Month: January 2011

Drawing The Line

by digby

I see that Senator Rand Paul has weighed in and declared that Jared Loughner was mentally ill (which, as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t take a medical degree to see.)But he also seems to think this means that the fact that he assassinated a Democratic congresswoman is irrelevant — even though it was a political assassination by a disturbed young man which happened in an atmosphere of violent threats against Democratic politicians. You can call that a coincidence if you want, but it would be stupid.

I’ve been trying to sort through my feelings about all this in the context of free speech and I think it’s fairly simple, really. I’m less concerned with “death panels” and even “Obama is Hitler” signs than I am with this:

This is the speech by the spokesman for the Ohio Valley Freedom Fighters at that Rand Paul political rally:

We are the original homeland security, not the paid agents that today masquerade as such in ninja outfits, dressed in black to intimidate the people with their faces covered to keep them from being held accountable for their actions. I have even been shown proof that they consider the founding fathers like George Washington, Sam Adams and Thomas Jefferson to be the terrorists of old.

Unless you are a member of the active military, it is your historical, constitutional and moral duty to participate in a citizen’s militia. And I’ll say this, shame on those who are either too busy or too scared or too apathetic to step up.

The British aren’t coming. It is the Soviet socialists that have occupied our Capitol. It might as well be Moscow on the Potomac.

The question is: do we have the courage and the spirit of our forefathers? Our people do. Today we want to tell the Marxist control freaks out there, don’t dare cross that bridge. But we know they will. We the militia, and hopefully with your support, stand ready with no apologies, cause what we have forced upon us is not from a legitimate government, or the American values of self reliance and independence. If you want to be a European, move.

The Declaration of Independence says that when a government is no longer beneficial or responsive to the people, it is our right and duty to change it. Now some citizens are holding out hope that the upcoming elections will better things, and you know we’ll wait and see. Lots of us believe that maybe that’s not reliable, considering the fact that the progressive socialists have been chipping away at our foundations. Regardless, the founders made sure we had plan B (holds up his gun). You know what that is.

The treasonous left wing socialist politicians, and their lapdogs in the press, have gotten a wedgie here recently in their underpants over the tea parties. And a little broken glass (wink, wink). I sure hope they’re out there today. If they read history, they should know and fear what came after those events over 200 years ago. This latest forced health care bill, which is really about people control, the same thing as gun control, is the modern day equivalent of the 1765 standback, its only more disastrous to our freedom living way of life, etc…

History it seems is ready to repeat itself. After a long and costly civil war that is eminent, and sure to be forced upon us, we are taking note of those who are responsible for the treason, and they will be held accountable. I advise the press to start getting it right from this moment on, and stop aiding and abetting un-American activities. Like the Tories of old, the worst shall be hung, most will be exiled, and I’m a contractor so I have a little bit of tar and feathers for those who are only partially guilty.

In closing, let me implore you to keep the torch of freedom burning bright, god bless the republic, death to the New World Order. We shall prevail.

That doesn’t sound like regular, spirited political discourse to me. It sounds like a threat. And it’s a threat by a bunch of guys carrying guns. At the very least it tends to keep people who don’t care to get caught in the crossfire away from political gatherings. And you can certainly see how it might incite impressionable minds to think that they are not alone in their violent fantasies and give them permission to act out. Worst of all, it’s undemocratic. This isn’t about voting. It’s about intimidation.

The political rhetoric doesn’t worry me all that much. Threatening people with guns if they refuse to do your will does.

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And Lo, The Subject Changes!

by tristero

Here we go again:

“To see the left exploit this for political advantage — some people have no conscience,” the Tea Party Patriot’s Mark Meckler told The Daily Beast. “It’s genuinely revolting…I think it sinks to the level of evil.”

“[I]f these scumbags want to play it politically, let it be on their conscience,” he said.

Oh, by the way, this is shaping up to be the dominant meme going forward about the latest outrage from postcard-perfect Arizona. Here’s the latest typing from Ross Douthat:

…the attempted murder of a Democratic congresswoman is a potential gift to liberalism.

It takes a uniquely cynical moron to imagine that it is a gift to liberalism for a Democratic congresswoman to get shot in the head.

Never mind, tho. The left is doing all it can to use this belated Christmas present to gain political traction and that’s the story. Ignore the fact that there is hardly any left left in the United States, at least any even remotely close to political power. It’s still the story.And that’s what they’ll be talking about next Sunday on the blovia-sphere, and in the op-eds.

