Good Morning Conflucians!!
First up, and clearly the most important news, the Packers won last night. And didn’t just win, but won 48 – 21 against the Falcons:
Behind a nearly flawless performance by quarterback Aaron Rodgers, the Green Bay Packers pounded the Atlanta Falcons, 48-21, at the Georgia Dome to earn a place in the N.F.C. championship game.
Rodgers completed 31 of 36 passes for 366 yards and 3 touchdowns, and also ran for a score. He led Green Bay on one long scoring drive after another, putting on an offensive clinic and controlling the game. The Packers gained 442 yards over all, and did not have to punt once.
“This just feels so good right now,” Rodgers said. “To be able to put up that kind of a performance as an offense is incredible.”
They will travel to face the winner of Sunday’s second N.F.C. playoff game, between the Bears and the Seahawks, next Sunday.
Oh yea. A classic line up of the oldest of rivalries would be the Packers against the Bears. We’ll know tomorrow who it will be.
There is continuing good news for Congresswoman Gifforts:
We continue to hear about hopeful signs of recovery from Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. On Saturday morning, doctors removed her breathing tube, freeing the Congresswoman from the ventilator. At the same time, they inserted a tracheotomy tube into her windpipe to protect her airways and inserted a feeding tube from outside the skin into the stomach to help provide nutrition.
The Congresswoman’s progress to date is remarkable. She is opening her eyes and moving her limbs on both sides of her body. This is significant since brain injuries often leave a patient with impaired function on the opposite side of the body from where the brain was damaged. In the Congresswoman’s case the bullet struck the left side of her brain which, as well as controlling the muscles on the right side of the body, controls the speech centers. We don’t yet know how the shooting may have affected the Congresswoman’s ability to speak. Now that doctors removed the breathing tube, they hope to determine what, if any speech rehabilitation will be necessary.
There is a long way to go of course. And there’s a lot they don’t know about speech and of course finer motor control, and indeed full brain function. But things look pretty hopeful.
One sad outcome of the tragic shooting and this time very likely from the venomous, over the top, reactions from the media, one of the victims of the shooting has been arrested for making threats at a tea party event:
A man who was wounded in last week’s shooting rampage in Tucson was apprehended by authorities Saturday after he allegedly threatened a “tea party” activist at a town hall meeting of victims and eyewitnesses of the attack.
James Eric Fuller, a 63-year-old Democratic activist, was arrested after shouting “You’re dead!” at Tucson Tea Party spokesman Trent Humphries, said Pima County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jason Ogan. Fuller was shot in the knee and back Jan. 8 when a gunman opened fire, killing six and injuring 13, including Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Fuller, a disabled veteran and former campaign volunteer for Giffords, was charged with making threats, intimidation and disorderly conduct and was involuntarily committed for a psychiatric evaluation, Ogan said.
In an interview with Democracy Now on Thursday, Fuller linked the shooting to conservative leaders associated with the tea party, including Sarah Palin, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck and Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle. “It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target,” Fuller said.
This looks pretty directly linked to the hyperbole and crazy over the top reactions and finger pointing. The media does have influence. Mission Accomplished DailyKos and MSNBC. Of course that doesn’t mean the over the top right should not be held accountable for their insanity and bad taste. As we’ve said before, they’re professionals at this stuff. Don’t kid yourselves. In this case it’s very likely this recent victim was overwhelmed with the tragic event and not in his right mind. Of course now we’ll get to measure the quality and class of the right by how they react to this. Will they say this guy was mislead and overwhelmed by what happened and not necessarily influenced by the media? Not likely. Let even more escalation of the insanity continue.
Here’s my .02 on the matter. This is all Media Kabuki. All theater. Occasionally crazies do crazy things. We of course expect some investigations into who and why, and the usual documentaries and even made for TV movies on the event. In the first case we had a real crazy apolitical person do something horrible. But it seems clear it wasn’t about Giffords politics per se. In the second case I’d guess we have someone overwhelmed by his own injury and the violent event and the loss and injury of friends, and likely with a bit of prodding from the nuts at MSNBC and others, the guy snapped and made a threat. There is no indication he would ever carry out the treat. The emotion is understandable if you’re injured/dazed and mislead with such emotion. But what do we see on both sides of this tragedy. Finger pointing, yelling, over the top, crazy foaming at the mouth about the evils of each side. And the result is more and more anger on each side from the troops. All noise and anger and yelling, keeping everyone focused on the other side as the enemy. Who benefits from that? What are we not talking about and doing something about while we’re all distracted by this theater? I’m not necessarily saying this is carefully organized by both sides to keep the rabble fighting each other. Divide and conquer. It might just have resulted naturally from events, and now the media seeing a good thing is flaming the fires. Step back and take a look at the landscape and think about that some more. Neither party nor the media is your friend. Don’t listen to them. Step back and analyze.
