten minutes. Son, Ah don' care if you is in Meridian, Mississippi or Noo York, we'll ship this baby out to ya overnight and no extree charge."
... I don't think being a combat vet would have helped either. In combat, generally, everybody downrage is the enemy. You shoot until they all go down. In this situation, picking one guy off in a crowd of friendlies, it would be equivalent of "destroying the town to save it".
Oh, dear, sweet conservative Americans, how you must have shit yourself on Saturday when you heard that someone had shot up an event with a Democratic member of Congress in, of all goddamned places, Arizona. And, worse, a Representative who had voted in favor of health care reform, which you have demonized as nothing short of a resurrection of the Nazi Party. It must have been awful for so many conservatives, thinking, praying, "Please, please, please, don’t let it be some Tea Party dick who says he did it because Glenn Beck told him to. Don’t let it be someone who wants to fuck Sarah Palin and thinks that if he starts taking out her congressional crosshaired targets, he’ll get into her pants."
Now, ah, yes, now, lovely right-wingers, you could defend yourself. You could work yourselves into a huff about how unjustly you were accused of driving this obviously disturbed individual into an act of calculated, cold-blooded violence. But that's because you're sitting there in your shit-filled underpants, thinking, "I don't believe in violence. I don't approve this. I hope the government doesn't try to crack down on us."
So, welcome, assholes, because you are Muslim now.
How does it feel to stand in Muslim shoes today? Because, right now, yes, you are being treated like suspects. You are being treated like you are guilty of the crimes that are committed by the deranged in your number. Sure, you may think, you can spout all the blood-filled, gun-toting, war-flogging rhetoric you want against citizens of your own country. But those are just words, you know? You can’t, you know, be held accountable for the actions of a few. And, gosh, it’s just wrong to lump you all together, to stereotype you all as criminals in waiting. Like, you know, you have done with Muslims since September 11, 2001.
How will you live with yourselves in the future? Look, heated, vicious rhetoric is part of the political game. But, frankly, there’s a bit of difference between saying that you’re going to "target" an opponent and saying that there might have to be "Second Amendment solutions" to the nation’s problems. Let's not do the bullshit dance of false equivalence. While there was a period of time when the left was violent (which was met by officially-sanctioned violence by the government), in the last couple of decades, it hasn't been the left shooting shit up. It wasn't the left who let the assault weapons ban lapse. It wasn't the left that made access to guns as easy as a McDonald's drive-thru. It wasn't the left that cried "Fascism" to background checks for someone who wants to own a fucking machine gun. It wasn't the left that supported preemptive war and violence against individuals as solutions to our nation's problems. Time to welcome your chickens home, conservatives. Open your filthy arms.
But you know what, you ridiculous worms? At the end of the day, the Rude Pundit supports your right to say your stupid shit. And it's ironic that Giffords read the First Amendment during the House's big show last week of reading the Constitution. Free speech ain't a free pass. It never, ever comes without responsibility. You wanna spout crazy, violent shit? You wanna talk about end times and revolution, Glenn Beck? Then man up and know that some people will take you seriously, even if you are just a joke.
When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?
Put me in the latter category. I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008 campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again. The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence.
Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.
And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.
Of course, the likes of Mr. Beck and Mr. O’Reilly are responding to popular demand. Citizens of other democracies may marvel at the American psyche, at the way efforts by mildly liberal presidents to expand health coverage are met with cries of tyranny and talk of armed resistance. Still, that’s what happens whenever a Democrat occupies the White House, and there’s a market for anyone willing to stoke that anger.
But even if hate is what many want to hear, that doesn’t excuse those who pander to that desire. They should be shunned by all decent people.
Lindsey Graham Suggests U.S. Keep Two Permanent Bases in Afghanistan
To protect small minority who want us to stay there from huge majority who want us to leave.
Obama to Deliver State of the Union Address on Jan. 25
Immediately following, GOP will deliver State of the Confederacy address.
Navy Relieves Captain of Duty for Performing in Raunchy Videos
Search begins to find replacement who has never performed in raunchy videos.
Study: Rich Unable to Accurately Identify Emotions in Others
But the help can do it for them.
Facebook Valued at $50 Billion
Still far less than Legbook, Assbook, Titbook.
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said it best:
“The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous, and unfortunately Arizona has become sort of the capital,” Dupnik said Saturday January 8th at a press conference about the shooting of Congresswoman Gabriell Giffords and 18 others.
“We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry,” Dupnik added. “The fiery rhetoric that has taken hold in politics may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences.”
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From top to bottom we have become a sick society filled with hatred and armed crazies.
In our political process the opposition is demonized to the point where media commentators such as Glenn Beck can suggest liberals ought to be killed.
Sheriff Dupnik made the point that where a climate of hatred and intolerance is created, that opens the door for armed nut cases to act out their craziness.
And this isn’t the first time a gunman has tried to kill those who serve our country and kill those who have political views opposed to theirs. They try to instill fear in anyone who is willing to step up to the plate for fairness and social justice.
America is known for killing its leaders….and are we any different than Pakistan right now?
The hate filled rhetoric being used to justify one side’s political agenda has to stop RIGHT NOW !