UPDATE: But wait! There’s more!

Another Tea Party leader is accusing the left of unfairly blaming the Tea Party for the mass shootings in Arizona, describing how “revolting and disgusting the left is for trying to associate the tea party with violence like this.”

…

*Actually, there are two elephants, the other being the eliminationist rhetoric spewing from top Republicans.The elephant I’m thinking about, though, which hardly anyone mentions, is this:

What kind of crazy-ass country permits automatic weapons to be sold to nearly any adult who wants one, including raving lunatics?

Mentally Disturbed

by tristero

By all accounts, Loughner was/is a very disturbed indidvidual. I don’t doubt it for a second. He believed a lot of very strange things.

Unlike your typical Republican or teabagger.

UPDATE: What PZ says.

Progress

by digby

Howie offers this up for the end of a long and difficult week-end:

My old friend Dan Levitin, a professor at McGill and author of This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science Of Human Obsession and The World In Six Songs: How The Musical Brain Created Human Nature, turned me on to this spectacular 4:47 video of Dr. Hans Rosling explaining the past 200 years of world progress using an animated and utterly fascinating graph. It speaks for itself– and so much more energetically and eloquently than I could possibly hope to explain it– so do yourself a favor and watch it. Watch it as pure science or as history or as a wonder of technological achievement.

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Virtually Speaking

by digby

I’m on Virtually Speaking tonight with Glenn Greenwald, talking about the news of the day, Wikileaks, tasers and whatever else we think of.

You can listen here.

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Out of Touch

by digby

James Warren on Robert Gibbs’ “relatively modest” salary:

[I]t’s natural to labor hard in government, see what goes on a few blocks away and feel entitled to same. People who came to town to change the world, and fight for the working guy, wind up thinking that a salary that would be a king’s ransom to most of their constituents is chicken feed.

It’s partly because they inevitably contrast themselves not with others in government, or cushier locales in the nonprofit world, but with the mightiest denizens of corporate America.

Should that be the basis of comparison, even stipulating that Gibbs is smarter than many outrageously-compensated corporate executives I have encountered and probably labored twice as hard in an inherently thankless, burnout task in which family life takes a back seat?

I’ve known elected officials, who had significant impact on laws and regulations touching the private sector, who bristled at the sums earned by the CEOs who lobbied them and whose firms they impacted, sometimes helped enormously. One congressional titan even pointed with blatant envy to the seven-figure salaries of network television anchors who cozzied up to him.

In some cases, I could appreciate the reflex. It’s probably more pronounced amid the new private equity fortunes. Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel, for one, made a tidy $16 million in that universe in just one year after leaving the Clinton administration.

So President Obama may have spoken a certain marketplace truth Monday. Unfortunately, it’s a market known to too few Americans during historically tough times when a pink slip, or just the need for a root canal, can bring financial crisis to homes.

I wrote about the spirited defense of the President’s comment by Paul Begala and Mary Matalin the other day, and I don’t mean to beat a dead horse. But the fact is that on so many levels it’s become clear that the elites don’t know or care how they sound to the rest of the country, whether it’s tone deafness about the economy or dismissiveness about violent rhetoric. They are completely out of touch.

Ironically, those leaders who seem to be the most in touch are the everyday, lower level congressional Reps, who do the intimate voter outreach stuff like Giffords was doing on Saturday. And it’s clear that both sides have been influenced by the aggressive rhetoric of the Tea Party. The disconnect can be seen here:

Another Ohio Democrat, Steve Driehaus, clashed repeatedly with Boehner before losing his seat in the midterm elections. After Boehner suggested that by voting for Obamacare, Driehaus “may be a dead man” and “can’t go home to the west side of Cincinnati” because “the Catholics will run him out of town,” Driehaus began receiving death threats, and a right-wing website published directions to his house. Driehaus says he approached Boehner on the floor and confronted him. “I didn’t think it was funny at all,” Driehaus says. “I’ve got three little kids and a wife. I said to him, ‘John, this is bullshit, and way out of bounds. For you to say something like that is wildly irresponsible.'” Driehaus is quick to point out that he doesn’t think Boehner meant to urge anyone to violence. “But it’s not about what he intended — it’s about how the least rational person in my district takes it. We run into some crazy people in this line of work.” Driehaus says Boehner was “taken aback” when confronted on the floor, but never actually said he was sorry: “He said something along the lines of, ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’ But he didn’t apologize.”

