Source: Paul Jamiol
On Saturday, a man named Jared Lee Loughner murdered six people, and wounded thirteen others, including Rep Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who is in critical condition (as of this writing) with a bullet to her brain.
These are the dead:
- Phyllis Scheck, 79
- Dorthy Murray, 76
- Dorwin Stoddard, 76
- John M. Roll, 63
- Gabriel Zimmerman, 30
- Christina Green, 9
Tell me something Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Fox News et al: When is enough enough? When do you feel like you’ve “won?” How much blood must be shed, in the name of your twisted ideology? What is it going to take for you to SHUT UP?
Who will be the next Scott Roeder…Richard Popalowski…Jim Adkisson…Byron Williams…or Jared Lee Loughner? Who will be the next unbalanced crackpot, sitting next to his/her radio or television, soaking up the despicable noxious bloviations gushing from your loathsome mouths, and deciding that the best thing to do about your egregious hyperbole is to take a gun and blast people out of existence? Who!?
Don’t worry, no one expects any tearful retractions — as if such a thing is even possible — or heartfelt mea culpas. No no no no, we all know that there was no way you could have anticipated the effect your vomitous spewing would have on the odd unbalanced individual. Heavens no! Hearing Bill O’Reilly’s pompous pontificating over “Tiller the baby killer” or Glenn Beck’s paranoid ravings about the Tides Foundation or Sarah Palin’s thoughtless and provocative hit list with gun cross-hairs couldn’t possibly have any adverse effect, right?
Well, Sarah Palin is right about one thing. It IS time to take a stand — against the likes of her, O’Reilly, Beck, Limbaugh, and so many others whose main purpose in life is to foment hatred and violence, while making tons of money in the process of shredding the fabric of this country.
This stops now — a little girl named Christina Green will never see her 10th birthday, because of YOU.
This is our daily open thread.
TheZoo 
Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, THIS IS ON YOU!
as does Mr. Hannity…They own it!
Creating dIalogue is an integral part of a healing community. From the bottom of my heart, Zooey, thank you and the other Critters for making this a safe forum to meaningfully work through this time for all of us … Yesterday’s events were/are a big turning point for me.
i was in a snowdome yesterday, literally and figuratively … shaken slightly by looking outside and finding the peace of gently falling snow and folks coming into the shoppe for winter refreshment; not one person spoke of, or seemed to even know about, what was happening in a place so seemingly far away from “home” …
Traveling as much as I do, I try to make “home” wherever I am at any given moment in time. This often brings me peace. Checking in with others through technology is also one of the ways I find “home” while “in motion” …
The feeds of yesterday’s reality kept me “frozen”; I wanted to feel the warmth of virtual time and place by continually reading for information, trying to make sense of the senseless. How I continued to function yesterday was truly an act of otherworldy grace. As I continue to “thaw”, I am hopeful that today someone at work will look up to meet my eyes and communicate something, anything, about what happened yesterday …
My sincere sympathy is with the families who have lost loved ones in yesterday’s events. I cannot even imagine what Christina’s family is going through ~ may they have some privacy to find a way to deal with all of this …. that is my prayer of peace for today …
Excellent editorial in the NYT about the shooting.
It asks the question… will the shooting mark the end of an ugly era of political discourse in the country, or does it mark the beginning of a new era of something even worse.
I saw an interesting comment on Townhall this morning. I had decided to see what the right-wing blogs were saying about this. It’s not pretty. One commenter was trying to say that the Tea Partiers were the grown-ups while also trying to make the childish point that “the Democrats started it.”
Like Keith mentioned, I wont sit here and pretend that I’ve not contributed to the problem here. (Granted, I have but a small voice, and not any sort of national audience.) And while I think it’s okay to challenge people on their own hate, it’s a fine line not to cross into that realm myself. But I will try. That’s all I can do. And then I hope that perhaps, in its own chaos theory sort of way, it will make a small incremental difference toward a better future.
It is a fine line, zxbe … and I am confident that you will remain steadfast to your word. You have already made a better difference by your insightful post and NYT link. Thank you for that.
Unfortunately I am not really optimistic that this can stop. Out there there are too many willing to listen to that crap. The European’s take is in a post below, but beware, there’s a rant at the beginning. I am still stunned that it came to pass, never mind it wasn’t really surprising.
I saw this on the Sunday Morning Bobble Head thread on C&L:
link: http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/sunday-morning-bobblehead-thread-104
“Let me say this: if your first response after hearing about a congress person has been shot is to scrub your site of your violent rhetoric, you can’t say that you had no impact. “
Well, get ready for some exhaustive coverage today on the shooting, with a little room made for the snow storm headed in my direction later this afternoon. I see the stuff is in Texas right now, headed straight at me.
They just said the threat is for the worst snow Atlanta has seen since 1940. I was in Marietta in January 1988, when we had snow bad enough the kids were out of school several days, and we had to take them to work with us each day. The snow was deep enough on the road that the 914 got high centered on a drift, and I had to push it while my wife drove it out.
Just the thought of being ” snowed in” with exhaustive coverage of the shooting is a little more than I can bear, House. Hope you have all the necessary provisions for the anticipated storm?!
The frustrating part of this for me, is how it will take on a life of its own in the legal system.
He will plead not guilty by some reason of insanity and it will spend years in the court system.
It’s fairly obvious what has happened here and justice should move according the gravity of his actions.
There’s not a lot of grey area about what he did.
Yeah, technically he has rights but he gave up those rights when he chose to act irresponsibly and take the lives of others.
Lass, thanks. 🙂
Whom, that is a very good question. I think a good rule of thumb is if you have to pull something after an incident such as this, you have to ask: should it have been posted in the first place?
