“I think it’s a very bad thing for Cantor to have done,” Trump said, “because I’ll tell you, people love this issue especially in the Republican Party. And there’s something to what we’re saying.” – Donald Trump
This is going to make the Tea Party Right and the 38% birther crowd that reportedly won’t vote for any candidate unless he or she believes in birtherism royally frustrated. Their gal betrayed them.
“As a former Secretary of State (sic), I do not support designating one person as the gatekeeper to the ballot for a candidate, which could lead to arbitrary or politically-motivated decisions,” Brewer wrote in her veto message to House Speaker Kirk Adams.
“In addition, I never imagined being presented with a bill that could require candidates for President (sic) of the greatest and most powerful nation on earth to submit their “early baptismal or circumcision certificates” among other records to the Arizona Secretary of State. This is a bridge too far,” Brewer wrote.
You’re guess is as good as mine why she brought up baptismal and circumcision.
Brewer also nixed guns in schools, citing that the bill didn’t define the “public right of way.”
Why can’t Republicans just say these ideas are crazy, because of the lack of merits? The so-called birther bill is about delegitimizing Pres. Obama, instead of taking him on through the issues. As for guns in school, the people who came up with that one are nuts, with a special side of crazy for the NRA, who is always somewhere in the picture.
Waaaaaaah—waaaaaaaaah–wah. The big bad AARP is beating us senseless with their huge numbers, so the Republican We’ll Show Them Report is out.
And Republican allies have come up with a scary title for AARP to rev up the Right: “AARP is the Death Star of American entitlements.” Through AARP the Right hopes to do a tricky bank shot over to Social Security and Medicare entitlement “reform,” also known as their get out the wingnut vote machine.
So they don’t call it “Hot Air” for nothing. However, Allahpundit’s squeal about AARP’s tax exempt status is very short-sighted. But hey, if the Right is coming for AARP on that score go for it. But let’s be consistent, shall we? Then the NRA should also be investigated for their 501 C 4 status. After all, it’s not like they aren’t pulling all sorts of shenanigans.
A “GOP Report.” Well, let’s get on this right away, Hot Air.
Supporters of the carve-out will note—correctly—that NRA cannot take corporate funds specifically to spend on elections; this would void its exemption. But, everyone in politics is familiar with the wink and the nod. Corporations can give general revenue funds which will then free up NRA’s copious individual donor money from their 4+ million members for spending on elections—money they would not have otherwise spent.
I’m not a member of AARP or the NRA. We’re gun owners, my husband an expert on firearms, but I wouldn’t get caught being a part of the NRA, because their notorious mission basically boils down to irresponsible pimping of the gun industry, without any thought to responsibility.
North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler, an NRA backer and conservative Democrat, proved to be pivotal to the NRA deal. Shuler was the first to offer an amendment to exempt the NRA and other nonprofits from the legislation, but that move drew objections from campaign watchdog groups.
“There were a number of concerns that the DISCLOSE Act could hinder or penalize the efforts of certain long-standing, member-driven organizations who have historically acted in good faith,” Shuler said…
The Right’s caterwauling about AARP is not only hypocritical, because their outrage is only toward an organization that’s big and effective, which they see as standing up for the health care law, ACA, but also because AARP has been investigated before, going back all the way to 1988.
A source who knows everything there is to know about tax status C 3, C 4, C 6 entities, including AARP, gave me a hand on understanding this stuff, because this subject is crazy complex. This headline going back to 1988 is a classic, but the article isn’t available online, so I’ve got a screen capture of it. The investigative piece that followed left nothing unturned.
A snippet of it is below:
Low dues bring prospects through the door, and the direct-mail maestros move in from there. AARP — which knows the names and addresses of more Americans than any other comparable organization in the U.S. — accounted for as much as 1.5% of the nonprofit third-class mail delivered last year. The volume of incoming mail is so massive that AARP has its own zip code: 20049. Some members report getting three pitch letters a month for AARP’s health insurance alone. The sell is a bit too hard for some. Mark Gilbert, 74, of Durham, N.C., quit AARP last year after eight years. ”They were always pushing some tour or insurance policy,” he says. ”Every week some fat packet would arrive promoting something. The insistence got to me.” The second wave in the marketing blitz is Modern Maturity and the AARP News Bulletin. In the most recent Modern Maturity, AARP and its commercial partners accounted for 35% of the paid advertising pages. (AARP also airs Modern Maturity Television, a weekly public-affairs show carried on 270 PBS channels.) Competing companies are not allowed to buy space in AARP publications, so members never find ads for any mutual funds, health insurance or mail-order pharmacy services other than AARP’s own. And despite a consumerist bent to many of AARP’s lobbying efforts, Modern Maturity publishing director Robert Wood says he cannot recall ever printing comparison-shopping articles that mentioned competitors. Says Wood: ”We aren’t Consumer Reports.” AARP’s other major marketing advantage is its nonprofit status. This does not mean that AARP cannot make money but rather that any earnings — called ”excess revenues” in nonprofit accounting jargon — must be spent to further the purposes of the association. AARP’s lawyers carefully construct each business agreement to ensure that no matter how great the proceeds to AARP, they remain tax-free. In recent years, large financial companies paid an average of 6.2% of their revenues in federal income taxes; applied to AARP’s business revenues, that percentage could yield taxes of more than $9 million. Instead, AARP paid no federal income taxes at all last year. The Internal Revenue Service generally allows a tax-exempt organization to avoid taxes on business income as long as the business is ”substantially related” to the group’s founding purpose. That permits AARP to keep a tax- free 4% ”administrative allowance” for collecting health insurance premiums and forwarding them to Prudential. Last year that fee came to $67 million. The tax exemption also applies to whatever interest the premiums earn while in AARP’s possession — $15 million in 1987. In its other businesses AARP typically receives a percentage of its partners’ gross revenues as royalties, which do not usually trigger any taxes for tax-exempt groups. The association last year brought in another $30 million tax-free this way. (That includes a small amount from the sale of 32 educational books, co-published by AARP and Scott Foresman & Co., which, like MONEY, is owned by Time Inc.) This strategy could be in jeopardy, however; a House Ways and Means subcommittee is expected to recommend that the tax break for royalty income be repealed. AARP’s nonprofit status qualifies its mailings for cut-rate postage. On average, AARP can churn out 74% more mail for the dollar than a for-profit, bulk-rate firm. The nonprofit postal rate is so low that the Postal Service loses an estimated $14 million a year serving AARP, a deficit made up by U.S. taxpayers. Less tangibly, nonprofit status lends AARP the aura of a charitable organization with purer motives than those of its competitors. As a result, AARP tends to inspire uncritical trust among its members. Paul Kerschner, AARP’s chief lobbyist from 1978 to 1983, recalls: ”The staff used to joke that the easiest way to become a millionaire would be to take out an ad in Modern Maturity saying, ‘AARP wants you to send me $100.’ ” Many AARP officials, like AARP members, tend to believe that their association holds to a higher standard than conventional corporations. Says former executive director Brickfield: ”AARP enters its ((commercial)) programs only after determining that they will be of special value to % members.” But it is not always possible to identify any special value to AARP’s programs. In some cases, in fact, more efficient for-profit competitors offer comparable services at lower prices. Nevertheless, AARP is unlikely to pull out of these programs. Even if the association were willing to forgo the income they produce, it is still bound by contracts with its business partners to continue offering all of its products, the mediocre as well as the excellent.
But let’s cut to the bone.
The Right wants an investigation of AARP for the same reasons it went after all the other groups that have members who support the Democratic Party. One of the most important organizations to women in this country, Planned Parenthood, is the latest. Now the Right wants to neuter an organization that aids the boomer crowd and senior citizens, because it’s working effectively for its members. AARP supports policy that its members support, not for the sake of helping itself, with all of the royalties it receives going back into their mission. This latest Republican target is about 2012 and elective cycle neutering of progressive interests, which is to further the lives of American citizens.
AARP is non-partisan, but they’re not stupid. There is no reason to only help one party over another, because their power comes from numbers not ideology and the only way you get numbers is to serve the most people, which isn’t going to happen if you push a political agenda over what’s good for the people you service.
That’s the reason Republicans also blew it trying to privatize Social Security. It wasn’t in the interest of the vast majority of people, so the Right lost trying to push their ideology.
Let’s just not pretend this is about anything other than politics. Otherwise let’s put the NRA and their massive money machine under a microscope too.