Boehner wasn’t calling for anyone to do violence against Driehaus. But violent rhetoric has become so mainstream among Republicans that he just didn’t hear it the way Driehaus heard it. Similarly, this infamous exchange between Chuck Todd and Gabrielle Giffords over the Palin target map shows that he doesn’t understand how a person who is being shouted down at every Townhall meeting by an angry group of super-aggressive, coordinated constituents, who are following detailed instructions, might logically feel intimidated.

Out of touch, in so many ways, many of our elites simply don’t know what’s going on out here.

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Inscrutable Writing

by digby

This article in Politico is intriguing, although it’s hard to know if it has any bearing on what happened yesterday:

Jared Lee Loughner’s rants about grammar and mind control track closely to the writings of a conspiracy theorist who believes that is how the government controls the populace, one leading group says – and the man tells POLITICO he agrees with some of Loughner’s statements.The far-right activist, David Wynn Miller, said in a telephone interview that he didn’t know Loughner, but agreed with his statement in a YouTube video that “the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar.” …
Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, first mentioned Miller during an appearance Saturday on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.” “The idea weirdly enough of controlling grammar, of somehow the government using grammar to control the people is an idea that exists on the radical right. There’s a particular person, a man named David Wynn Miller who has plugged this idea for years,” Potok said. Miller “claims to have invented truth language,” Potok said in an interview with POLITICO. “His idea is that if you only use the correct grammar and punctuation, you can throw off the shackles of the tyrannical government.” Potok said Loughner appeared “practically illiterate and quite mentally ill,” but his statements and the books he has cited suggest a “pretty strong anti-government, conspiracy-oriented threat.” “It seems he is getting some of his key ideas from David Wynn Miller,” he said.

What’s intriguing about it is that when you read the writings of David Wynn Miller, you would come to the conclusion that he is severely mentally disordered if you didn’t know that he was speaking in his own “code”:

FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE WRONG-SYNTAX-COMMUNICATION-TEACHINGS ARE WITH THE CLAIM OF THE TEACHINGS WITH THE LODIO-CONTRACT-VOID = AILING BY THE RULING-CLASS, GOV, KING, QUEEN, JUDGE, ATTORNEY, LAWYER, TEACHER, PRIEST, DOCTOR AND [PEOPLE JUST DO NOT KNOW!!!] OF EVERY-NATION ON EARTH WITH THE SLAVERY OF THE PEOPLE WITH THE CONTROL OF THE LICENSING-USURY AND TAXATION OF THE WATER, AIR, EARTH AND FIRE.[7]

Who knows if Loughner’s disordered writings were influenced b ythat. It’s probably a coincidence that he was dwelling on grammar and punctuation. (He was obsessed with “literacy” whatever he meant by that.) But it’s interesting that this guy comes from the far right “sovereignty” movement and speaks in similar weird terms that you would think are nonsensical unless you know that it’s a coded language.

Meanwhile, back in the states:

Showing no sign of tamping down on divisive political rhetoric in the wake of the shooting of 20 people that left six dead in Tuscon Saturday, the Tea Party Nation group e-mailed its members Sunday warning them they would be called upon to fight leftists in the days ahead and defend their movement. TPN founder Judson Phillips, in an article linked off the e-mail “The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and the left’s attack on the Tea Party movement,” described the shooter as “a leftist lunatic” and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik as a “leftist sheriff” who “was one of the first to start in on the liberal attack.” Phillips urged tea party supporters to blame liberals for the attack on centrist Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was shot through the head and is now fighting for her life, as a means of defending the tea party movement’s recent electoral gains. “The hard left is going to try and silence the Tea Party movement by blaming us for this,” he wrote. Clinton used the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to “blame conservative talk radio, especially Rush Limbaugh” and “The tactic worked then, backing conservatives off and possibly helping to ensure a second Clinton term.” “The left is coming and will hit us hard on this. We need to push back harder with the simple truth. The shooter was a liberal lunatic. Emphasis on both words,” he wrote.

Good of him to write it down. Just so we know.