In other news, Tunisia just had a bit of a revolution, as noted here yesterday, and now there’s some hints about the state of Egypt:
Moments after Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was ejected from his palace, tweets began flying across a region that was at once enthralled and appalled by the specter of an Arab leader being overthrown by his own people.
“Today Ben Ali, tomorrow Hosni Mubarak,” gloated one tweeter, referring to Egypt’s long-serving president. “Come on Mubarak, take a hint and follow the lead,” urged another.
And prominent Egyptian blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy observed: “Revolutions are like dominos.”
They follow up with:
On Saturday, a day after Tunisia’s president was forced into exile by massive street demonstrations, the Middle East was still reeling, with calls for copycat protests reverberating across the Internet, in cafes and on street corners as far afield as Jordan and Yemen. For the first time in the history of a part of the world long calcified by autocratic rule, a dictator had been forced from office by a popular revolt, and it was all broadcast live on television
Leaders braced for the fallout. Elites analyzed the potential for the revolution to spread. Ordinary people celebrated, marveled, gossiped and wondered: Will it happen here? What can we do? And, perhaps most important, who will be next?
More on the Tunisian event can be found here. Oh yea, more middle east instability. Just what we all needed. It’s a scary world out there. Perhaps the politicians, pundits, and media could cool their engines and stop playing games for a few minutes.
In science news, it appears smoking does more damage and sooner than we thought. It starts to damage your DNA between 15 and 30 minutes from the first time you smoke:
The researchers looked at the level of chemicals linked with cancer, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), in 12 patients after smoking.
A PAH was added to the subject’s cigarettes, which was then modified by the body and turned into another chemical which damages DNA and has been linked with cancer.
The research shows this process only took between 15 and 30 minutes to take place.
[...]
Martin Dockrell, director of policy and research at Ash (Action on Smoking and Health), said: “Almost everybody knows that smoking can cause lung cancer.
“The chilling thing about this research is that it shows just how early the very first stages of that process begin – not in 30 years but within 30 minutes of a single cigarette for every subject in the study.
Time to put down those smokes. And don’t pick them up if you haven’t.
In some fun but strange news, and just when you thought things seemed to be going backwards politically and economically, we could see wooly mammoths walking the earth within 4 years:
If you thought “Jurassic Park” and the large, reconstructed skeletons seen in museums were the closest we’d ever come to seeing extinct creatures come to life, you might want to think again.
Akira Iritani, a professor at Kyoto University in Japan, is looking to resurrect the woolly mammoth now that a new cloning technique can make it possible. Not only is it possible, but the woolly mammoth could also be reborn as soon as four years from now.
[...]
In 2008, Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama from the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology developed a cloning technique that allowed him to use the cells of a mouse that was frozen for 16 years to clone a new mouse. This technique has paved the way for new clone-related opportunities, and has inspired Iritani to resurrect the woolly mammoth.
Iritani plans to use this technique to pinpoint healthy nuclei within mammoth cells in order to extract and use them for cloning.
“Now that the technical problems have been overcome, all we need is a good sample of soft tissue from a frozen mammoth,” said Iritani.
I for one welcome our new Wooly Mammoth overlords. Well, someone had to say it.
That’s a bit of what’s in the news this morning. Chime in with what you’re reading.
Filed under: General, Morning News edition Tagged: | General, Morning Edition, news
On the media kabuki theater: it’s true, but the media is merely a symptom (see ABC reporting the death threat without mentioning the politics of the threatee).
In this very case, people seem to forget who really lit the fire of the finger pointing: the very sheriff who neglected to act on the complaints of death threats from the shooter – himself rabidly political (at one point he was quoting blogs)
I think if someone does a chicken/egg analysis on the parties/media here, will eventually arrive at the gamesters who fund the circus.
The system is so perfect, people hardly think of the puppet makers.
Well said NYS..
Word. And bravo!
GO PACK GO.
The game was very SWEET.
70 years! — before Pearl Harbor — since the last time that the Pack Attack met Duh Bearsss in a postseason playoff. I actually am rooting for the Bears today, for the one and only time in my life, because I have to head to Chicago this week and would so enjoy the fun of that always fun city going even more wild.
That is, I’m all for Bears fans having as sweet a day today as we did yesterday, so that they can go wild all the way to Soldiers Field next weekend. But then, may they slink home very, very unhappy.
You got your wish as the Bears won.
Good game.
But the Pack will be the leaders next week.
Cheers.