That high pitched scream you just heard is the soul of the Republican Party, which can’t survive without sucking on the NRA’s teat. Unfortunately, Democrats have also joined in on that party, which is why the DISCLOSE Act looks away from the NRA.
So, tomorrow the AARP folks will sit in front of Congress for a partisan tongue lashing and when it’s over they’ll go back to doing what they do best. Working for American people who benefit from power being in the numbers, not in pushing an ideology over what’s best for their lives.
It came very close for “Rawhide,” Pres. Reagan’s Secret Service code name.
A remarkable report from CBS News adds to the history of this day.
At 2:27 pm EST, thirty years ago today, Pres. Ronald Reagan was shot and critically wounded, though the American public didn’t know how grievously at the time.
Hinckley’s visits to Williamsburg also trigger notification to Sarah Brady, whose husband James, was critically wounded during the assassination attempt. James Brady was the White House Press Secretary at the time. Sarah Brady is an alumna of the College of William and Mary.
“Every time he gets out for a 10-day period,” Davis quoted Sarah Brady saying of Hinckley, “I get a call so I know to not go to Williamsburg then. I love going there. But I obviously don’t want to cross paths with John Hinckley.”
“If it hadn’t been for them, we would not have passed the Brady Law, and then the ban on assault weapons, and on cop-killer bullets…How many people are alive today because of Jim and Sarah Brady? How many? Countless.”
New audio recordings, which you can hear on the video above, reveal just how close Reagan came to having his life ended.
“I hope you’re all Republicans,” Reagan quipped with the GW trauma surgeons who saved his life. Their response: today we’re all Republicans.
The assassination attempt bonded the American people to Pres. Reagan, which is likely one reason why Reagan had no problem getting a second term, but more importantly, escaped impeachment hearings over Iran-Contra, a convoluted scheme which would have revealed real crimes and misdemeanors.
This story is incredible and shows who is actually the thug in Wisconsin’s union battle: Republicans.
An Indiana deputy prosecutor and Republican activist resigned Thursday after the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism uncovered an email to Gov. Scott Walker in which he suggested a fake attack on the governor to discredit union protesters.
Carlos F. Lam submitted his resignation shortly before the Center published a story quoting his Feb. 19 email, which praised Walker for standing up to unions but went on to say that the chaos in Wisconsin presented “a good opportunity for what’s called a ‘false flag’ operation.”
Perhaps Pres. Obama let Sec. of Labor Hilda Solis out for Women’s History Month.
But Sec. Solis finally, at long last, after waiting around forever, has come out from her previously undisclosed location inside the Obama bubble to write a post over at HuffingtonPost.
In hard times, we all understand the need for sacrifices. Scapegoating teachers, firefighters and bus drivers by taking away their basic rights is not going to solve any problems. This is a time to find ways to work together and forge compromise. Neither side will get everything it wants, and everyone should share in the sacrifice.
Collective bargaining — what my dad called sitting “at the table” — is a cornerstone of our democracy and our middle class. It shouldn’t be cast aside in hard times. It can and should be part of the solution. Just as my dad explained to me with those paper scraps at our kitchen table, the best solutions come from people sitting down at the table together.
Sitting down “at the table” is exactly what unions do, including in Wisconsin, to get their contracts. It’s the cornerstone of negotiating.
Speaker John Boehner and Republicans don’t understand this reality and that politicians have been involved in every single gain public sector unions have received. As unions begin to give back some of what they’ve won, Republicans ignore the concessions. Speaking to David Brody, Boehner offered a statement on why Republicans are making this fight, replete with NRA fueled gun language.
Speaker John Boehner: “It’s not just Wisconsin. It’s Ohio. It’s Indiana. You’re going to see these types of actions taken in a lot of states because the states are broke and over the last couple of years the Obama administration, the Democrat controlled Congress bailed out the states where they could avoid making the tough decisions. Well, there are no more bailouts coming from Washington. We’re broke. We’re broke! We don’t have money to dish out to the states so all these Governors are trying to find ways to balance their budgets, which they’re required to do. In some of these states you’ve got collective bargaining laws that are so weighted in favor of the public employees that there’s almost no bargaining. We’ve given them a machine gun and put it right at the heads of the local officials and they really have their hands tied. And I think what you’re seeing in these states is they’re trying to bring some balance to these negotiations that when you look at the pay of public employees today and you look at their retirement benefits they are way out of line with many other working Americans. So all of these Governors are going to have big challenges and it’s not just going to be the Governors. You’re going to see every political jurisdiction in America grapple with what do we need to do as opposed to what do we want to do. All of them are going to go through a very difficult period.”
The reason Pres. Obama weigh in at all is because of new polling on Independents that are critical to his reelection.
The reason Boehner weighed in as he did is because the fight in Wisconsin is not about the budget. It’s about knee-capping unions support for Democrats, hoping to take advantage of it in 2012.
The fact that the Obama administration finally let Sec. Solis speak out is novel, but unimpressive. She’s been nowhere in this fight. She has had no voice, no presence, because the Obama administration is giving her no power.
Can’t appear too partisan, too strong on a union issue, because some voter somewhere in some state that Pres. Obama needs for ’12 might not like it.
The Obama political era is represented by weakness at the top of the national party, with national Republicans in such calamitous disarray that they can’t find anyone strong and palatable to the broad center to take Obama on. That’s his good fortune.
As unions and state Democratic politicians stand up beside workers in Wisconsin, the national parties have never been weaker, with the celebrity presidency of Barack Obama relegated to a footnote, out of choice, in a historic union fight that could impact Democrats for a long time.
But she won’t, nobody on the Right will, because their NRA streak seems to be wider than their civic conscience.
Rachel Maddow covered this story last night, which caused quite a discussion in our house, as my husband is a gun expert and we are gun owners.
This is an issue on which Republicans and Democrats, Independents and political agnostics should agree. People who can’t pass simple background checks shouldn’t be able to buy a gun, no exceptions.
But yet, there isn’t common cause and common ground here, with the Right protecting the gunshows who allow access to illegal guns to people who have no business having them.
The undercover video above says it all, yet NRA members and the Right side of the gun-owning community seem to think that there is no problem with gun sellers winking and nodding to men who admit before they purchase a firearm that they couldn’t pass a background check. But not to worry, in Arizona it’s not needed.
Mayor Bloomberg has taken this issue on directly. Kroll, a global leader in business intelligence and investigations, visited the Crossroads of the West Gun Show in Phoenix, Arizona on January 23. Gunshow Undercover lays it out.
Gun owners should be able to agree that people who can’t withstand a simple background check should not have a firearm. Unfortunately, in our “don’t retreat, reload” NRA fueled reality, some gun owners actually think restrictions are an attack on their Second Amendment.
There has been an argument for a long time from righteous gun owners that if more people had guns the bad guys wouldn’t gain an inch. What this ignores is that there are a vast swath of individuals who simply do not want to own guns, which shouldn’t be a prerequisite for safety in the United States.
Yet how can any of us feel safe if states can make their own rules, not respect the need for a simple background check, and make sure gunshows are operating lawfully under federal statute? Of course, what none of this addresses is the number of private sales through local newspapers and other avenues, which are not policed.
Below are the results from the investigation into firearms sales at an Arizona gun show and they’re chilling.
Two Sellers Sold Guns to Undercover Buyers, Even After Buyers Said “I probably couldn’t pass a background check”
Previous Investigation Yields Major Changes
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today announced the results of a New York City undercover investigation of gun sales at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show in Phoenix, Arizona. The investigation proves on video how easy it is to obtain firearms with high capacity magazines at gun shows, even for those who tell sellers that they probably couldn’t pass a background check. A Glock pistol with a 33-round extended magazine, like the weapon used in Tucson, was legally purchased with no background check – exposing a dangerous gap in our existing federal gun laws. Two other semi-automatic pistols were purchased with no checks even after sellers were told by undercover buyers that they probably could not pass a background check; under federal law the sellers should have stopped the sale. The videos are available at: www.gunshowundercover.org. The Mayor also announced that the City’s first undercover investigation of gun shows had led to several major developments, including the seizure of 799 guns from a so-called “occasional seller” and improvements in policy at some gun shows.
“We have demonstrated how easy it is for anyone to buy a semiautomatic handgun and a high capacity magazine, no questions asked,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “This country must take two simple steps to stop more of the 34 murders that occur with guns every day: make every gun sale subject to a background check, and make sure the background check system has all the required records in it. Congress should act now, but gun show operators shouldn’t wait. They can do the right thing today by making sure that every gun sale at their shows is subject to a background check. Four of the seven gun shows we investigated in 2009 have agreed to make that reform, and there is no doubt it will save lives.”