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Rhetorical Excess

by digby

I couldn’t help but notice Arizona Representative Trent Franks all over television lugubriously bemoaning the horrible events of yesterday. He just appeared on Candy Crowley’s show and said this in response to Sheriff Dupnik’s comments yesterday about “the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government, the anger the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country that is getting to be outrageous.”

Franks: Even in these circumstance, first of all I think our focus should be upon the tragedy that occurred here and I think it’s unfortunate to inject the comments that the Sheriff did in this case because he has been heavily involved in the whole immigration issue and he found himself in this case at ends even different than Miss Giffords. And I think that he’s carrying on that debate even in this tragic moment and I think it’s unfortunate.

Crowley: Probably should say that you all have been personally affected by this and that sometimes you say things you might not want to. The point being that there is now going to be this conversation about “why?” And right now we are seeing “the political conversation is terrible, it is heated rhetoric, we are seeing unhinged people to do things.” Do you see a link between increased sharp rhetoric, sometimes aggressive rhetoric, violent rhetoric, whatever you want to call it, in the political forum and this type of heinous activity.

Frank: Sometimes in any human dynamic there are so many factors that it becomes difficult to really analyze it. But sometimes you can see a central element, and that central element is this unhinged lunatic that had no respect for human life was willing to make some grand statement, I don’t know if he even knows what grand statement he was willing to make to take the lives of his fellow human lives to do it. And there is the problem, a lack of respect for innocent human life. It’s a lack of respect for the constitution, for freedom.

It’s interesting that he would say that. And even more interesting that Crowley didn’t think to ask him about this comment of his at last year’s How To Take Back America conference:

Obama’s first act as president of any consequence, in the middle of a financial meltdown, was to send taxpayers’ money overseas to pay for the killing of unborn children in other countries…there’s almost nothing that you should be surprised at after that. We shouldn’t be shocked that he does all these other insane things. A president that has lost his way that badly, that has no ability to see the image of God in these little fellow human beings, if he can’t do that right, then he has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity

Not that there’s any direct correlation, but you can’t help but think of this when you read that:

Don Coorough, 58, who sat two desks in front of Mr. Loughner in a poetry class last semester, described him as a “troubled young man” and “emotionally underdeveloped.” After another student read a poem about getting an abortion, Mr. Loughner compared the young woman to a “terrorist for killing the baby.”

That kind of rhetoric is so common that we hardly even notice it anymore, even when fanatics gun down abortion doctors, as happened just a year and a half ago. But you’d think it would still be just a little bit unusual for a member of Congress. And yet it’s common. Just listen to Trent Franks himself on the floor of the House:

All morning I’m hearing the media and the politicians decrying the rhetoric on “both sides” with Matt Bai leading the charge in his NY Times article in which he dredges up the bogus “Move-On Hitler” nonsense (thus proving the case that there is very little equivalence on the left.) It’s maddening.

Meanwhile, last night, Erick Erickson of Redstate tweets this:

The left and media, in perpetuating the lie that the shooter was a tea party activist, may wrongly incite violence against the right.

I kid you not.

There are certainly left wing people who spew incendiary and violent rhetoric. But they are few and far between compared to the drumbeat of hatred and consequential acts of violence we’ve seen over the past two years and none who make the kind of profit at it that the right wing noise machine does. There is no comparison, it’s ridiculous to frame it that way. And it ends up distorting the truth, which is that we have a violent right wing political movement developing in this country with the help and acquiescence of a major political party which refuses to police its own.

This is the kind of thing Democratic office holders have been facing at every public meeting since Barack Obama was elected:

They sell t-shirts that say this at tea party rallies. Google it.

Perhaps the meaning of that has finally sunk in after yesterday’s horror. I’m sure it crossed the minds of the congresspeople who were targeted with those signs at Townhall meetings. And since the media are continuing to normalize these statements by suggesting that it’s all part of some incoherent left/right extremist rhetoric rather than a very specific intimidation tactic by a newly powerful right wing faction, they’ll undoubtedly succeed in intimidating a few. The fact that some impressionable, mentally ill kid did the dirty work doesn’t change that.

Update: If they succeed in forcing Sheriff Dupnik to resign because he told the truth, we are well and truly fucked, my friends.

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Question For Ann Coulter

by tristero

You once said:

My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.

Happy now?

Question. And Answer.

by tristero

Who will be the next victim on Sarah Palin’s hitlist?

Answer:

I’m afraid we probably won’t have to wait very long to find out.