Vinyl, I do agree about the legal system taking on a life of its own. Still, we don’t have all of the facts regarding the mental status of the perpetrator before / during/after the crime(s) . Until that is eslablished, we can only, sadly, speculate.
I can only imagine the damage control going on in Sarah Palins camp at this time.
Her spin doctors are preparing defensive rhetoric to paint her as not connected in any way to the actions of a mad man when she is in fact howling mad.
I’m just waiting to hear how they attempt to distance her from this.
Lass, I’m going out a little later and lay in provisions for a couple of days. I’m in a level area with plenty of stores close by, so a short trip out is not out of the question unless the power is out and they can’t run the registers or cook.
“established” 😉
And yes, vinyl … they are a ” spinning” for sure!
I caught a bit of David Webb (a Tea Party leader) last night and he was in full-spin mode saying they weren’t a violent movement, and declaring (lying) that no one in the movement advocates violence. Of course this was on Fox so he wasn’t challenged about the calls for 2nd Amendment solutions etc.
I do think those are valid questions to be asked, if not in the accusatory sense, but in the reflective sense. And to reiterate the point made earlier and to tie it Vinyl’s point just a moment ago. If the first reaction is to pull things one has posted; or to go into “damage control” mode, then the question one should ask themselves is “am I too close to the edge?”
What? No bean counters, bartering or flintnappers near you, House?! Stay safe and warm down there ~ I’ll be checking in from Wonkaville periodically to see how ya’ll are doing … peace
I thought maybe an insert of true peaceful beauty into a so often ugly and violent world might be appropriate this morning. There is beauty in Arizona, as the following shows. Note that the subject is not human, however.
Photo by Denny Green, Tempe Arizona
Snowy Egret at the Gilbert Water Park, Gilbert Arizona; fall 2010.
Note that the Gilbert Water Park is roughly 100 miles straight north, as the crow flies, of the Safeway center at Oracle and Ina in Tucson, site of yesterday’s horror and ugliness.
The first partisan statement I have heard on the MSM.
Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Id) on Meet the Press: We have to be careful not to blame one side or the other, because both sides are guilty of this. You have extremes on both sides; you have crazy people on both sides…the American people need to understand that during the Bush Administration we have a bunch of people on the left who were using the same kind of vitriol that some people on the right are using now against Obama. So it’s not something that either party is guilty by themselves or either party is innocent of.
Fuck you, Teabagger Labrador.
No, no Rep. Raul labrador you are wrong.
During the Bush administration, George had a shoe thrown at him.
To the best of my recollection, Congessmen and Congress women did not face violent attacks threatening their lives.
Rep. Labrador is trying to down play the vociferous and violent nature of his party.
I have seen right-wingers defensively claim a false equivalence between the violent rhetoric of the left and the violent rhetoric of the right. To the right, they are one and the same, but in reality there is an important difference. Both sides speak of political campaigns in terms of warfare, but I think a major distinction is that the right wing often makes it personal.
The violent rhetoric of the left is usually directed at ideas, at policies, or at the entirety of the political party on the other side. We say we want to defeat Conservatism, we want to defeat Corporate Cronyism, or we want to defeat Republicans. And we usually talk about “beating” or “defeating” them.
The violent rhetoric of the right is often directed at the candidates themselves, at individual people (or groups of people) themselves, and is often even more intense. They want to “destroy” Liberalism, they want to “kill” Socialism”, or they want to “eliminate” Democrats.
For us, it’s always the most important election of our lifetimes because we can’t afford to do things their way. For them, it’s an apocalyptic showdown and the world will come to an end if our side wins.
There can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the rhetoric from the right is rooted in extremism, while our rhetoric is rooted in idealism. There is no equivalence at all.
Well said, Wayne.
Observations:
*No one in the Tea Party will volunteer to be a human shield at public events hosted by Democrats.
*By saying both sides engage in this, the actions of the gunman are justified in the eyes of those who believe they are part of “God’s Chosen.”
* This tragedy will not be enough to stop the insanity. If it were, there would have not been comments made like what Rep. Labrador said. The fact that he felt compelled to belittle the event means it was not serious enough for the likes of him to want to put an end to these kinds of attacks.
* This also means, for all the abridgment of the 4th Amendment written into the Patriot Act, it is still not enough to keep us absolutely safe. Big Brother is not watching everyone. Yet.
Steve Benen has a good piece on this very subject (thanks, Zooey) at Washington Monthly, along with a piece of good news and humanity from the Arizona Republic.
Hernandez is an intern with Giffords’ office. He started last week.
Just heard this on MSNBC. Christina Greene, 9, was born on 9/11, and was actually featured on some publication that featured photos of babies born that fateful day. It doesn’t mean anything, just sad that she came into this world on a day full of tragedy, and left this world in such a tragedy..
It just started snowing here.
Here is the video of Congresswoman Giffords back in March talking about the need to tone down the rhetoric, and directly addressing this chart with the ‘bullseyes’ of Sarah Palin’s.
Giffords:
Follow the money. Beck, Limbaugh, Palin, O’Reilly, and Angle all make money by spewing their violent rhetoric. Crazy people have always been lurking in the shadows and now money has enticed and emboldened them.
Arizona laws encourage carrying guns and gun possession. The the violent drug cartels are purchasing their deadly weapons from American gun runners and AZ has a lot of open dessert between Mexico and the US.
This could be determined by the authorities to be an act of domestic terrorism and I think the Patriot Act applies to domestic terrorism. Then there is the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
No snow here, Muse. Just got back from walkies and it’s in the upper 30s. Are you at a higher altitude?