Investigators Bought Glock in a Legal Sale with No Checks
On January 23, 2011, undercover investigators working for the City of New York attended the Crossroads of the World gun show in Phoenix. One investigator purchased a Glock 9 mm semiautomatic pistol without a background check. Because the gun dealer is a private seller and not a federally licensed firearms dealer, no background check was required and the transaction was apparently legal, assuming the seller was, in fact, an “occasional seller.” This gap in federal law that enables private sellers to sell guns without background checks is sometimes called the Gun Show Loophole because such sellers congregate at gun shows. The investigator also purchased 33-round extended magazines for the Glock from a separate seller – also legal because the 1994 law that banned such sales expired in 2004.
Gun shows have been found to be major sources of guns used in crimes. According to the ATF, 30 percent of guns involved in federal illegal gun trafficking investigations are connected to gun shows. Because no records are kept, guns sold by private sellers at gun shows become virtually untraceable.
Investigators Bought Two Other Guns with No Checks, Even After Undercover Buyers Said, “I Probably Couldn’t Pass a Background Check”
Two private sellers failed integrity tests by illegally selling guns to an undercover investigator. Each seller sold a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol, one Sig Sauer and one Smith & Wesson, to an undercover investigator even after he declared that he “probably couldn’t pass” a background check. That statement should have immediately stopped the sale because even though occasional sellers are not required to run background checks using the FBI database, it is a federal felony for them to sell guns to people they have reason to believe are prohibited purchasers.
Update from 2009 Undercover Gun Show Investigation: Reforms at Four of Seven Shows
In 2009, the City of New York conducted a similar investigation and documented problems at seven gun shows in three states. Investigators found private dealers who sold to those who said they could not pass a background check, including two sellers who failed at multiple shows. In total, 19 of the 30 private sellers approached in 2009 failed the test.
Since the 2009 investigation, four of the seven gun shows documented on video have changed their practices.
The operator of the Big Reno Show, and the owner of the venue, the Grand Sierra Resort and Casino, have each signed agreements with the City of New York agreeing to end no-background check gun sales. The Big Reno Show is one of the nation’s largest gun shows. It has 1,300 tables of exhibits, at the time of the investigation there were 120 private sellers at the show offering 1,700 guns for sale.
The operator of the Big Reno Show has also prevented any seller caught breaking the law in the undercover investigation from returning to the show. The agreement stipulates that all sales by private party sellers will be processed through licensed gun dealers who will perform background checks.
Bill Goodman’s Gun and Knife Shows promotes three of the seven shows visited by the City in 2009, they were held at the Hara Arena and Sharonville Convention Center in Ohio and at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds in Nashville. The promoter has ended no-background check sales at all 34 shows that he promotes.
In 2009, the City turned over all of its investigative materials on illegal sales to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF). One of the sellers caught on tape at the Big Reno gun show, Robert Daly, was the subject of an ATF search warrant in July 2010. When the warrant was executed at Daly’s home in Mesa, Arizona, ATF agents seized 799 guns. The Justice Department has charged him with illegally selling these guns at gun shows.
About the Investigation
A team of investigators supervised by the firm Kroll, a global leader in business intelligence and investigations, visited the Crossroads of the West Gun Show in Phoenix, Arizona on January 23. Every investigator who participated in the integrity tests was required to complete an intensive training program designed and administered by Kroll.
Congress needs to close the gun loopholes in the federal laws.
In his SOTU speech, Pres. Obama didn’t mention the challenge of keeping guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have access to them. He’s expected to do it sometime in the future. His leadership in getting federal laws tighter on basic safety measures put in place for the public is important, but won’t mean much if Democrats and Republicans who are gun owners don’t get involved.
Simple background checks on gun owners and people purchasing guns should be a federal mandate.
The Right, led by the NRA, but also by celebrity politicians like Sarah Palin, also play an important role in this story, but right now they’re sitting on the sidelines.
The flashback quote above from the Tea Party co-founder who was threatened yesterday was made after a gun was reportedly dropped by an attendee at a previous meet-up with Gabrielle Giffords.
How ironic the Right, who weren’t even bothered by a gun dropping at a Giffords event, and squealed violent hate speech rhetoric didn’t have an outcome after she was shot and almost mortally wounded, is now raising the roof about the latest example of offensively dangerous rhetoric that just last week they were saying doesn’t matter.
They can’t have it both ways.
So, now the Right is finally wailing about dangerous hate speech, but only because the hate speech has been focused on one of their own, though the real reason they’re talking about the incident is to use it against the Left.
Fuller’s hate speech should be condemned on all sides, as should the crosshairs targeting action and rhetoric of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman and Sharron Angle, but the Right can’t be bothered with consistency.
One can only imagine the Right’s reaction if one of their own had been targeted with crosshairs on a poster by a politician encouraging “don’t retreat, reload,” which ended up with one of those politicians shot and fighting for her life in the hospital, with others killed, including a young girl. All happening in a come “armed and dangerous” atmosphere egged on by powerful Tea Party politicians like Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachman.
From KGUN9-TV, the very channel name illustrative, but we are talking about Arizona.
Two things are clear from Saturday’s ABC News town hall meeting in Tucson. One: Tucsonans are eager to move forward and recover from last week’s horrible shooting rampage. And two: that process is going to be slow and painful. That latter point was driven home by the arrest of a shooting victim, who threatened a speaker during the taping of the program.
… On the front row was Kenneth Dorushka, who was shot shielding his wife from Loughner’s gunfire; and J. Eric Fuller, who was shot in the knee.
… That’s where the atmosphere turned tense. When Tucson Tea Party founder Trent Humphries rose to suggest that any conversation about gun control should be put off until after the funerals for all the victims, witnesses say Fuller became agitated. Two told KGUN9 News that finally, Fuller took a picture of Humphries, and said, “You’re dead.”
The threat from Fuller is inexcusable.
I wonder if it will shut up the “civility is censorship” lunatic fringe Right, the same crew who thought crosshairs “targeting” politicians wouldn’t have “consequences,” as Rep. Gabrielle Giffords herself warned.
Mr. Fuller, a 63-year-old disabled veteran, is a Giffords supporter, who when interviewed last week also had this to say about the Tea Party inciters. Via Democracy Now:
“It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target,” Fuller says. “Their wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled.”
America is hearing him now.
It’s very convenient for the Right to rise up on the dangerously unhinged death threat from Mr. Fuller, said in the light of day at an ABC News town hall in Tucson.
However, the Right has no credibility on calling out Fuller, because their indignation at his use of violent rhetoric only reared up when it was focused at one of their own and they’re using it only to attack the Left.
It’s all so predictable. The Right is nothing if not opportunistic and hypocritical.
On this day in history, January 16, 1547, Ivan the Terrible was crowned czar in Russia.
Here are some morning links:
~Remember that billion dollar, taxpayer-funded, high-tech security fence being built along the Arizona/N.M. border to keep people from entering illegally? Well, the Obama administration has canceled the project because it turns out it was yet one more taxpayer-funded boondoggle that wasn’t working as planned. The question is, what took so long to kill the project and do we get our money back?
~The U.S. government has slightly eased travel restrictions to Cuba. I wish they would completely rework our policy towards Cuba, it makes no sense to me given that we are more than happy to do business with oppressive communist governments when it suits our economic needs/desires.
~Sean Hannity has a brilliant foreign policy idea to help prevent rising gas prices: re-invade Iraq and Kuwait because those ungrateful sheiks need to repay us for their liberation, dammit!
~The balance of power has again shifted in Tunisia as Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, a close ally of the former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali (now in Saudi Arabia), stepped down and handed power to the current speaker of the Parliament, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Meanwhile, you can bet the farm that right now there is major anxiety in repressive regimes in the region as they watch the popular uprising unfold. Many are shocked and saying they didn’t think it was possible. The U.S. is also on shaky ground as we have long backed the repressive Tunisian regime for our own political expediency, a fact which has not gone unnoticed in the Arab world and the word they are using to describe our selective policy of democracy promotion in the Arab world (and even elsewhere): hypocrisy.
~Ok, this is important- the Jets v. Patriots playoff today. As a Bostonian I am rooting for the Pats (naturally) and I want it on record that I am sick of the Jets’ Rex Ryan’s smack talk.
~The Washington Note deconstructs the hype about China’s growing military might. It’s an interesting read.