I just heard on CNN about a woman who is a democratic activist, threatening tea party members with death. So now there are two of them.
I think I heard this right, but keep tuned. We should hear more about her later today.
ooops, never mind. She was a woman who ran for the republican nomination and when she filed a discrimination charge, and it was dismissed. She threatened the judges.
To quote one of Obama’s mentors: there they go again…
The Tucson Witch Hunt
Great. So the left overreacts and overreaches and it only accomplishes two things: fostering sympathy for its opponents and nurturing a false equivalence within the body politic. Well done, Democrats.
Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support.
You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand.
Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/opinion/15blow.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Where can I get one of those wooly mammoths? I’d like to carry it around in my purse as a novelty like Paris Hilton.
p.s. Where can I get a really really big purse?
Somewhere on Rodeo Drive will be a gigantic purse
Maybe they can create a miniature version of a mammoth which likes to cuddle with cats…
djmm
I don’t think Mr. Fuller was threatening the T.P. guy at all–as I understand things, he pointed his cell phone at the guy and yelled “you’re dead,” as a way, I assume, of illustrating what might happen to anyone if firearms are not restricted. Anyway, the tea partiers seem to be pretty good at issuing threats themselves, so, if you couple Mr. Fuller’s horrible experience with that, what’s so hard to understand about his angry response?
ok. But the police at the event DID. Mr Fuller has been arrested and “involuntarily committed” for observation. Perhaps he needed the counseling after the traumatic anyway, and that’s a good thing.
But understand, that several Tea Party leaders in the Tucson area have already been receiving multiple death threats, which the police knew about. Quite possible the police were on high alert to watch for the “sources” of the other threats.
Any detail about the source of the threats against the Tea Party people? Some story is out about a GOP party official resigning apparently fearing threats FROM the Right.
I think Pima County is now doing what they should have done 3 years ago. The Sheriff is still trying to say that Loughner was only “acting goofy” and there was no reason to even hold him for observation.
Do I think that Fuller was going to kill the founder of the Tucson Tea Party? Probably not, but if he is suffering some kind of PTSD, he might need an evaluation. It would also be a good idea for ABC not to engage in this king of disaster porn exactly seven days after the attack,
Many times, PTSD victims don’t even realize they need help. If nothing else comes from his being arrested than helping him get some kind of counseling/comforting, then it’s a good thing, I think.
If this man had a PTSD after he was shot, arresting him is going to fuel the fire. I wasn’t there, but I hope that the police aren’t trying to make an example out of a man already victimized.
Can’t you see the inherent contradiction in your argument? If Palin & Tea Party (note the grand generalization here too) use violent imagery and language, they are somehow directly responsible for the Giffords attack. If this man yells a direct threat at someone, it’s not the same thing?
Huh?
Dude, forget politics — it is never ok to yell “You’re dead” to someone else regardless of what has happened to you/what you are talking about. What happened to Mr. Fuller is an explanation for his behavior, but not an excuse. People today seem to have a hard time distinguishing between the two.
Gah! Please fix the block quote for me — pretty please?
Done!!
Plus, HONK!
“…it is never ok to yell “You’re dead” to someone else”
Thank you!! Why is common sense so uncommon these days?
djmm
The version I read is even more mild.
Fuller wanted to talk about gun control. The other person said it was too soon to talk about that. (Which might or might not have been ‘baiting’ Fuller.)
Fuller pointed a camera at him and shouted “You’re dead.”
Rather than a threat, this might be just a common piece of anti-gun rhetoric: to show that IF this had been a gun, you’d be dead, therefore gun control is important. If it’s this easy to bring a camera into this meeting, it would be equally easy to bring a gun in.
It’s good that the police put him in custody for mental examination, because iirc this will go on his record and prevent him passing a background check if he ever wants to buy a gun. The police may be over-reacting because of their failure to do this when Loughner made threats.
The last successful popular uprising against a dictatorship in the Middle East was in Iran in 1979 …
That worked out well.
I read in an early report on the Fuller incident that the man he threatened was baiting him. The other man was a very outspoken gun rights enthusiast. If this was the case it sheds a slightly different light on the incident and points out the how omission of some facts can slant the perception of the incident. I would also like to see any writings or public statements by Fuller before he was shot to see if he had a predisposition to this or if it was a one time incident brought on by stress and being baited.
Uppity Woman posted a story with link on Fuller which may show that I was all wet about him in my earlier post.
I think it was caught on video for ABC so we may all know for sure.