It’s been snowing here all night, but it’s fine powdery snow, so it only amounts to a couple inches so far. I’ll go out there with my broomo and get rid of it in a little while.
gummitch, it stopped shortly after it started. The sky is starting to get dark again. Maybe.. And gummitch, if you want to be a hedgehog as well that isn’t a problem to have two people choose the same Critter..
TP is unreadable already this morning. Disgusting.
Jon Kyl of Arizona calls the Arizona’s remarks yesterday “inappropriate“.. No surprises there.
Why can’t they just take this information and apply a dose of introspection.. Maybe look at their own actions and words, and see if there is anything positive they can do that might make a difference?
That’s a mighty steep order, muse.
If Kyl and his kind could manage introspection, they’d be Democrats.
So is that the difference between a ‘liberal’ brain and a ‘conservative’ brain? Self-reflection? Ability to adapt to the circumstances and change your behavior, apply corrections? Are the simply inflexible, incapable of taking responsibility for their actions?
You know, I read John Dean’s book on “Conservatives Without Conscience“, and it opened my eyes, shocking the heck out of me, but this is whole other level.
I know a cowboy in Arizona, met him in the late nineties while on a camping trip in the Hannagan Meadow vicinity. With few exception, we ran into him year-by-year after that, mainly because our summer schedules came together and crossed in mid-July. He was a wrangler by profession, also had a hunting guide service. Guns were his passion, though not in a bad or nutty way. He loved to hunt. But every summer prior to the presidential election — 2000, 2004, and 2008, he would invariably say to all who would listen that if the democrat — Gore, Kerry, and Obama — were to get elected, “they’ll be comin’ for our guns.” And no one could talk him out of that position; he was totally convinced that the ONLY things on the Democratic Party’s agenda were to come for ‘our’ guns, and to take ‘our’ money and give it to ‘n****rs. The summer of 2008 he was particularly mean-spirited about it, given that Obama was a n****r.
He lives in Tucson, is a resident of Giffords’ District. He had no time for her at all. She wanted to ‘come for our guns.’
There is, truly, a substantial chunk of AZ that believes much the same thing. The gun culture there is larger than anywhere else I’ve ever lived; they fancy themselves still to be the defining remnant of the wild west, and the only people who don’t have guns are ‘tree-huggin’ sonsabitches, them nuts and berries people. Goddamned Democrats.’ Plus, the NRA tells them regularly that the Democrats are coming for their guns.
It’s a sickness there. Yesterday was no surprise, none at all, to me. Oh, and Giffords’ other fault — ‘she’s a goddamned woman.’
Frugal, that is despicable.
frugal – you are right. The “Democrats will take our guns away” is a myth that keeps on going and going, like the Energizer battery.
If the shooter had been a Muslim, there would have been massive mosque burnings starting yesterday. Instead, we have the usual suspects defending hate speech on the media. Ruppert Murdock supports this rhetoric because it boosts his revenues. This is about money. We need to remind people that a nine year old girl was killed along with 5 other bystanders because of hate speech. I’ve had enough of this and I won’t accept their excuses.
I just opened up a bag of Yogi Tea and the tag read “Live for each other”. It would be nice if we did.
What does the asterick mean next to posters’ names?
Cats, Critters have asterisks next to our names. Seems to be a feature on this template.
Light snow just starting here, 5-10 inches predicted. A flock of Canadian geese nearby appear to be talking it over.
Cats, yes, money, always money. The loudest and most virulent hate-talkers have made fortunes simply by spewing hate. Money is, i.m.c.o., the taproot of domestic terrorism, the sap of American politics. When I was young, country always came first. Then something happened — around Nov. 1980, if memory serves, and all of a sudden ‘country’ as ‘government’ became evil, and money emerged as the new national driving force.
And now, as the nation dies, it’s the power money buys that counts. No more nanny state, no siree. “I’ve got mine, screw you” is the new American mantra. We won’t last long, I’m thinking.
That’s when I started noticing the decline of this country, frugal — in the 80s.
I kept waiting for so long for us to get back to “normal,” until I realized this was the new normal, and I was out of the loop. Not that I mind being out of that disgusting loop.
The asterisks indicate Administrators. Actually ‘original hands’.
I can’t remember for sure which individual it is that I’ve voted against more than any other individual alive or dead, whether it’s John McCain or John Kyl, but for sure it’s one of the two. Of the two, however (and this isn’t an easy choice, but I do think I’m right), Kyl is the most despicable, the current earthly manifestation of a motherless turd. McCain at least had some brighter moments a decade or more ago, Kyl has been a dim bulb from the onset. Never could figure how he ever got more than one vote, his own.
I did enjoy watching Kyl eat his START lunch last month, though. That was fun.
Rand Paul makes a ‘medical diagnosis’ of the shooter.. Then says.. “But the weapons don’t kill people, it’s the individual that kills — that killed these people.”
Only problem with that thinking.. If you take that semi-automatic weapon away from that young man, NOBODY would be dead or fighting for their lives right now in that Tuscon hospital… By the way, Rand Paul is a “self-certified” opthamologist..
Rand “Dr Frist” Paul is a really stupid individual. The only thing he knows is his ideology.
Senator Lamar Alexander is telling the media that it is irresponsible for them to even talk about Sarah Palin’s crosshairs-map.. The GOP is out in force applying pressure to the press to put them on the defensive. I hope the media doesn’t back down. Now is precisely the time to discuss this dangerous rhetoric—as a nation—and say collectively we won’t stand for it any more.