~Never underestimate the power of the GOP to do everything in their power to stall progress. AmericaBlog Gay reported on Friday that Rep. Duncan Hunter plans to introduce legislation next week to stop the repeal of DADT and in so doing, undo the will of the American people.
~I really don’t think Charles Krauthammer gets it. It’s interesting how some on the right are so defensive and afraid of the implications of toning down the rhetoric. It probably has something to do with the fact that violent symbolism and reckless, irresponsible rhetoric has become their calling card, without which, their whole anti-government “brand” would be seriously diminished. Were some too quick to politicize the events in Arizona in the immediate aftermath? Yes. But lets keep in mind that part of the reason the debate instantly turned to the significance of the dangerous, gutter-level rhetoric that has become all too commonplace was because the Congresswoman who happened to have had an assassin’s bullet removed from her head had herself raised concerns over being a target on Sarah Palin’s infamous midterm hit-list. At the time, Giffords had called for more responsible debate and toning down the rhetoric. Is Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck or the Tea Party responsible for what the troubled Jared Loughner did? No. But is it really too much to ask to take this opportunity to step back and realize that our political opponents are not enemies or targets or traitors or evil?
~Robert Naiman makes an interesting comparison between the events in Tunisia and the potential for significant civil unrest in Haiti if their isn’t a new election there, one that actually reflects the will of the people.
~Sssshhhhh! We’re quietly extending the PATRIOT Act even though we know law enforcement is abusing it’s authority under the Act’s most controversial provisions. And yes, Obama will sign this one too despite campaign pledges to reform the Act so as to try to protect civil liberties.
~House Speaker Boehner turns down yet another Obama invite- this time to the State Dinner for China. So much for even the pretense of bipartisanship.
~In case you missed it, in a jaw-dropping editorial this week, the Washington Times defended Sarah Palin’s tone-deaf use of the phrase “blood libel” by saying “the latest round of an ongoing pogrom against conservative thinkers.” Yes, they said pogrom. Here is the Wikipedia definition of pogrom with some historical context, specifically as it has been applied to Jewish people, resulting in horrific violence. So, what loaded, totally inappropriate term will be used next to describe the victimhood of poor Sarah Palin? Genocide? Holocaust?
~I was actually watching this Chris Mathews episode the other night when the word “crackers” escaped the motormouth and I found myself almost instinctively recoiling and thinking “no he didn’t.”
~Rachel Maddow did what I thought was a really great segment about how the conventional wisdom on gun control has become radicalized over the past 5 or so years. You can see the video here. As someone who was taught to respect, and responsibly handle, guns at a young age because we had my father and grandfather’s rifles and handguns in the house, I think that reasonable restrictions on high capacity magazines and assault weapons does not trample rough-shod over Second Amendment rights. Maddow also points out the disturbing and extreme rhetoric of many in the GOP/Tea Party who have expressed that the primary purpose of the right to bear arms (without any limitation) is for the overthrow of the democratically-elected U.S. government, should they deem that necessary. On the other side of the coin, John Meacham, a gun owner himself, makes the argument that the Assault Weapon’s Ban is a reasonable restriction on gun ownership.
~The stuxnet worm that infected Iran’s nuclear facilities appears to have been a joint US-Israeli project according to today’s NYT. The article is a fascinating look at the ins and outs of cyber warfare and of course the unasked question is “what if we get hit with something like stuxnet by our enemies?
~Congresswoman Gabby Giffords continues to make good progress in her recovery. Doctors performed a tracheotomy on Saturday and she has apparently been weaned off the ventilator and is able to breath on her own.
~The referendum in Sudan came to a close on Saturday and results will not be available for some time. But there is still one big question mark- how will the issue of Abyei be resolved?
It would be one thing if the quote above had simply come from Rush Limbaugh. It’s quite another for his listeners to confirm it, which is what happened yesterday on his show, with Limbaugh wholeheartedly agreeing, amidst a defensive onslaught of talk radio babble that had the right-wing leader hailing Sarah Palin, while pronouncing her a victim.
After Palin dropped “blood libel” into the American dialogue on the Arizona terrorism tragedy, she’s been fighting for her political life even harder than she was when the crosshairs “targeting” signaling out Rep. Gabrielle Giffords sent Sarah fleeing into hiding. Since then, she’s not only sent a message she doesn’t plan to back down, but she’s betting she’s got Republican primary voters behind her, at least the ones she’ll need in the early states.
The Republican and Tea Party Right have decided to gamble on Pres. Obama’s “it did not” caveat on hate speech causing Loughner to snap, as well as some polling they feel bolsters America supposedly doesn’t care about the Right’s hate speech.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will deliver a keynote address to a gun convention later this month.
Palin (R) will speak to the Safari International Club (SCI) in Reno, Nev. on Saturday, Jan. 29, according to the group’s website. The organization bills itself as “the leader in protecting the freedom to hunt and promoting wildlife conservation worldwide.”
There’s a hint in Palin’s choice to do this address that she and her people think there has been overreaching in the criticism of her crosshairs targeting, as well as on her “blood libel” charge. That to back down would be a political catastrophe for Palin. So, in the spirit of the old Lee Atwater, attack, attack, attack it will be.
I’ve known quite a few hunters who were committed to “wildlife conservation worldwide,” with Sarah Palin’s actions to date, especially as governor, being the antithesis of what that means. A conservationist doesn’t use loopholes in federals laws to got wolf hunting from helicopters.
The comment on Rush’s show is the leading edge of where the Right stands today after the Arizona domestic terrorism tragedy. They’re not “retreating” from their rhetoric, they’re “reloading.”
That Rush and his audience, which can easily be said to be representative of the entire Right’s thinking, believes civility means you’re being censored reveals something stark about the campaign we’ll see waged going forward.
There’s been a lot of career obituary writing lately where Sarah Palin is concerned. Now, she may not run for president, but there’s absolutely no evidence, example A “blood libel,” example B her upcoming key address at the Nevada gun convention, that Palin is backing away from considering a presidential run. As I’ve written, it’s clear establishment Republicans are sending the message she cannot win, which hardly stops her from running. Democrats, including in the media, are saying the same thing, but also proclaiming she can’t win. This judgment is made not only prematurely, but through a very rosy picture of the Right and the base who votes in primaries.
Rep. Keith Ellison posits that Palin may have hit the end of her political ride. The announcement of Palin talking at a gun convention proves otherwise. It’s also wishful thinking from someone who hasn’t studied what drives the Right, which now has a majority in the House and, they think, the ultimate weapon to take it all home in 2012. What they call “Obamacare” and a campaign that won’t sound rabid as much as reasonable to many who are against the bill and want it repealed.
If Sarah Palin runs she can win the nomination. Can she win the presidency? I appreciate the rush to proclaim it impossible, but George W. Bush taught us even the incompetent and morally bankrupt can prevail in today’s scorched earth politics, from which the Right has no intention of retreating. But Sarah doesn’t think from the end, she thinks from the possible, taking on the immediate challenge and worrying about the future when it becomes today. Sarah Palin would make history with the nomination.
So, the clarion call has gone out far and wide. “Civility is censorship,” proclaimed by Rush Limbaugh and his talk radio audience, which is shared by Rush, Laura Ingraham, Larry Elder, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin and on and on, aided by their cable outlet Fox News.
This means that when Pres. Obama takes on the topic of civility in his State of the Union message all out political war will be proclaimed and 2012 will have begun.
It will take a lot more than Republicans and Democrats sitting next to each other to change our current trajectory.
Rep. Giffords is “definitely ‘there’,” her aide tells Brian Williams. She’s made “V” sign with her fingers, scratched her nose…
Pres. Obama will speak tonight from Arizona; word out that he will talk about the victims and the heroes.
Juxtaposed against this event is the arrest of a man threatening to kill Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott.
As for the ongoing controversy about Sarah Palin invoking “blood libel,” Politics Daily religion reporter weighs in. The way this day has gone the title is going to upset some people.
Palin’s use of the “blood libel” accusation was an example of overreach. The analogy is certainly in keeping with a growing trend among many conservatives to see themselves as an oppressed minority — just as the Jews have been throughout much of the last 2,000 years. But it can strike Jews as a kind of expropriation of their own painful history, and an attempt to make a false historical equivalency — Christian conservatives in 21st century America are not Jews in 12th century England.
“When Governor Palin learns that many Jews are pained by and take offense at the use of the term, we are sure that she will choose to retract her comment, apologize and make a less inflammatory choice of words,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, head of the left-leaning Jewish group J Street, said Wednesday.
Hank Sheinkopf, a Jewish New York-based Democratic political consultant, told Politico use of the term was “absolutely inappropriate.”