Christianne Amanpour claims it wasn’t clear. The threat apparently happened after the taping when most or all of the cameras were off
Bummer. It seems like the KGUN-TV reporter thought it was pretty clear, as did quite a few of the audience. I’m not surprised that ABC missed it though
Regardless of what happen, I don’t blame the guy for the threat. He was just shot in that horrible tragedy. I can understand the emotion. And he’s partly right, the tea party and their “leaders” and media have said some very irresponsible things. And I blame the people on the “other side” (of course they’re not really on the other side) for jumping and feeding the fire of late.
It’s sad to see. And if he was baited into it like that, that’s very sad. When you see someone in that much pain and conflict, you don’t play with them and bait them. You help them.
This doesn’t really meet my definition of baiting
ABC really should have had second and third thoughts about doing this town meeting show so close to the event. Amanpour must need ratings pretty bad.
She does. Her show is doing horribly, and for good reason.
Agree. Lotta people calling for ABC to bring back Jake Tapper.
I’m not sure how advocating for gun rights, which the guy has always done, is construed as personally “baiting” Fuller. Regardless, I think uppitywoman summed it up pretty well in her initial post on this:
I’m tired of uselessly sorting through “fault” and grievance. Can we the people just pull the damn car over, reach back, and smack ALL of them?
I wish!
As a parent, there came a point when “He started it! No, she started it!” was no longer even relevant to me.
I don’t care. Grow the fuck up and STOP IT. NOW.
Sorry, but I think you’re falling into a trap here. Remember “A lie can travel the world while the Truth is still trying to get his boots on.”
1. Start a false accusation. Shout it till people are tired of the subject.
2. By the time a truthful person has found out the facts, everyone is tired of the subject and won’t listen to the defense.
But this also supposes that there hasn’t been volatile political rhetoric since the beginning of time. Read Thomas Paine. People are only bent out of shape because it is a threat to Obama’s reelection. They are doing what they have to do to silence any opposition. Have we so quickly forgotten being called rac*sts at every turn? Where do you draw the line between free speech and censorship? Very slippery slope, and with the Overlords in charge, giving them ANY excuse to manipulate, intimidate and silence is very dangerous IMHO. If that argument was worthy, then it would have to extend to the efforts to curb all violent language and imagery in music, movies, and TV. Where does it end?
Great news about Gabby. We can all take some comfort from these reports.
Thanks, Dandy!
First of all, Go Steelers!
Secondly, while I don’t always agree with Larry Johnson, espcially regarding Plame and Wilson, I did find his post this morning very interesting.
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2011/01/16/obamacrats-and-the-chicago-way/#more-55482
And, thirdly, I have spent a lot of time the past two weeks, probably more than I should, but that’s what it takes apparently, scouring as many blogs and news sources as I can to monitor dialogue and conversations about vitriolic behavior and language. Without a doubt, the most evil spewing that I have been able to detect comes from the left, not the right. Mention “Tea Party” and the left goes berserk. As an Independent, I have attended three Tea Party events here in New Mexico and I found them to be informative and friendly….never a racist word or sign (only in one instance and that turned out to be a troll) and never any violent language or outrageous behavior. The discussion was always about smaller government and more fiscal responsibility. Maybe it’s just New Mexico.
In talking with a friend the other day, he informed me how violent and aggressive the Tea Party people were in NM and I asked how he knew this….a friend told him. I asked if he had ever attended an event and the answer was “no”. So much of what is going on is “hearsay” and innuendo. It’s very sad. I also spent considerable time going over all available footage and photos of the so-called congressional “spitting and name calling event” from last year. I could not find anything close to confirming that those gentleman were spit on or called “nigger”….nothing! The only evidence is that “they heard it” and “they were spit on”…..and, thus, and sadly so, the power of words.
Is it worse to be called “nigger” or to accuse someone of calling you that when they did not? Once a word is “spoken” it is taken as fact….and so this present situation we are in is beginning more and more to resembe a contemporary Tower of Babble”! No one can understand what anyone is saying anymore.
Well, there’s your problem, you’re taking in too much media.
By the way, there’s nothing independent about the Tea Party. It was created and funded by movement conservatives. That’s not spin. That’s proven fact.
Just thought you should know.
Excuse me, but I did not say that the Tea Party was independent…you either misunderstood what I said or misread it. I said “I” am an independent. I believe in certain liberal points of view and certain conserviative points of view. My point, once again, is that as an Independent I believe in a smaller federal government and more fiscal responsibility at all government levels. Does the Democratic Party espouse this?….NO! Does the Republican Pary espouse this?….maybe. Does the Tea Party espouse this? Yes. It is a curious situation, and, in my mind, neither of the mainstream parties is goin to win in 2012 without the independent voter. Fact of the matter is, none of the current politcal parties are “independent”…all parties are subjec to funding of “movement” adherents”. I made the point the other day when someone on your site mentioned that Obama was scheduled to go to NYC to speak to a fund-raiser group. I asked who was scheduled to attend and got vague responses. Well look into who are the NYC bundlers, as I have, and they area all party operatives and large bundlers, many with Chicago ties….a number of who have already received ambassadorships and other government emoluments
Also, I disagree with your second point, one can never stop taking in information….both sides tend to “distort” facts…call it lying if you want….but you have to keep digging and keep digging…or just believe in your own point of view….which may, in fact, not have all the facts.