Excellent post by Amanda Terkel on HuffPost today. Palin is trying to back away from the crosshairs map, saying it had nothing to do with violence or guns, yet read this:
This is precisely WHY you have to be careful, more responsible with the rhetoric! You have no way of knowing who will take your words, take them to heart, stable of mind or not, and act on them. Weapons are far too easy to have access to these days. Extremely deadly weapons, far more deadly than even the police possess, that can kill dozens in a matter of seconds, that’s only purpose is to kill, available to anyone who wants to own them.. How logical or responsible is that as a nation… Why does anyone NEED that kind of weapon? Why can there not be some limits? Regular citizens aren’t allowed to have bombs and tanks. That is a clear boundary. Why can’t we limit guns sold to the population that only have the purpose of killing many in a short amount of time..
The rhetoric has to have some limits in tone. Time for taking responsibility to kick in. Words have consequences.
Our elected leaders HAVE to take the lead in this and set the right tone and example.
It is too easy to just blame it on the person. More needs to be discussed and acted on.
What? Not her “surveyor’s mark” list?
Zooey,
You forget McCarthy, Goldwater and Nixon as well as the Kennedy’s and MLK (for being assassinated).
Walt, I didn’t forget any of them, although I was a child when they were assassinated or disgraced. I’m only referring to my own perspective of when things changed in this country.
I think, Zooey, that the first stone of the groundwork for the 80’s ‘disease’ was laid on November 22, 1963 with the assassination of JFK. I remain convinced that the event was a well-planned black op, in effect a coup d’etat. One of the characters in my book explains it all in some detail, and boy does he make sense!
Frugal, it is described in great detail in the book I am currently reading as well. Every page continues to amaze me.. The book is:
“Family of Secrets” by Russ Baker. I can’t recommend this book enough… (Read the editorial reviews on this page).
Was hoping to find a video but there doesn’t seem to be (I’ll keep looking) – the physicians were realistic, thoughtful and thorough. (I had turned on my local news just as they switched to the hospital interview)
Congresswoman Giffords Able to Communicate with Doctors Through Commands
Guns eliminate:
Patience, logic and progress…
“Civilization?”
All of the world’s love,
Embracing the innocent;
Undone by a gun
That “guns don’t kill, people kill” is one of the most oft-repeated (usually if not exclusively by right wingers) and most inherently silly/stupid lines in the English language. I know — my gun nut cousin uses it all the time.
Muse, thanks for the book referral. I’d not heard of it, but it sounds very interesting. I’ll be curious to see how closely it matches with the thesis of my (totally fictional) character/friend Nick Dixon.
There’s another book on the topic, one written by Fletcher Prouty called “JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy.” Prouty was there, in many ways, and privy to a whole lot of info that had a hard time ever seeing the light of day. But the case Prouty makes is very compelling.
In any case, that’s the day — November 22, 1963, that the United States changed. Despite the misleading and bland conclusions in the Warren Report.
Palin, and the like, can ‘scrub’ all they want but it has been saved for posterity.
To paraphrase zxbe, mean what you post and post what you mean – no need to delete.
That’s just it – their rhetoric, to them, always sounds righteous so there would be no need to walk it back…until a tragedy such as AZ.
ebb, the fact that Palin is scrubbing her website speaks far more loudly than if she had left it alone.
The repugnant party is not a forward thinking group.
When they are allowed to skip, skirt and generally be held blameless the saying ‘actions have consequences’ is meaningless. The murdoch/koch cabal will bail their asses out – not this time.
Not this time.
Zooey – it would be really, really sad if we were to find out it was her PR person who thought of that. I just don’t see Palin’s thought process being that evolved.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the PR person suggested it and Palin asked ‘why?’
———-
Did you PIN arrive?
ebb, Palin is a beast with amazing survival skills, but little common sense.
Her first impulse would be to hide everything, and think about it later. Naturally, staff and PR people will take all the blame for the scrubbing. Palin will claim she would have left everything as it was, because she has nothing to be ashamed of.
Yep, the PIN arrived yesterday. Finally!!
Hooda, – How’s your Mom doing today?
Remember how our government went after the bank accounts and the charities that served as front organizations for the foreign terrorists? Who is funding these domestic terrorist organizations? Where is their money coming from? Are we told to look at the decreasing number of Mexicans crossing the border so that we don’t look at the gun runners crossing into Mexico? Would all this violence directed at Congressional members and judges and the President be a diversionary measure? Is it a “look over there while I take from over here”? Just asking.
RUCerious, please check in with the Zookeeper, ASAP!!
tp_test@hotmail.com
Thanks.
This post mentioning John Boehner on the Daily Dish was kind of troubling, and basically is exactly what this whole mess is about..
Afternoon all. I had to take a break. Yesterday’s tragic incident was bad enough but I just couldn’t stand to listen to the spin coming from the Right. Using gunsights on a website and saying, it was just a metphor. Gah.
Ebb, Mom is doing well. I visited with her this AM and she is spitting carpet tacks over this shooting.
That’s when I started noticing the decline of this country, frugal — in the 80s.
Wouldn’t that being during the Reagan years when Ronnie told everyone that government is the enemy?
Cats, it was more that I noticed people becoming more materialistic and hard. They wanted the lifestyle of the rich and famous on an office worker’s salary, and didn’t mind living that dream on a credit card. Things became more and more fake over the years, and people followed suit. Only later did I make the connection between the politics and decline of society.
I agree, Zooey. It was in the 80’s when the bank account became the measurement of success and patriotism. It also saw the increase of sex and violence in the media. We have become gradually inured to these things on a day-to-day basis.
Sarah Palin’s ‘Crosshairs’ Ad Dominates Gabrielle Giffords Debate
ABC News – John Berman – 53 minutes ago
In the stunned aftermath of the Tuscon massacre, Sarah Palin has found herself in the crosshairs of the ensuing political debate …
Aaaargh! Nothing like using a gun metaphor in describing the debate over the tragic shooting. Hello, MSM? Why not just come out an say someone should take a bazooka to the Tundra Tart?