Even some conservatives were taken aback. Jennifer Rubin, who penned a lengthy critique of American Jewish antipathy to Palin in Commentary magazine a year ago, tweeted Wednesday morning that the “blood libel” usage shows she is “inflam[matory]” and “not serious.”
There’s been a lot of cable chatter about what tonight might mean for Pres. Obama. But right now it’s not for me.
I’m just overjoyed that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is fighting back and winning so far.
No one should be surprised that Andrew Breitbart would equate deserved criticism of former governor Sarah Palin with gang rape. This is the type of hate speech from the Right, especially towards women, that is common. Remember their depictions of Speaker Pelosi, Hillary Clinton before she became secretary of state?
“Instead of dialing down the rhetoric at this difficult moment, Sarah Palin chose to accuse others trying to sort out the meaning of this tragedy of somehow engaging in a ‘blood libel’ against her and others,” said David Harris, president of the National Democratic Jewish Council, in a statement. “This is of course a particularly heinous term for American Jews, given that the repeated fiction of blood libels are directly responsible for the murder of so many Jews across centuries — and given that blood libels are so directly intertwined with deeply ingrained anti-Semitism around the globe, even today.”
She is probably ignorant of its history as many people are of inflammatory expressions that get into our common culture’s vernacular. What it does indicate is something far sadder and of greater concern. Sarah Palin’s use of this term “blood libel” indicates that she sees herself as the victim this week. This is a profoundly distorted experience of reality that any sane person in this country from left to far right should see given that the true victims, the six Americans murdered have not yet even even been buried yet and fourteen other victims lie wounded in hospitals recovering.
Kula even wonders whether the phrase came to her because,
… at some level, unconsciously, she feels guilty in some way for what has happened. But this is so painful at an unconscious level that she has disassociated and lashed out accusing others of what is a deep self-judgment. This is sad, as she is not responsible at all for the shootings in Arizona. She is simply, along with all of us who have created her, responsible for the coarsening of our public culture at a time when we are facing historic challenges that cut to the very core of what America will be in the next period of history.
The victimhood mentality of Sarah Palin seems to be the only position, a permanent crouch, from which she can operate, so she can be prepared at any moment to pounce, to attack.
Mrs. Palin could have simply come out to say that going forward she was going to be more diligent in her use of language and anything else that could be used to incite violence. But no.
To Palin fans, I was fair to Sarah Palin right up until the moment I rendered much deserved criticism. Just one response:
Taylor you are a low life to talk the way you do and have a hatred for Sarah Palin. All this talk about the right, bull shit!!!! The hatred is on the left. Sarah thinks different than you do and is winning with her way of thinking with the American people and boy does that piss you off.
Fearing violence from tea party activists, Arizona Legislative District 20 Republican Chairman Anthony Miller and several others tendered their resignation this week following mass shootings that left six dead and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) in critical condition.
Former governor Sarah Palin had a chance today to regain her footing. Instead she fell on her face and on the way down decided to declare herself a political martyr, too.
That conservatives like Andrew Breitbart felt it necessary to go where no one should go in her defense has been part of the Right’s problem all along. The hate never ends.
In an interview with CNN Wednesday Clinton, who had recently referred to the shooter as an “extremist,” doubled down on her comments saying that the shooter was an extremist who acted on his “bizarre” political views.
“Based on what I know, this is a criminal defendant who was in some ways motivated by his own political views, who had a particular animus toward the congresswoman,” Clinton said. “And I think when you cross the line from expressing opinions that are of conflicting differences in our political environment into taking action, that’s violent action, that’s a hallmark of extremism, whether it comes from the right, the left, from al Qaeda, from anarchists, whoever it is. That is a form of extremism. So yes, I think that when you’re a criminal who is in some way pursuing criminal activity connected to — however bizarre and poorly thought through — your political views, that’s a form of extremism.”
Clinton added that she knows Giffords personally.
“I happen to know the congresswoman,” Clinton added. “I think very highly of her. She’s an extraordinary person as well as a great public servant. And the loss of all of the people — the federal judge, the nine-year-old girl, and others — is just heartbreaking to me.”
Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times stated on “Daily Rundown” (see video) today that an “unofficial adviser” to Sarah Palin, also mentioning “supporters,” have told him that former Gov. Palin needs to speak out on the Arizona domestic terrorism tragedy. Not in a tweet or a Facebook post, but in an address.
Now, “unofficial adviser” is a laughable source, but what isn’t funny is that there are Sarah Palin supporters talking to Zeleny believing Sarah Palin must stand up.
It would also be hilarious if this wasn’t so deadly serious that Palin’s supporters and in the Tea Party now want everyone to believe that “don’t retreat, reload” rhetoric and her crosshairs poster was actually about surveying opponents, naming Rep. Gabrielle Giffords specifically to be surveyed.
What people defending Sarah Palin’s crosshairs graphic don’t get is that it’s not that anyone thinks the former governor specifically inspired Loughner. It’s that Palin, with her “don’t retreat, reload,” rhetoric perfectly symbolizes the collision of politically charged gun invocations with an atmosphere that’s manifested Tea Party activists showing up at political rallies with holstered weapons on their hip. The final cry of crescendo coming in Arizona, a state whose own governor has fueled suspicion and hatred of brown people, and a general mistrust for government, while championing states’ rights over a united America.
Having been the first to write about what former Gov. Sarah Palin’s crosshairs “targeting” campaign could cost her politically in the wake of the weekend tragedy, others now following, the advice for her to speak out is sound. In fact, it could turn the entire situation around for her. But is she big enough to step up? We should all hope the answer to this is yes, but as you see by the unbelievable “survey graphics” push back, it’s unlikely.
If the Republican establishment has anything to do with it, the crosshairs poster and the “targeting” of Giffords, will be Palin’s undoing.
Big Government’s Dana Loesch chose the full back flip defense through a graphic “survey symbols” tour de farce, as shown in the screen captures on this page. I’m afraid all she accomplished was revealing her Tea Party panic.
But you can be sure where there’s panic on the Right someone will soon have to pay for it.
Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona didn’t waste any time going after Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, which Fox News quickly turned into a screaming headline: Pima County Sheriff Sets Off Debate on Price of Free Speech. Fox’s Megyn Kelly in an interview called Dupnik’s law enforcement judgment “speculation,” even if the sheriff’s assessment of his own county and state is based on his professional experience as a law enforcement officer.
Michelle Malkin is going after Dupnik too, as did Larry Elder on his radio show. Rush Limbaugh continued today the efforts, mocking Sheriff Dupnik, calling him “anti conservative” and “anti Republican” without any proof. He did this after demanding proof that Loughner was incited to his act of domestic terrorism, while denying there is no atmosphere in America that encouraged it, as Dupnik suggested was the case. In case you didn’t get what a right-wing campaign revving up against someone looks like this is it.
The screen capture to the left from Loesch is supposed to prove that the crosshairs in Palin’s graphic aren’t really what they are, but instead “survey symbols” as shown in the red drawings above. I asked my gun expert hubby what he thought of the defense and he laughed out loud.
Ms. Loesch and her boss Andrew Breitbart and others on the Tea Party Right are bending over backward to put a politician, Sarah Palin, above principles and what’s best for the American conversation going forward. The Tea Party created their movement, so if they want to kill it that’s up to them, too. I’d just advise Sarah Palin isn’t worth it, no politician is.
Oh, and just to prove irony isn’t dead. While Michelle Malkin squeals about the hatred on the Left, with others on the Right drawing false equivalencies, this graphic of Obama is prominently displayed on Malkin’s website.
The Right doesn’t like feeling the intense heat of the blow back. Case in point, Glenn Reynolds writing in the Wall Street Journal, who luckily gets a rhetorical lifeline from Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz:
The critics were a bit short on particulars as to what that meant. Mrs. Palin has used some martial metaphors—”lock and load”—and talked about “targeting” opponents. But as media writer Howard Kurtz noted in The Daily Beast, such metaphors are common in politics. Palin critic Markos Moulitsas, on his Daily Kos blog, had even included Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s district on a list of congressional districts “bullseyed” for primary challenges. When Democrats use language like this—or even harsher language like Mr. Obama’s famous remark, in Philadelphia during the 2008 campaign, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”—it’s just evidence of high spirits, apparently. But if Republicans do it, it somehow creates a climate of hate.
There’s a climate of hate out there, all right, but it doesn’t derive from the innocuous use of political clichés. And former Gov. Palin and the tea party movement are more the targets than the source.