I believe in a smaller federal government
That is a major tenet of the conservative movement. We liberals are for universal health care. That’s big government. That’s either single payer — most likely managed by we the people, i.e., government — or some mixed solution like Germany — which still means large government involvement.
I believe in a smaller federal government
That is a major tenet of the conservative movement
I USED to believe that until W created the DHS – the biggest jobs program in American history. The fact that it dovetailed with curtailing Constitutional rights was a bonus for him.
I don’t believe there is an iota of difference between either party anymore. It is all moneymoneymoney and powerpowerpower and hang every one not in the position to pay for that power.
Ann
I don’t believe in a “smaller federal government” at all. To me that’s a recipe for corruption and graft.
If something is a government’s responsibility (streets&roads, healthCare, SpaceFlight, TaxAdministration, etc) Then Do NOT outsource it …. Keep it under government adminstration and control.
Rebuild the civil service class — make government service a proud profession again.
When we outsource those tasks then we lose control of their budgets. and too much of our tax money goes to salaries and waste.
Yeah, what Katiebird says.
We could make government smaller by dismantling social security. That would make it a smidge smaller. Or we could make it smaller by stopping the stupid war in Iraq. Oh, but wait, the whole point of that war was to destabilize and already unstable area of the world with important natural resources. Bravo, bushies! Make it so we can’t extricate ourselves without bringing down the whole oil market.
Still, if Republicans were serious about smaller government, they could stop the war. We spend more on national security than any other budget item.
As a matter of fact, I could swear that government is smaller with respect to the things I actually care about the most.
I pay a lot in fees to every private concern theses days from bankers to toll operators to currency exchangers to the guy who plows the private road that I live on despite the fact that if I lived in a regular single family home and not a townhouse, my roads would be plowed by the outrageous taxes I already pay to the township.
But I digress. Republicans have nothing to say about smaller government that I want to hear. I like public schools, good roads, safe bridges, reasonable college tuitions, affordable, fair healthcare and a poverty free retirement. When they figure out how to shrink the rest of government to give me those things, I’ll vote for them. Since that has not been their behavior in decades, they’re full of shit and I am entitled to treat them like the liars and misleaders they are,
It’s actually impossible to tell how big the government is because of the huge amount of outsourcing that goes on. There is a huge shadow government that nobody has a handle on, probably at least as big as the known government. IIRC the privatization was Al Gore’s project, but IMO it’s time to go the other direction for a while. One thing hard to monitor in the private sector is fair hiring practices; it’s much easier to see for instance how many female employees are in a government department and how their wages and job titles correspond to male employees.
I’m not sure we need to be bringing back the wooly mammoth with the effects of global warming already clearly manifest. On the other hand, this technology seems to offer hope for preserving species that are currently threatened with extinction. I’d like to see samples taken from every healthy tiger, red wolf, Florida panther, endangered whale, golden-cheeked warbler, etc., we can get our hands on.
Like a really tiny Noah’s Ark
Agreed. (Maybe they can find a frozen passenger pigeon.)
djmm
According to twitter, the right believes in UFOs more than the left. Seems to be one of the memes for the day. The higher you place on this list, the more likely you are to believe in UFOs. Can’t vouch for credibility of research but it is getting wide circulation and it shows liberals are more grounded.
It looks like this is all based on internet polls (reports referencing # of “users”), so I wouldn’t put all that much stock in it. Plus I find belief in aliens much more credible than, say, many liberals’ belief that Obama is The One.
The week of that interview began with the House passing the health care bill on Sunday. Within hours, on Monday morning, vandals smashed the front door of Giffords’s office in Tucson. The Palin “target” map (and the accompanying Twitter dictum to “RELOAD”) went up on Tuesday, just one day after that vandalism — timing that was at best tone-deaf and at worst nastily provocative. Not just Giffords, but at least three other of the 20 members of Congress on the Palin map were also hit with vandalism or death threats.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/opinion/16rich.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
But of course we know for sure there was absolutely no connection because,… because, …wasn’t there some study done about children and video games that proves provocative political rhetoric never gets acted on by the loyal troops?…
After saying all week that Gifford’s door was smashed because of that target map, now we find it happened before the map went up? Isn’t that special.