That is just stunning cluelessness.
I had turned 21 exactly four weeks, to the day, prior to the Kennedy assassination. Shook me up. I was a third year college kid at the time, and watched with trepidation as LBJ immediately began reversing what appeared to be Kennedy’s policy of pulling out of the Nam while the pulling out was still possible. Then came August of 1964 and LBJ on TV telling about the (later shown to be completely bogus) Gulf of Tonkin incident, followed soon by his “request” that the Congress grant him the right to, in effect, escalate the “war.” My butt puckered on that one, because I knew I only had two semester deferments to go, that come May the draft board would be coming for me. (I escaped their hangman’s noose, but that’s another story).
Anyway, the war in the Nam, for me, proclaimed the beginning of America’s decline and fall, the end of her glory years. Then came Nixon, horror of horrors, who reached out to southern bigoted Dixiecrats, turned them into Republicans, and set the stage. Then there was massive inflation, Gerry Ford and his “WIN” buttons, four years of respite with Jimmy Carter, and finally, Reagan. Anyone who paid attention could watch it all happen as education funding was slashed, the government was redefined as the bad guy, the religious wingnuts clambered aboard, and the ship of state started to take on water thanks to gigantic tax cuts plus wildly growing deficits.
We’ve never gotten past that massive fuckup, and who knows if we ever will, thanks to the even more vicious excesses of Dubsy Bush, and the ever more gigantic deficits he created with his two wars, plus his tax cuts for the filth and the rich.
Nutshell: JFK was planning to pull all American “advisors” out of the Nam by Dec. 1964. No war. Uh oh. Enter the black op. Bang bang, JFK’s out of the picture and by Dec. 1964, the war is on, not off. Money money money profit profit profit. It set the course.
Oh, and can’t forget those two roadblocks to the war in the Nam, roadblocks that were having an effect in 1968: Martin Luther King Jr., also Robert F. Kennedy who, had he become President, would have stopped the war in its tracks. Bang. Bang. Two problems solved. Coup d’etat now complete. The filthy. rich. now, finally, on board and manning the wheel. 1980 — bingo. “Reconstruction” now underway, money trickling up. Etc.
Frugal, I agree. We are sitting in on the final act of a 50 year plan by corporate interests to control basically everything. If they can topple the US, it will be a long uphill battle to stop the greed. I’m afraid we may see a return of the gun as a means of pushing the agenda to climax.
I am with you frugal! That is exactly how I remember it. I also remember the McCarthy hearings and Goldwater’s takeover effort. The only reason we got to the Moon was because no one dared to usurp the Kennedy legend and a fear that the commies were going to outshine us.
Yeah, Hooda, it’s like a line I posted once on TP (I think it was there) — my proposal that if in, say, 2012 (or whenever), the Republicans maintain control in the House, retake the Senate and the White House that we change the national leader’s title from President to The Sheriff of Nottingham. It will soon prove to be a far better fit, I think.
Chairman of the World has a nice ring to it.
frugal, I do not know whether RFK would have pulled us out of SE Asia or not. Over the years I have seen too many politicians on which the Left projected their dreams only to be disappointed, and it’s all to rare that any president has walked away from a war.
Yep, Walt, I remember the McCarthy hearings too. Even watched some of them on our brand new (and first) 21″ TV! These days I have DVD’s of the Murrow/McCarthy feud; anyone who cares to see the REAL difference between the progressive mentality and the far right wingnut mentality should watch them (Netflix has ’em, a.i.r.). The contrasts were as stunning then as they are today.
Goldwater never bothered me that much. I lived in AZ then, and was impressed by his local accomplishments. He had basically led the movement in the early fifties to desegregate the Phoenix public schools, led the effort to desegregate the Arizona Air National Guard (of which he was a high-ranking member), also that he was highly respected by local Indian tribes, particularly both the Navajo and Hopi (who didn’t and still don’t get along all that well with each other). Goldwater’s ‘conservative’ philosophy was a far cry from what’s out there today; in fact, I think today he’d be a Democrat (he was accused by local Republicans of being a turncoat during the Clinton years, shortly before he died). To my mind his major mistake was the position he took on the 64 Civil Rights Act; even though it wasn’t based on personal racism, only on his opinion that it violated the Constitution in some strange way (ask Rand Paul, I guess), it came back to haunt him over the years. But then, he was the one who apparently convinced Nixon to either resign or be impeached, so maybe he made up for it.
As for the moon race, it was a done deal back then, mainly because Republicans hadn’t yet gotten their strangling hands on public education yet. That took Reagan to get it done; I’m not sure there’s much innovative capacity left in this country anymore, and it’s only going to get worse given the sorry state of things these days. No Child Left Behind, the Republican’s upcoming assault on making college affordable, etc. Republicans hate an educated “masses” because it usually voted Democratic.
I remember from my high school days an interesting meme that played relating something about the fear that the Kennedys were secretly trying to establish a dynasty of Catholic Leftist control of America. Two terms of Jack, two of Bobby, two of Teddy. Twenty four years of Kennedy presidents.