Howie Kurtz is going with the “lone nut” theory and is just so tired of all the whining about violent rhetoric, ignoring that it’s backed up by gun toting activists, all of whom are being told that Barack Obama is ruining their country, because he’s a socialist or un-American, all at a time of economic angst.
As for Byron York’s claim that everyone tip toed around Maj. Nidal Hasan’s religious affiliations after he yelled “Allahu Akbar!” and went on a domestic terrorist rampage inside a military base. Our entire aviation experience in this country revolves around the what ifs? of a post 9/11 contastrope at the hands of Saudi Arabians. Who’s York kidding?
Even establishment Republicans are so freaked they’ll get targeted by the Right’s fire that they won’t even speak on the record about an assassination attempt that ended in an act of domestic terrorism so intense it could change political participation by the American people. From POLITICO yesterday:
A senior Republican senator, speaking anonymously in order to freely discuss the tragedy, told POLITICO that the Giffords shooting should be taken as a “cautionary tale” by Republicans. “There is a need for some reflection here – what is too far now?” said the senator. “What was too far when Oklahoma City happened is accepted now. There’s been a desensitizing. These town halls and cable TV and talk radio, everybody’s trying to outdo each other.”
Who is “a senior Republican” afraid of inciting? Take a guess.
And the last time I looked Moulitsas wasn’t simultaneously squealing “don’t retreat, reload,” while on weekends being filmed attempting to kill a caribou. The only missing element being Yee-HA!
When I think of Barack Obama yielding a gun all I get is a painful picture of him bowling bouncing around in my head. No offense intended, really, he just doesn’t seem like a gun guy that’s all and he’s not suffering because he isn’t. His whole persona is non-violent.
Kurtz and others leave out the constant fearmongering in the economic climate we’re in and that Rush, Beck, Hannity, Mark Levine and the right-wing radio umbrella under which the entire country is locked never shuts up about the grievous wounds happening to every listener, all because of Democrats.
The fearmongering of the Right, aided by a complicit press, who thought it was all just so silly to think that Pres. George W. Bush would lie about anything to take us into preemptive war and change the foreign policy of America, is how we ended up in Iraq spending billions of dollars a month.
Sarah Palin’s crosshairs target poster didn’t start this nightmare. But it was the tipping point of not taking this anymore, because one of the people she targeted was almost assassinated.
Evidently Gene, Howie, Byron and Palin think this is all some remarkable coincidence.
It’s not.
There is also absolutely no equivalency anywhere on the Left to what right-wing radio spews and some of what goes on during Fox News shows, excluding Shep Smith and a few others.
We have news organizations who won’t call an act of domestic terrorism for what it is.
This would never have happened in the day of Cronkite, let alone Edward R. Murrow.
We wouldn’t be hearing calm down it’s not anyone’s fault in the day of Chet Huntley.
Act after act and we’re still supposed to stay on the notion of the “lone nut,” according to Mr. Kurtz. Even by his posts count that’s a lot of lone nuttery.
There’s also the notion being floated by Andrew Breitbart that the Left wants to wipe out the Tea Party, which seems immaturely offered and not thought through at all. It’s just the fastest thing he could come up with after the hail storm of criticism. The Tea Party just might be friendlier to the Left’s ability to stop the war in Afghanistan, as well as cut the Pentagon budget. They sure as hell look more promising than the Blue Dogs.
No one wants to destroy the Tea Party, we just don’t want people killed for believing in health care or a different immigration policy, even the right for women to be equally free as men, without being called a “terrorist” and being stalked.
But we’re a tortoise nation, with the Kurtz crowd preferring to hide back in the national shell so as not to have to deal with anything too directly. So, be ready for the usual suspects to opine about the irresponsibility of assigning blame. “That both sides are guilty.” Just don’t believe it.
The worst you’re going to get from most people on the Left is rudeness and maybe in some cases some eviscerating truth wrapped in high voltage rhetoric. No, it’s not always pretty, but nobody’s going to die from it, because the Left doesn’t go to political rallies packing heat.
“At a time like this, it is terrible that we do have to think about politics, but no matter what the shooter’s motivations were, the left is going to blame this on the Tea Party movement,” Mr. Phillips, from Tea Party Nation, said on his Web site. “While we need to take a moment to extend our sympathies to the families of those who died, we cannot allow the hard left to do what it tried to do in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing,” he wrote. “Within the entire political spectrum, there are extremists, both on the left and the right. Violence of this nature should be decried by everyone and not used for political gain.” – Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics
In a poetry class Jared Lee Loughner was taking, when a woman read a poem about abortion, Loughner called her a “terrorist for killing the baby,” according to reports quoting a 58 year-old man who sat two desks away from him. Caitie Parker said Loughner was “left wing, quite liberal” and described him as a “political radical,” who met Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, calling her “stupid & unintelligent.”
It’s hard to imagine a “left wing, quite liberal… political radical” calling a woman a “terrorist” for making a legal personal decision that is no one elses business.
It is offensive to hear equivalency made between Left and Right on the issue of hate speech and inciteful violent rhetoric, because it’s untrue. It’s equally untrue to blame all people on the Right. As you can see in the video, there are responsible conservatives out there, but we know the ones who are not, many of whom reside on right-wing radio.
To read Phillips from Tea Party Nation above decry talking about the political element as if it’s not part of the equation is insulting and an obfuscation to make people who want to talk about the obvious political targeting of Giffords feel guilty. The people in this country who are partially responsible for what’s been brewing in this country for well over a year need to be called out plainly.
Left wing liberals don’t go to political rallies with guns strapped to their leg. They don’t make villains out of people who want sensible gun laws and don’t think weapons have any place at a political rally, which includes gun owners like my husband and myself. We also believe a concealed carry permit comes with responsibilities that are very serious as well.
There isn’t one liberal politician who would dare put crosshairs on opponents in a poster in a “It’s time to take a stand” campaign. Only Sarah Palin did that and she did it with pride and bravado.
Jane Hamsher revealed that Gabrielle Gifford’s general election opponent, Jesse Kelly, was unmoved by Sarah Palin’s “target list” campaign. In fact, Kelly did Palin one better or in this case worse.
Get on Target for Victory in November Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shot a fully automatic M15 with Jesse Kelly.
That the specific incitement in this instance is coming from Sarah Palin, a star female politician from the Tea Party Right must not go unnoticed, especially when it sends a signal it’s okay for others to follow that lead. The transferred machismo to a female in order for her to appear tough enough to take on anything a man can hangle by utilizing inciteful rhetoric and campaigns is exactly the wrong message to send, because it raises the bar above and beyond what any democratic republic should tolerate. I’ve written about macho rhetoric in female politicians before.
Gabrielle Gifford understood the incitement going on and knew the dangers of it.
“We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” Ms. Giffords said last March. “But the thing is the way that she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences to that.” – Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics
Mrs. Palin made a horrible mistake with her “It’s time to take a stand” campaign that targeted lawmakers with crosshairs. She was called on it, but chose to be defiant. “Don’t retreat, reload” is a constant mantra of Palin. Of course, she didn’t cause Jared Loughner to go on a murderous rampage. He did that on his own, whether out of rage, frustration or desperation, even mania, we do not know. But there can be no doubt that Sarah Palin is the leader of a group of people who have for a very long time made anger a political tool, using this most powerful of emotions to flood the airwaves with hate and using the Second Amendment to do it. Sharron Angle floated “Second Amendment remedies” during the midterms, yet another woman trying to channel power through rhetorical scattershot screeds.
“But I think the way some Republicans are handling this is nothing more than purely despicable,” Hasselbeck said. The names that are next to and being highlighted by those crosshairs — I think it’s an abuse of the Second Amendment. I also feel as though every single person on here is a mother, a father, a friend, a brother, a sister, and to take it to this level is — it’s disappointing to see this come from the Party, and I would hope that leaders like Sarah Palin would end this.” – conservative Elizabeth Hasselbeck (quote from the video above)
With the presidential election season gearing up, the buzz around whether Palin might run remains high. However, the midterms are long over and she has to prove herself beyond the base and an off-year election that had hyper partisan voters coming out in droves. Since 2011 dawned, Sarah’s problem is front and center. The Republican establishment has started a concerted effort against her, speaking out to oppose her, regardless of her persona and people power. Many influential conservatives from Joe Scarborough to George Will and Charles Krauthammer voicing she cannot be elected president even if the base loves her.