It’ way past time to stop pushing this meme, unless the Left enjoys quicksand.
Hey, Palin has total mind control over her supporters.
And she has become the national scapegoat.
She can also travel through time.
Except for the small detail that no one ever said a door was smashed because of the target map.
And “target map”? A Palin staffer said it wasn’t meant to be the crosshairs of a gun, but rather a “surveyer’s symboll. Palin’s “don’t retreat, instead– reload” thing is probably a surveying slogan too.
Your post said it was a “target” map. And a lot of people were pointing to that smashed door. History will not be rewritten.
The first part of the post was a direct quotation from the opinion piece. It was meant to be in blockquotes. Note also the target/surveyor’s-symbol/avocado-with-toothpicks cartoon that goes with the opinion piece.
WHO was pointing to the smashed door? This is the first I heard of a previous attack on her office. Link?
Well, this is the first time I’ve seen that detail about the date of the vandalism and the date of the map going up.
As for survey marks, a more silly excuse is what the Dem Campaign Committee used for their bullseye map: that it was not threatening because it recalled the Target store logo.
I’d be surprised if Palin’s graphic mark wasn’t chosen to recall gunsights to fit in with her gun metaphors and her pro-gun policies. But that’s a long way from calling for assassination. (She must have thought assassination very unlikely or she wouldn’t have, er, put herself in the line of fire this way.)
As to ‘surveyor’s marks’, that’s literally true. A real gunsight has short bars along the center line. A Democratic candidate used a real one over the face of his opponent, full size and realistic, on a campaign video a while back. (I’ve seen a lot of comments suggesting that Palin’s map put her symbol over a face or a name, but that’s not true.)
If she only used crosses, she’d probably be accused (again) of anti-Semitism.
The gun that got dropped during one of her town halls happened before the office incident. The “shoot a M-16 with Jessie Kelly” event happened after both those incidents. We had had 2 cross-hairs on our state. Two on Tucson area. Grijalva is “South Tucson” district. Giffords Tucson. Both Pima County for the most part of Pima County boundaries. Grijalva has probably received more than her but we won’t know all that and how many there have been until the records of police reports start coming out. I am now quite sure, one would hope so anyway, that the national news will start reporting them. Tucson pretty surrounds South Tucson so we all consider it all one big Tucson.
Sorry, meant to type 3 cross-hairs. 2 however were focused on Tucson area.
And sorry again, meant to reference the death threats that Grijalva and Giffords (as well as other of our city officials have received. One of our Public Defenders gets them a lot.)
Oh, and they were taken as “cross-hairs” and discussed and commented as such before the killings, meaning well before Palin has now spoken to tell us they are surveyor marks. I just think it would have been good to let us all know that before now when she had the opportunity to let us know that when it was discussed before the elections and in the local and national eye. Anyone know if she issued a twit saying they were surveyor marks back then?
The “surveyor mark” thing was a staffer, not Palin herself.
Apparently the crosshairs graphic came first, then Palin’s “don’t retreat, reload” tweet linked to it.
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/blogs/palin-watch/8205-palin-staffer-calls-using-tragedy-to-score-political-points-qobsceneq-
The NYT piece I linked to earlier has that link and much more; I don’t have time to chase them all down myself, but it looks like the guy has done his homework. Here’s the NYT link again:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/opinion/16rich.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Bullshit, nijma. Stop defending this map. It is indefensible in every way and unbelievable as well.
I would advise you to distance yourself from campaign materials like this map and all other over the top right wing rhetoric while you are here at this blog. If you want to continue your apologia of the right wing’s dehumanizing behavior towards liberals over th past twenty years, plea do it somewhere else.
And that goes for The rest of you right leaning commenters.
Don’t go away mad. Just go away.
There are other items on dandy tigers post that are worth commenting on. Find another topic or leave.
I
are you playing stupid for some reason? Sorry if you are not, but I am sensing that you are playing a game of some sort.
Palin never said they were surveyors marks, some one else did.
In any case gun metaphors are hardly unique to Palin or the rights. They are not a suggestion that people be shot and more that Obama meant to shoot people when he said “if they bring a knife we bring a gun”.
@RD, what makes you think I am defending Palin’s map? I am not.
http://camelsnose.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/this-is-just-wrong/
I have taken issue with Teh Clown on this too, on some of his recent late night threads, although I agree with him on most other things. I do not believe this type of public discourse is harmless, as he seems to.
Mary, seek affirmation elsewhere.
This is your last warning.
WTF?