Of course the right wants to push this under the rug. While it may be that the acts of domestic terrorism are committed by highly mentally unstable individuals, rhetoric and suggestive imagery can push them over the fringe. It seems Loughter was attracted by the American Renaissance as well, and you would think that these conspiracy theories that fringe groups like these subscribe to would be left on the fringes…However, there is a portion of the establishment that likes to take these fringe theories in order to make a grand conspiracy that threatens to destroy the country. Every time you look at these fringe groups, you hear of X taking over our country, invading, destroying, whatever…
So when you hear that Progressivism is a disease, needs to be stamped out, when you hear that liberals want to destroy this country, it may not resonate as much with a sane person who sees the ballot box as the remedy or whatever…but to an individual who believes that government forces are out to get him by being the grammar police or whatever…
JFK was in process of tuning down what was a police action starting in 1963. He wanted to be out by the November elections. Budget lines were being drawn at the time of his assassination. My Dad was high up in the defense industry (In Texas!) and was looking for a position in the civilian sector when JFK was shot. Afterwards, he shifted back to plan A.
In the book I referenced earlier, there are more pieces to the JFK puzzle, more names and threads to the spiderweb that I’d never heard of or considered before, more layers to consider. Pieces this guy put together that positively stunned me. It was quite unnerving.. He makes an amazing case with lots of research, evidence and his own interviews. He connected a lot of dots, many that others missed all together.
I don’t know either, Gummitch, no one really does. But it was guaranteed that Nixon would not, and that if the race came down to Nixon vs. Humphrey, Nixon would probably win because of Humphrey’s LBJ VP baggage. RFK was the only other realistic option, and after he won the California Primary the odds of him getting the nomination over Humphrey were considered to be very very good. My own guess is that the “black hole” had that figured, and that there were plans in place in case RFK won in California. Yet one more ‘single shooter’ political assassination, this time by an immigrant Arab who apparently cannot, even today, remember anything of the event until Rosey Grier sat on him and disarmed him that fateful night. No memory, no real trial, life sentence. My first thought even back then was MKULTRA, a CIA operation with which I was vaguely familiar, thanks to earlier employment, also with some of the shit they were up to regarding forced memory loss. I think some of what they were up to can be googled today, including a mind-bending drug I worked on in 1965, now declassified, named BZ. Vicious stuff. Also found it curious that the lab I worked in had a jar of “EA-1729” locked in a cabinet in an always locked lab. It was LSD. Research projects funded by the CIA.
Anyway, would Bobby have gotten us out? I dunno, but he was the only reasonable alternative. History has revealed, in fact, that LBJ learned Nixon was using agents, pre-election 1968, to convince the S.Vietnamese to NOT go along with LBJ’s overtures re bombing halts, stuff like that. Nixon said they’d get a far better deal from him come January. LBJ mentioned the word ‘treason’ once in association with what Nixon was up to, but never publicly accused. Unfortunately.
Well, enough of a ramble. Suffice to say, however, that that era was incredibly complex, and the desire on the part of _________ to continue the war was of driving import. Again, RFK was the only real possibility, but he was assassinated well before the fact.
Yes, Walt, there was a National Security Action Memo, I think it was called, issued by JFK in October 1963, a month before he was shot, that called for a late 1963 pullout of a thousand or so advisors, to be followed by a complete pullout in 1964. LBJ rescinded that memo even before Kennedy was buried.
Hooda, yeah, I remember that anti-Catholic meme too. After the 1960 elections I visited with my then ancient Aunt Hilda, in her nineties, a Lutheran who was petrified that men with guns would make her go to Catholic mass. Fear tactics: they almost always work, and they work real well. Too well.
Oh, the horror of going to Catholic mass…Why is it that the imagery of government agents presumably with guns repeats over and over again?
Muse: I agree on the dot connecting thingee, also am fully convinced that part of the Warren Commission’s responsibility was to lose dots, not connect them. They were good at what they did. Interesting that one of the Commission’s members was Allen Dulles, former CIA Director, canned by JFK who swore, after the Bay of Pigs, that he’d ‘break the CIA into a thousand pieces,’ a task he’d begin undertaking (by turning various projects over to the military via the joint chiefs, i.i.r.c.). Many of the dots are safe in the Black Hole these days, but still there are enough to offer at least reasonable doubt. Not to mention a sub-plot for a novel. 🙂
Several CIA operatives, it’s worth noting, from Operation Mongoose (Bay of Pigs) turned up in many places over the years, Some were, in fact, reported spotted in both Dallas 1963 and in the Ambassador Hotel in LA, June 5 1968. Dots? Could be.
Oh, and the Mayor of Dallas in 1963, Charles Cabell, just happened to be Allen Dulles’s chief deputy in the CIA before JFK canned Dulles.
Dots.
Kitty: “Oh, the horror of going to Catholic mass…Why is it that the imagery of government agents presumably with guns repeats over and over again?”
One word answer: FEAR.
Fear works especially if you put the intended targets of the fear on the defensive…a sick way to justify in their own minds their state and any actions they might commit…
If you look at the Turner Diaries, the impetus for the underground guerrilla movement was the government taking away the guns from citizens…The talk about the gays and supposedly our wish to recruit or infect children…the KKK supposedly defending the “flower of Southern womenhood” against African-American men…
Some things never change, don’t they?
Oh, the horror of going to Catholic mass…
This was pre-Vatican II.
What puzzles me is group think, that circumstance where either fear or hatred of an entire group defines the passion of the moment. Whether the group be Irish (old Boston), or Blacks, or Native Americans (“Injuns”), or Asians (“Japs,” “Chinamen,” “Gooks,”), or Mexicans (“Wetbacks”), Gays, etc., the techniques remain the same. Hate or fear them ALL, because they’re ALL out to get YOU. What is so terribly difficult about judging people one at a time? I’ve long asked myself.
And then came the Republicans, not the Republicans of yore who very often brought a lot to the table, but instead today’s version which brings little or nothing. Or less, even. I know a handful of them, but rational political discussion is impossible. And so often, if it begins at all it begins with Obama being a n****r and how horrible that is. Then I leave, because we’re right back on the group hate edge again, and I refuse to participate.