Now Republican intellectuals have got a powerful weapon to use against Sarah Palin, which they may not even have to invoke, because it’s unlikely people will forget. Sarah’s own flawed judgment that comes with graphics and an act of domestic terrorism in the state of Arizona that killed people and gravely wounded a Democratic congresswoman who was one of the politicians in Palin’s crosshairs.
UPDATE:
.. Evidence seized from Mr. Loughner’s home indicated that he had planned to kill Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, according to documents filed in the Federal District Court in Phoenix. Found in a safe in Mr. Loughner’s home, about five miles from the shooting scene, Special Agent Tony M. Taylor Jr. of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in an affidavit, was an envelope with these handwritten words: ”I planned ahead,” “My assassination” and “Giffords.” – Federal Charges Cite Assassination Plan
This morning, in an unspeakable tragedy, a number of Americans were shot in Tuscon, Arizona, at a constituent meeting with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. And while we are continuing to receive information, we know that some have passed away, and that Representative Giffords is gravely wounded. We do not yet have all the answers. What we do know is that such a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society. I ask all Americans to join me and Michelle in keeping Representative Giffords, the victims of this tragedy, and their families in our prayers. – Pres. Barack Obama
Democratic Congresswoman Giffords was reportedly shot and killed, along with 6 others. However, other reports, including her spokesperson, say she’s in surgery. Clearly there is confusion all ’round at this point.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head by a gunman at a public event in Tucson on Saturday. There are conflicting reports about whether she was killed.
The Pima County, Ariz., sheriff’s office told member station KJZZ the 40-year-old Democrat was killed. At least nine other people, including members of her staff, were injured.
Giffords, who was re-elected to a third term in November, was hosting a “Congress on Your Corner” event at a Safeway in northwest Tucson when a gunman ran up and started shooting, according to Peter Michaels, news director of Arizona Public Media.
SarahPalinPac “targeted” Giffords in their “It’s time to take a stand” campaign. SarahPalinPac servers were down and the target graphic has been scrubbed from the website. On Facebook, Mrs. Palin has issued a statement, with comments negative comments finally being deleted, though not fast enough. This deleted tweet from Sarah Palin is part of the problem.
UPDATE 1: MSNBC reports Rep. Giffords pulled through surgery, expected to survive. Jared Loughner 22 year-old gunman in custody.
The most illustrative window is Loughner’s YouTube account, which appears to be hub of anti-government zealotry, obsession over currency and language standards, and, to put it bluntly, outright paranoia.
“In conclusion, reading the second United States Constitution, I can’t trust the current government because of the ratifications: the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar,” he writes in one video posting. “No! I won’t pay debt with a currency that’s not backed by gold and silver! No! I won’t trust in God!”Here is a link to Loughner’s YouTube site.
There are also some biographical details that can be culled from the page. Loughner attended Mountain View High School, Northwest Aztec Middle College, and Pima Community College. He also appears to have been in the armed forces, at one point in time.
“Every United States Military recruit at MEPS in Phoenix is receiving one mini bible before the tests,” he writes in one video. “Jared Loughner is a United States Military recruit at MEPS in Phoenix Therefore, Jared Loughner is receiving one mini bible before the tests.”
We cannot as a nation survive much longer. We must take a page from our own history at the Alamo and “draw a line in the sand.” We must decide who we are, what we are capable of and look to the heavens to chart our course.
UPDATE 6: SEN MCCAIN ISSUES POTENT STATEMENT:
“I am horrified by the violent attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords and many other innocent people by a wicked person who has no sense of justice or compassion. I pray for Gabby and the other victims, and for the repose of the souls of the dead and comfort for their families. I beg our loving Creator to spare the lives of those who are still alive, heal them in body and spirit, and return them to their loved ones.
“Whoever did this; whatever their reason, they are a disgrace to Arizona, this country and the human race, and they deserve and will receive the contempt of all decent people and the strongest punishment of the law.”
U.S. Marshal for Arizona David Gonzales confirmed to the Associated Press that the U.S. District Judge had died. He offered no other details on the shooting.
Arizona Central talked to Gonzales in 2009 after Roll allowed a $32 million civil-rights lawsuit to proceed against a local rancher. The case was filed by illegal immigrants and drew the ire of local talk radio hosts, who “spurred audiences into making threats.”
In one afternoon, Roll logged more than 200 phone calls. Callers threatened the judge and his family. They posted personal information about Roll online.
“They said, ‘We should kill him. He should be dead,’ ” Gonzales said.
UPDATED 8: Official picture from the Situation Room, the first with William Daley present:
TM.COM NOTE: This post has been edited from Texan4Hillary’s “In the News” original post, additional text provided by Taylor Marsh; updates by Texan4Hillary.
Among the basic items of protocol blithely ignored by Palin as she set off into the wilderness in a Rambo-style headband was her failure to take practice shots, or check the sights of the rifle, which duly turned out to be off-kilter. She failed to carry her own weapon, relying on her elderly father and his companion, Steve, to lug it around. When a beast eventually wandered into range, Ms Palin left Chuck Snr to load the rifle, and discharge spent bullet casings. – Hunter becomes the hunted as Palin critics say she can’t shoot
“Does it kick?”
Seriously?
Is she kidding with this crap? If Sarah was a Democrat she’d be flayed for this fakery. I can’t imagine asking that question, except the very first time you fired a rifle, which for me happened when I was a kid.
Palin’s latest embarrassment comes as TIME’s cover story on Sarah Palin lands, where she gives little doubt she’s moving closer to a presidential run.
But Palin thinks Obama is vulnerable, and she implies that she is the one to take him on. “In battleground states, he’s polling at 40% or below,” she notes. “The country is rejecting his agenda … My vision of America is diametrically opposed to his. He sees America as the problem. I see America as the solution.” Asked what she makes of Obama’s presidency thus far, Palin quipped, “Two words: Jimmy Carter.” Asked who can beat him, she needed seven more: “Someone who can draw a sharp contrast.”
As she does, her people need to rein in her needless penchant for setting herself up as an easy target, on video no less, as she did in last week’s episode of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.”
It seems not even her fans are willing to put up with Palin’s preening.
“What a joke,” wrote one viewer on Palin’s Facebook page. “I was a fan before the show. No one who is a true hunter lets others carry their rifle or can’t load their own shells. Sarah, you are a phony.”
“What kind of a question is that?” wrote a fan called Brad Schegel on Palin’s Facebook wall. “Doesn’t matter if it kicks or not, you shoot it the same. That was a girly question, momma griz.”
So, Sarah becomes yet another in a long line of right-wing politicians who think it’s important to show she can shoot, when she doesn’t know her ass from her elbow about hunting rifles or the time honored code of real hunters (which I am not, but my gun expert hubby helped prove Whittington was shot close to his heart, which we now know is true) who respect the hunting of animals enough to make sure they know what they’re doing. If it takes you five shots to hone in on your prey let alone take it down, either your site is off or you obviously a terrible shot or more likely, you shouldn’t be seen with a loaded gun outside the firing range, because you’ve not had enough practice with the rifle to be targeting squat.
Whatever authenticity she proclaimed as a hunter and rugged westerner went up in smoke as she walked along side her father, who carried her rifle for her, and after firing her fifth shot, since the first four missed.
I won’t even get into the fact that she couldn’t catch one salmon in another “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” episode, in a scene that had the fish lined up for the hook.
Across the 7 individual states where we’ve done 2012 polls so far- Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Montana, and Virginia- Palin averages receiving 77% of the Republican vote against Barack Obama. That puts her slightly behind Gingrich at 80% and well behind Romney and Huckabee at 84%. Palin does the worst of the Republicans among Republicans in Montana, Missouri, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Minnesota. Only North Carolina where she does better than Romney and Virginia where she does better than Gingrich and Romney serve as exceptions to the rule.
Republicans may hate Barack Obama but there look to be a pretty meaningful percentage of them who don’t hate him enough to vote to put Sarah Palin in the White House. When you combine that with her complete lack of appeal to Democrats and independents she looks virtually unelectable for 2012.
The grand pooba of political insiders, Mark Halperin, takes to TIME today to lay it out starkly for Democrats, focusing on Barack Obama. The message is an inside the beltway biz meme being repeated everywhere, with hints that midterm troubles are deeper than November. It’s one of those things that has a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, because no politician in today’s two party corporate system can survive if this message becomes accepted fact.