I heard on Rachel Maddow that a conservative talk show host explicitly urged his listeners to break the glass windows of (Democratic?) congressional offices. (I did not hear who or maybe she did not give the name.)
I think Palin’s map is extremely bad judgment (as was the DLC map), but I don’t think it caused the breakage. There are a lot more hateful people on the air and there will be worse people running for president on the Republican ticket.
I am still hoping we get a primary challenger for the Democratic nomination.
djmm
A good question to ask would be, how many Congresspeople had offices vandalised who were NOT on the map, for comparison.
Also, similar stats based on the DLC’s bullseye map.
Although, even if there were none, 3 (well, 4 counting Giffords) is probably not statistically significant, I’d think.
what in heaven’s name are you talking about? The connection that some of us are denying is the connection between the target map and a lone nut case gunman who some people who knew him say was a LIBERAL.
If the target graphic went up after the vandalism, what connection exactly are you trying to make?
I’m not sure we’ll ever know if there is a connection. My guess is that there *is* one but that it’s more a matter of ambience than direct cause and effect. Also, there are a lot of people who don’t know what the he’ll they are these days. They like liberal programs but they also think Obama is the Antichrist, socialist, fascist dictator who wants to make them all gay. And these are the people who have never been diagnosed with a mental illness and carry out all normal functions of life in an admirable fashion. They simply can’t think straight.
You don’t know any more than I know. But There are some things we can not dismiss: the target was a politician, the state is frequently cited as the most poltically heated in terms of right wing sentiment, and the shooter’s own writings contain words that the right pushes quite frequently.
Do I think sarah’s map had something to do with lounghner’s actions? I don’t know but I can’t rule it out yet. But it doesn’t matter if it was influential or not. No politician, right or left, should ever make a map like that because even if it isn’t provoking, it is a metaphor for treating your opponents as nothing more than an animal to be hunted. And that’s a sentiment that no politician should be broadcasting because it too is dehumanizing.
Did the map cause giffords’ office to be vandalized? Maybe not. However, if you know that one of the people on your proposed map has been vandalized, in a state known for roiling, seething, over the top behavior, should you go ahead and publish the map with the crosshairs anyway? What would YOU do if you were palin? If you wouldn’t do it, why would you
let a pulic figure with huge visibility off the hook for
doing it?
I would not go so far as to say that both sides do it equally because up until 2008, the right was far and
away the biggest perpetrator of incendiary rhetoric and
behavior. But neither side should be exonerated and most certainly not the right.
What would be a better usage of our time is to stop trying to prove something you can’t prove and instead try proving what you can using available data. So, I challenge anyone who is still debating this issue to gather data. Find out how many media outlets in each state, particularly radio, describe themselves as conservative, independent, liberal, socialist, etc. You can’t do any correlations until you have data. So, start with radio. Then, we’ll add other descriptors. Then we can find how many legislators have reported attacks on themselves or their property and we can also plot the geography of these incidences and the political affiliations of the legislators. Then, we can get a program that does something like PLS and anova and look at the data in some reasonable, scientific fashion. Then, when we have all of that data and can show the correlations and factors leading to potential threats, we’ll present it.
Then, I want all of you right wingers to STFU.
Deal?
right winger? I am about as liberal as I can get without falling off the left side of the democratic platform. My problem with everyone getting hysterical over the gun metaphors and the map is that the language of politics and campaigning is and always has been full of gun, battle and target metaphors and the left is getting loony over the whole thing and making asses of themselves. Being part of the left , that embarrasses me and it makes me despair over ever moving the country left again. The American people don’t like people who claim victim-hood when there is none. People don’t vote for cry babies.
There is no connection between Palin and that sick paranoid young man and trying to make a connection is every bit as ugly, more ugly and hateful than a very common place campaign graphic Palin used on her site. And this is all starting to remind me of the character assassination the obama folks did to the Clintons and the rest of us. I have no respect for those kind of politics.
“I have no respect for those kind of politics.”
Me neither, and I’ve been a proud Lefty since before RD was born (and have the FBI file to prove it).
Incidentally, it was the radicals of the late 60s who began the “demonization” of the term Liberal–more proof, as if any were needed, that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the extremes on both sides of the political scale.
I am about as liberal as I can get without falling off the left side of the democratic platform.
Me too. Clintonista since the 90s, did pro-Hillary sites starting 2007, kicked out of DU etc then from TM for not going Obama (he’s too far Right).
Forgot to say I supported Coakley against that guy from the Whatchamacallit Party. Glad to see this blog isn’t as far Right as it looked at that time.
No one has been trying to make a connection (except for Jane Fonda and some guy on Facebook). In fact, the reports I have seen have been very careful to say no one knows about this particular case.