Gummitch: “Oh, the horror of going to Catholic mass… This was pre-Vatican II.”
Remains in effect. For me. 🙂
I was raised Catholic and I still find them scary but nowhere near as scary as the fundies.
The universe runs on fear.
It takes an enlightened mind.
Tto see past the machinations of those selling the fear.
I don’t think so Vinyl. Mankind runs on fear. The universe knows it doesn’t have to.
False
Expectations
Appearing
Real
Raven, you just made me think of this song:
The big fear if Kennedy became President? That the Pope would then step in and take over the country.
My folks, being good Catholics at the time, campaigned vigorously for JFK. There were ‘KoffeeKlatches”; rallies; and rosaries being said all the time.
Every night we’d have to kneel, before a statue of the blessed mother [ who was in a glass case on the mantle] and pray for JFK to be President!
———————-
Reagan was a fu(k-up for eight years (1967 – 1975) as governor of CA.
This nation does not learn and voted him in for eight more to run the entire asylum…
George W. was a phuckup his whole life and he was president for 8 years.
I believe Nixon was the first presidency to have been bought by big business.
Reagan was a wholly owned subsidiary, and by time of the Bushes it had become business as usual.
Or in Sarah Palin’s crowd, it’s:
Fabricate
Exaggerate
Attack
Repeat
Raven: “I believe Nixon was the first presidency to have been bought by big business.”
I agree. LBJ bowed to several wishes, plus, he gave ‘them’ the war in Vietnam, but he really wasn’t parcel to the undercurrents. Nixon, though, as the first post-coup president, was the first one who really had the backing of undercurrent political power, esp. including his major sponsor, California’s notorious Bohemian Grove (traditionally linked philosophically and practically to the east coast’s Yale U. Skull and Bones). In that broad sense, Nixon was the “business establishment’s” candidate even though he was not officially parcel to either organization. But still, he was owned, lock, stock, and barrel. And he kept the war going for another four years. Profit, profit, profit. Watergate, resignation, and Ford interrupted, as did Carter in 1976. But then came the regrouping behind Reagan (and the attendant political chicanery — remember how the hostages in Iran weren’t released till Reagan’s inauguration day?).
Since then, it’s been Katy bar the door to the point where now, as Raven notes, corruption is “business as usual.” And of course, the corporate rewards continue there inflow to corporate coffers — courtesy of legislative and judicial (Citizens United) activism — much like floodwaters occasionally build behind desert dams during the rainy season.
Frugal, I often wonder why LBJ didn’t run in 68. He could have won handily. Lots of reasons not to like that man but under it all, I think he was a good one. Just not good enough.
I’ve wondered the same, Hooda. I guess it could have been everything from the dark turn the war took in the couple of months prior to his Sherman Statement (i.e. the Tet Offensive which changed the entire dynamic of the war) to, possibly, an ‘instruction’ of some sort, from the black hole for example, to stand down in order to get their true lackey (Nixon) into the Oval Office. I also suspect that his support for and signature upon the Civil Rights Act didn’t win him any friends in Low Places. It is an interesting question, though, and one that can be made to fit comfortably into a great many scenarios beyond the most abject and/or simple ones.
I just checked TP. It’s still a fucking shitstorm.
What is it? Do they smell the blood in the air?
I think it takes a sort of Adolf Eichmann disposition and mentality to be a troll these days. Plus, TP doesn’t seem to give a shit how bad it gets. Nice combination.
If people would just stop falling for every little troll provocation…. Geez.
I think you’re right hooda,
The universe doesn’t know the difference,
But mankind sure makes that distinction
I toss the occasional dart when their ass is in clear view, but other than that, today I’ve not bothered trying to discuss anything on TP. There’s no need and it’s not worth the effort.
I do much the same, frugal, but less and less these days. If I’m smacking a troll, it’s usually because I have some aggression I need to work off. But even then it’s hardly worth the trouble.
I thought I’d make a comment about the topic of the top thread, but realized the whole thing had devolved into “You’re stupid. Nuh uh, you are!”
hooda,
LBJ did not run in ’68 because he was as likely to carry the South as carry a Sherman tank on his back while walking on water. His civil rights record made him damaged goods.
TP is a troll’s wet dream. Sad watching people swallow the bait and be easily manipulated by those who are there only for desperate attention and to disrupt.
Hello, Badmoodman!! Welcome to the Zoo!
Count me in…as swallowing the bait…although I’m probably testing my patience there in a futile attempt to educate…
Refuge.
<—— Btw, wtf is that icon about?
I think that the trolls have decided to make a frontal assault on TP in order to turn others away from the blog.
TP is getting too much exposure on the media to be ignored any longer by those opposing a liberal, but fair, political arena.
And can you reply to posts in this format?
Badmoodman, we usually just address each other by name. Nested commenting is such a pain in the ass.
Ugh, nice gravatar?
Ahhh, icon fixed. Heh.
Carrion.
just use “
” I guess
badmodman,
Like this?:
re: badmoodman
January 9, 2011 7:10 pm
that should be the HTML code for blockquote
A very warm and troll-free welcome to the badmoodman!
Zooey, are you saying that “nested commenting” is a euphemism for a sexual act? 😉
/snark
Pachy, I am a lady! 😛
“A very warm and troll-free welcome to the badmoodman!”
Thank you. Tell me, in this sandbox, are “*drink,*” “much,” and “sparky” allowed?
Isn’t it amazing my resemblance to Karl?
Those are forbidden words, Badmoodman. I’m surprised you didn’t dissolve into a pile of dust.
Isn’t it amazing my resemblance to Karl?