On Friday, after the release of the latest bleak unemployment data — the last major jobs figures before the midterms — Obama said, “Putting the American people back to work, expanding opportunity, rebuilding the economic security of the middle class is the moral and national challenge of our time.” But elites feel the President has failed to meet that challenge and are convinced he will be unable to do so in the remainder of his term. Moreover, there is a growing perception that Obama’s decisions are causing harm — that businesses are being hurt by the Administration’s legislation and that economic recovery is stalling because of the uncertainty surrounding energy policy, health care, deficits, housing, immigration and spending.
And that sentiment is spreading. Many members of the general public appear deeply skeptical of Obama’s capacity to turn things around, especially, but not exclusively, those inclined to dislike him — Tea Partyers and John McCain voters, but also tens of millions of middle-class Americans, including quite a few who turned out for Obama in 2008.
The first response from Tim Kaine central for the midterms was to blame Bush, which was never going to work. When the White House doubled down to blame the “professional left,” then upped the pot to include Democratic base “whiners,” the die was cast on the plan to make everyone else the problem, with the President accepting none himself. The “stolen” election gambit being the worst idea from Dems yet.
Again with feeling, GOTP candidates want to raise the retirement age on Social Security. To that Democrats should offer a pledge to protect Social Security as sacrosanct. But considering it was Pres. Obama who concocted the Deficit Commission, then put Alice Rivlin on it(if you don’t know who she is you need to get acquainted), Democrats have a new problem, which is they’re not looking like Democrats at all, so why vote for them?
In West Virginia, Joe Manchin has decided to strike out on his own, not unlike what’s happening with Blue Dog Democrats like Bobby Bright, while candidates like Raul Grijalva, as well as Alan Grayson whose got a great new “Sopranos” type ad out, and others are fighting tough to hold on, too. Across the spectrum, Dems are drowning.
Now amidst streakers and a book lob, Pres. Obama continues his barnstorming with the Democratic message being the missing element, which has been one step behind the rising tide on the Right since Sarah Palin squealed “death panel” on Facebook. The White House has been playing defense ever since. On health care, which could have been an amazing advancement for Democrats, candidates aren’t mentioning it at all and for good reason, with some campaigning against it.
Democracy Corps posted results of a new poll on Friday that lays out what works and what doesn’t with voters, coming in exactly where I’ve been stressing for weeks. That Obama’s political shop is doing most things wrong isn’t surprising. Just yesterday David Axelrod went on “Face the Nation” to proclaim that the Obama administration wasn’t in favor of a blanket foreclosure moratorium. It’s enough to render you speechless, especially since there are mechanisms beyond the presidential to take care of this, so chiming in on it just makes the White House sound anti-populist, which doesn’t help any Democrat, except maybe Bobby Bright.
From Carville’s group:
The weakest messages assert we should “go forward, not back.” Voters are not moved by Democratic messages that say ‘go forward, not back,’ mention President Bush, compare then and now, or even that hint the economy is “showing signs of progress.” No matter how dramatically these messages set out the record of Republican obstructionism, their work for the wealthiest and Goldman Sachs, the millions of jobs lost and Democrats’ support for jobs, small business and new industries – these messages falter before the Republican attack.
The messages get lower scores and lose voters. After hearing this battle of Republican and Democratic messages, 8 percent shift their vote to support the Republican, while only 5 percent move to the Democrats. We lose ground. These messages are helping the Republicans.
Another “don’t” is not to “Read your resume of accomplishments. Things as they are aren’t good enough – explain how we will do better.” One of the biggest missing pieces of the fall campaign is a Democratic message that includes what must change if you give Dems another two years to prove themselves. Coupled with a comparison of the other side’s proposed ideas Democrats would come out on top, however, this has not been done consistently, with Democrats bouncing around still trying to find something that breaks through the anger.
Even with all the anger and disaffection out there, when you compare what Democrats offers versus Republican austerity there is no choice. That the voters don’t understand this is because the White House and the DNC blew the message weeks ago.
I got some grief recently on Facebook for not being a cheerleader this close to midterms. I’ve said it before, but that’s simply not my job. The most important thing for people to know is that even in a wave election year it didn’t have to be this tough a fight for Democrats who have the better message. That it is isn’t the fault of the “professional left,” “whiners,” or movement progressives. It’s not too late to make sure Grijalva isn’t a casualty, but that he’s in a tough race reveals just how bad Democrats have botched it.
“It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense. And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.” – Paul Krugman
Justice Stevens retires today. At the same time the Supreme Court has upheld the Second Amendment against a Chicago suburb to limit handgun rights (the correct decision, I believe), though the Court is getting close to having enough votes to limit gun rights in some cases, according to many constitutional experts.
As Kagan steps up, it’s a good time to ask what does the current Supreme Court know about the average life of an American who just lost his or her unemployment benefits, with no job on the horizon? The answer is absolutely nothing. But on we trudge to an elitist court with nominees who prop up the status quo.
Frankly, I know Ms. Kagan is qualified and has done the track expected. She’s a woman, which is needed on the court, but I find the hearings uninspiring, this choice predictable for an insider Democratic president, who might have been a community organizer once, but is simply forwarding the usual status quo, elitist pick that all presidents prefer.
That Republicans are looking for a way to attack Kagan is just as bad, their hypocrisy legendary when it comes to whining about someone who is a solid mind and as insider as they pretend they’re not.
The whole thing is a pathetic charade. We’ll learn nothing, except which senator grandstands the most. Any debate long since substituted for partisanship, because the Senate doesn’t think anymore.
Segue to Elena Kagan:
“Mr. Chairman, the law school I had the good fortune to lead has a kind of motto, spoken each year at graduation. We tell the new graduates that they are ready to enter a profession devoted to “those wise restraints that make us free.” That phrase has always captured for me the way law, and the rule of law, matters. What the rule of law does is nothing less than to secure for each of us what our Constitution calls “the blessings of liberty” – those rights and freedoms, that promise of equality, that have defined this nation since its founding. And what the Supreme Court does is to safeguard the rule of law, through a commitment to even-handedness, principle, and restraint.
[...] “The idea is engraved on the very face of the Supreme Court building: Equal Justice Under Law. It means that everyone who comes before the Court – regardless of wealth or power or station – receives the same process and the same protections. What this commands of judges is even-handedness and impartiality. What it promises is nothing less than a fair shake for every American.
[...] “[T]he Supreme Court is a wondrous institution. But the time I spent in the other branches of government remind me that it must also be a modest one – properly deferential to the decisions of the American people and their elected representatives. What I most took away from those experiences was simple admiration for the democratic process. That process is often messy and frustrating, but the people of this country have great wisdom, and their representatives work hard to protect their interests. The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people.”
[...] “I’ve led a school whose faculty and students examine and discuss and debate every aspect of our law and legal system. And what I’ve learned most is that no one has a monopoly on truth or wisdom. I’ve learned that we make progress by listening to each other, across every apparent political or ideological divide. I’ve learned that we come closest to getting things right when we approach every person and every issue with an open mind. And I’ve learned the value of a habit that Justice Stevens wrote about more than fifty years ago – of ‘understanding before disagreeing.’
[...] I will make no pledges this week other than this one – that if confirmed, I will remember and abide by all these lessons. I will listen hard, to every party before the Court and to each of my colleagues. I will work hard. And I will do my best to consider every case impartially, modestly, with commitment to principle, and in accordance with law.”
There isn’t anyone in charge who understands the plight of the American people. Democrats don’t make Republicans actually filibuster, so needed funds won’t get to the desperate. The long hot summer is turning meaner by the minute as the hurricane season revs up.
Rand Paul, meet your political bookend, Sherry Angle.
Who is she? She wants to be a Nevada senator, but she may instead help to re-elect Harry Reid.
Angle’s idea of prison reform is for “female inmates to enter a drug rehabilitation program devised by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, an idea she still defends.”
This is one time I’m cheering for the Club for Growth, which along with the Tea Party, is slowly but surely pushing the Republican Party off the political cliff.
“I am the tea party,” said Angle, a 60-year-old former Nevada lawmaker.
With early voting under way for the June 8 primary, Angle has nearly erased Lowden’s double-digit lead in recent polls, thanks in part to endorsements from the Tea Party Express and other conservative groups, including the anti-tax Club for Growth. Lowden, a former state senator, has stumbled after she suggested people might barter for health care using chickens and she faced financial questions about the use of a leased bus.
Club for Growth began airing an ad statewide Wednesday that calls Angle a fiscal conservative and common-sense fighter and argues that Lowden supports huge spending increases and that she backed Reid.
The Tea Party candidates of 2010 remind me of kids at a day care center with no supervision. They’re sort of like wacky Jim Traficant, without the mainstream facade.
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