But the right-wingers are going to keep repeating it, and some people will believe it.
The bully claims to be a victim.
Well, I think those who claim that there is absolutely no connection or correlation or even the merest soupçon of causality have an obligation to the rest of us to prove it. There’s plenty of data out there. Go get it, project some latent structures on it and see what you’ve got.
Yeah, right. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about right wingers it’s that they are desperately afraid of evidence and even if they were witnesses to an event where the shooter made a public announcement that Mitch McConnel made him do it, the right wing wouldn’t believe it.
So, what exactly is the point of arguing this over and over and over again?? I’m never going to let the right or the Obama campaign off the hook for their dehumanizing behavior and the dehumanizers will never admit they have ever done anything wrong. They are just vibrantly exercising America’s enduring strength or some such focus group tested meme du jour.
Go away, right wing apologists. Go Away.
what the hell? How about you provide some proof that there is a connection and then you can explain why you are calling people right wingers? Is this daily kos? Disagree and you must be a right winger?
Get some sleep, RD. You really, really need it.
I watched the Amanpour program this morning and I actually thought it was well done. It was cathartic as it gave the victims a chance to come together and tell their story. It also was uplifting because it highlighted the heroics of everyday people who were in a horrifying situation doing extraordinary things. Candy Crowley also had a really good program on CNN this morning that discussed in depth the state of mental health in this country. A conversation, I believe, should have been first on the minds of liberals, and should continue.
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/state.of.the.union/
This issue has been discussed locally by mental health professionals well before this incident. When Medicare starting getting cut a few months ago which is still on gong with more budget cuts to come (Brewer just announced the new budget cuts. It was reported on the front page of the paper yesterday.) People were concerned in the first wave of Medicaid cuts that Brewer made the day before the healthcare bill went through that this would affect care for the mentally ill. One of the things that got cut back then was group counseling services, which were often held at UMC (where Gifford’s is) and some of the drug (switching to the older drugs rather than newer brand name drugs.) There is a certain “obtuseness” as well as some of these discussions in Tucson before this incident, of course gun laws, since the legislature changed the gun laws to concealed no permit at the heat of 1070 (the new gun law went into affect at the end of July 2010) as well as the Medicaid cuts that affected our community. The “obtuseness” for example as I worded it (my opinion) has been felt heavily here for a while. For example, when the budget cuts were announced yesterday, there were more Medicare cuts as well as 20% cut to Universities and 47% to community colleges. UMC is of course “university” one trauma center left of two (one got closed already because of the cuts) so they will receive less money. Just seems kinda irresponsible to me, that to not reconsider the budget regarding education and Medicare cuts, at this particular time. To announce it right now, at this particular time just seems “obtuse”. It was sending out the message that mental health “services” will probably not be addressed. (Did not check for typos again.)
I agree. We need more funding for health care, which includes mental health care, now more than ever.
This is what is being said locally and watching the last portion of ABC shows reflects. When the self-described Tea Party Member was speaking, Fuller pointed his cell phone at him, muttered, “You’re Dead”. The man beside him in the front row, who was also one of the shooting victims, said something like, “Calm down”. This was all said fairly quietly. The Tea Party speaker did not notice, nor the ABC guy holding the mic for the speaker. On the ABC video, you can see a woman behind the Tea Party Member, move her head and look to the front. Very few people noticed anything. There were a few more questions. They ended the show, the show was nearing the end anyway. In the ABC video it shows people just walking out to leave, Fuller and the other people standing up, and the deputies came up to him. No scuffle or anything. They did not come to get him or anything after his initial comment. it was all kinda discrete. The man that had said something to him on the front row, told the deputies what Fuller had said. I’m sure there will be video soon enough, that gets hyped in a media frenzy too. The local news was doing a peace on the out pouring for support of Jared’s parents. People were going to there house to offer their support. Fuller was one of the people that was interviewed and shown on the local news. (Sorry. I didn’t check for typos or anything in writing this.)
It’s encouraging to hear that Loughner’s parents are getting support from the community. It’s clear they knew something had gone terribly wrong with their son and had no idea what to do about it or where to go for help.
Anyway, I will be on Johnwsmart show for an interview this Tucson to discuss all this as an almost 20 year resident of Tucson if anyone wants to listen in. I’m just trying to go around some of the boards now to give some info, now that all this is being discussed through “civil discourse” now that the national news is focusing on Tucson in particular rather than the MSMBC shows, some blogs, that have just pretty much focused on AZ as a whole in this last year.
Thanks for the heads up
Sorry, I meant this Tuesday. We are all still a bit frazzled around. I always have some excuse for all my typos