The media who profit from allowing the Glenn Becks and others who spew hostility must stop exploiting promotion of hatred for their bottom line.
Those who profit from selling guns to crazy people must be stopped.
And we need to really do something effective about our mental health care system beyond cutting budgets because some folks don’t want to pay taxes.
The message from the armed crazies is to try and frighten anyone away from public service if they don’t follow the orthodoxy of one particular political perspective or another.
You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.
Update: I see that Sarah Palin has called the shooting “tragic”. OK, a bit of history: right-wingers went wild over anyone who called 9/11 a tragedy, insisting that it wasn’t a tragedy, it was an atrocity.
Update: I’m going to take down comments on this one; they would need a lot of moderating, because the crazies are coming out in force, and it’s all too likely to turn into a flame war.
Jared Lee Loughner, the assassin of Federal judge John M. Roll and five others and attempted assassin of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), was clearly mentally unstable. But the political themes of his instability were those of the American far Right. Loughner was acting politically even if he is not all there. He is said to have called out the names of his victims, such as Roll and Gifford, as he fired. As usual, when white people do these things, the mass media doesn’t call it terrorism.
The man who had most to do with Loughner after his arrest, Pima County Sherriff Clarence W. Dupnik, was clearly angered by what he heard from the assassin: “When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government, the anger, the hatred, the bigotry … it is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”
The subtext of the angst over the shooting of Giffords is that in recent months Loughner was saying Tea-Party-like things about the Federal government. The violent language of “elimination,” “putting in the cross-hairs,” (as with Palin’s poster, above) “taking back,” “taking out,” to which members of that movement so often resort, has created a heated atmosphere that easily seeps into the unconscious of the mentally disturbed. That is Dupnik’s point.
There apparently is some indication that Loughner had an accomplice, and his arrest and identification will shed a great deal more light on the motivations behind this political massacre. Did Loughner have a Rasputin? (my link)
Westboro Baptist Church To Picket Funerals Of Arizona Shooting Victims
In a flier posted on its web site, the controversial church writes, "THANK GOD FOR THE SHOOTER -- 6 DEAD!" The message continues:
God appointed this rod for your sins! God sent the shooter! This hateful nation unleashed violent veterans on the servants of God at WBC--hoping to silence our kind warning to obey God and flee the wrath to come.
The flier claims that the shooting of both a House member and a federal judge -- the latter of whom was killed -- is god's punishment for judicial and Congressional action against the WBC. "God sent the shooter to shoot you! And He's sitting in Heaven laughing at you!" the announcement reads.
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But let's put literary analysis aside. How about this: don't fuck with works of art. Don't cover the tits or dicks on statues. Don't put out DVDs with the naughty bits cut out of a film. If you can't handle it or are offended by it, move on. The Rude Pundit can't abide intense violence against women in movies, so there's a few allegedly great flicks he's missed. But he wouldn't ask to see Irreversible with the notorious rape scene cut out.
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... No matter how this turns out, is it unreasonable to ask that we take a look at the kind of political rhetoric that talks about "Second Amendment remedies", and draws gun-sight targets on Congressional districts (Facebook link / other link) and tweets "Don't retreat, INSTEAD Reload!"? Yes, every shooting like this is the work of a nut. But most of these nuts have cited the eliminationist rhetoric spouted by Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and the rest of the Tea Party mouthpieces and deities. At what point do we get to draw an association, if not outright cast blame, with those who tap into the obsessions of the mentally ill and the paranoid? What are we really gaining as a nation that is faced with a probably unavoidable decline when this is the nature of the discourse?
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We've been tolerating political rhetoric that is unspeakably violent since long before Sarah Palin started spewing her nonsense on Facebook. If she never spoke again, if she never said another word, we would still have a society in which it is totally okay to call some people expendable because they're unprivileged, evil because they're idealistic, and irredeemable because they have the gall to say that the way things are isn't the way things have to be.
Sarah Palin and her Facebook page are just a little cruder about expressing it, is all. And nobody really minded all that much until some lunatic started shooting.
Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords miraculously survived a point-blank gunshot to the head as a lone gunman killed six people Saturday during a routine voter meet-and-greet.
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A 9-year-old girl, a federal judge and a Giffords staffer were among those killed. Giffords and 12 others where wounded in a shooting that shook the nation.
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We, the Real Americans, in order to form a more God-Fearing Union, establish Justice as we see it, Defeat Health-Care Reform, and Preserve and Protect our Property, our Guns and our Right Not to Pay Taxes, do ordain and establish this Conservative Constitution for the United States of Real America.
Article II. No person except a natural-born Citizen who can produce video, photographic or eyewitness evidence of birth in a non-island American State shall be eligible to the Office of President.
The President shall faithfully execute the laws, except when, as Commander in Chief, he decides he'd really rather not.
AMENDMENTS
1. Congress shall make no law abridging the Freedom of Speech, except where citizens desecrate the Flag of the United States; respecting an establishment of Religion, except to support Christian schools, religious apparitions in food products and the display of crosses and creches in public places; or abridging the free exercise of Religion, except to block the construction of mosques in sensitive areas as determined by Florida Pastors or the Fox News Channel.
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12. No one may be required to do anything He or She does not want to do. Ever.
From Swiss TV 1991