No wonder you’re in a bad mood…
I was trying to be polite and not ask if you were, in fact, a relative of the KKKarl man.
badmoodman,
I believe Marx had a beard.
The last I looked at TP there were over 1800 comments on that thread from yesterday. My computer doesn’t do well with that many comments. I find it interesting that the Saint’s few comments have met with approval, enough to double his likes from all previous posts.
I think that TP has the reich-wingers worried, thus the massive invasion of trolls. I know that Koch has funded “basic training” in social media for the “patriotic grass-root” groups they’ve created. They have a long way to go, given thecomments from the imbecilic hoard that invaded TP after the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords.
Ohhhh, so the Saint is one of the popular crowd now, huh? 😉
ebb, what happens in the cesspool, stays in the cesspool. Heh.
For you Z
Rawr, I luvs me some Tom Jones.
Thanks, Pachy. I bet you know what all the ladies like.
pachy, that’s a pretty amazing count as TP went down for several hours last night.
Z, please delete my comment.
Which, ebb? 7:47 pm?
about the ‘drink’ – cesspool
It’s gone, ebb, but I don’t think it was offensive in any way.
A hearty welcome to Badmoodman.
7:44p
Hey badmoodman, welcome to the Zoo!
I was that pesky noseeum back when I bothered with TP.
Sorry for not reading the entire thread; someone may have already posted this. But better to be redundant than to let this one pass.
Trolls pule about how terrible and the meanies at TP are for editing their comments. I mean we all know Reichwhiner sites would never do that, right?
Right? <– (Get it, "right"? … )
The following needs to be bookmarked and shared on a regular basis:
http://obamalondon.blogspot.com/2011/01/inexplicable-edits-on-sarah-palins.html
Well, I guess there’s a badmood rising. Welcome to the Zoo!
(Wait, I did hear that right, didn’t I?)
How about this comment from that blog, Gary?
Wow. That is just insane!
Of course, a dead little girl is the most terrifying political threat in the world to someone like Quitter Palin. She will likely understand this far too late…
The staggering visciousness of the people at Palin’s and other Reichwhiner locales really does not admit of description. But that link provides a small, instrumental piece of well documented evidence that I believe we would all do well to keep in our tool boxes.
Good idea, Gary.
I posted a copy of something my son posted on Palin’s FB last night. It was literally gone in seconds, and he was blocked.
oh, I went to the spam bin….for saying
As stated last evening, that apple didn’t fall far from the mother tree, Zooey!
In response to you posting your son’s comment to the Palin blog.
Let’s see if this goes through.
WP must have blipped, ebb. You’re not in the spam bin.
But thanks for saying that, ebb!! 🙂
Truth is always flattering, Zooey! It was a great comment by the young Zooey offspring!
Sweetheart, bitter heart
Now I can tell you apart
Cozy and cold
Put the horse before the cart
“When politicians stop speaking out for fear of death, then we all lose out.”
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/americas/2011/01/09/two-very-different-politicians-two-very-similar-shootings
ebb,
I saw your comment in yesterday’s open.
ebb,
I found it:
Submitted on 2011/01/08 at 10:01 pm
It’s in the January 8th open thread.
Thanks, WaltTheMan
I am off to the sack. Pet vulture says I need my beauty rest.
ebb,
At the zoo, we aim to please. Cheers
Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/sarah-palin/3405336/Sarah-Palin-blamed-by-the-US-Secret-Service-for-death-threats-against-Barack-Obama.html?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d2a2a998935ffeb,0
Things haven’t changed in two years – she’s still the shrill that kills…
Thanks for posting that article, pachy.
*Christina Greene*
Can we please spell her last name correctly in the above? GREEN.
Imagine the bad karma these individual now have from the blood which is directly on their hands. If they have a heart & soul, they will realize that they are responsible for inciting this murderer to violence.
Words have consequences and metaphors kill.
Peace & Happy 2011 to all of the Zoo denizens!!
“lux et veritas” … you knew it was me all the time??
Sarah Palin’s now infamous target list is the ONLY thing she will now be known for….the murder of innocents.
Sarah Palin: The Shriller Killer
Nice to see you, veritas!
Nice to see you, too, Zooey!
It IS time to stand up to the violent bullies in our body politic. Their time has now come and gone. Palin is as capricious and irresponsible with her incendiary rhetoric as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh (maybe they can have a manage a trois?) – three violent peas in a pod! Of course, they know they’re culpable for the climate which home-grew this murdered; hell, they’ve worked 24/7 to help bring it about with gun metaphors and violent imagery. It’s time to tell Miss Demagogue to go back to the Tundra where she belongs. She no longer has a place on our national stage. Every time she opens her mouth, it’s full of guns and violence and now blood libel. This cinches what we all knew from the start – that she is a capricious, uneducated, irresponsible political pyromaniac. She commits crimes by proxy and then runs away laughing and playing the victim card. Her MO is so full of psychiatric pathology that I’m shocked that it’s taken so long for the average person to recognize it. Today, I believe they do. If Faux News intends to continue to prop her up, then we will go after ALL of the sponsors which Fox has – not just the ones propping up Glenn Beck. We’ve decimated Beck’s sponsors and we have the power to do it to any corporation who sponsors “hate speech” in this country. If they don’t have enough of a conscience and heart to do it themselves, then we will have to hit them where it hurts….in their pockets!
Let’s just sit back and observe the next step which the Tea Party extremists take. If Fox continues to prop them up along with Simple Sarah and provide a platform for the continuation of hateful rhetoric, then we will need to organize a national boycott of Fox’s “Sponsors of Hate”.
It’s great to be back, despite the lunatic trolls who still spread their feces on TP! I’m learning the ‘new ropes’ though….LOL.