It’s a common fantasy repeated endlessly by gun enthusiasts. When you get a crazy person who walks into a crowd and starts shooting people, some of us begin to question the overly-lax gun laws and start suggesting that at least some reasonable, even ridiculously mild form of gun control–you know, like allowing clips that hold only ten bullets instead of thirty so crazy people can only shoot a more limited number of people. At which point the enthusiasts disagree (some vehemently), and that’s when they bring up the fantasy.

“It’s too bad that one of the victims wasn’t armed, or better yet, all of them,” they lament. They envision a scenario in which a shooter would immediately meet return fire and be taken down before many people got hurt. After the shooting in Arizona, local congressman Trent Franks deplored, “I wish there had been one more gun in Tucson.”

The reality is much more complicated. The fact is, there was an armed citizen nearby when Loughner began his shooting spree in Arizona; the man immediately grabbed his gun, ran to the scene of the shooting–and very nearly shot one of the people who was subduing the gunman. This was not some frazzled dimwit, but someone who seemed to know their way around a gun, who seemed completely reasonable and responsible.

As if to back up the point, in Detroit yesterday, a gunman walked into a building filled with people and opened fire, shooting one man in the back and hitting three others before someone returned fire and killed the man. You might think that this is the fantasy situation fulfilled–that there was an armed person nearby who was able to return fire. In a sense, this is true: the building was a police station. There were lots of armed people there. And yet, four people got shot before someone returned fire, and the situation was less than controlled:

“Utter chaos and pandemonium took place,” Police Chief Ralph Godbee said at a news conference. “We have a number of officers who are shaken up.”

Even when nearly everyone in the room is armed, a gunman can still do a great amount of damage. Even trained, experienced police officers do not always react like the hero-fantasy expects. If a room full of professional gun-bearers reacted like that to random gun violence, can we really expect randomly armed citizens to do much better?

Also keep in mind that in the Detroit case, the gunman did not even have as deadly a gun as Loughner did. Furthermore, these are scenarios where the gunman comes in and starts firing with no thought to protecting himself. If the gunman has even the slightest ability to plan ahead and work out a scenario more complex than “walk in and start shooting,” he could potentially employ strategies that would allow him to do even more harm against rooms filled with armed people.

As for arming everyone, let’s also remember that there are few places which require a gun owner to train in the use of the weapon or to take even rudimentary safety instruction. Is it ever a good idea to suggest that more untrained people go around armed? We would not imagine allowing people to drive cars without going through at least basic instruction and testing, and most Americans value their right to own and drive a car more than they would to own a gun. Yet few question the wisdom of training, licensing, and registration where motor vehicles are concerned.

As has been pointed out:

A panel of criminology and statistics experts with the National Research Council the National Academies published a study in 2004 that found no reduced crime in states with right-to-carry (RTC) laws.

A 2010 study from Stanford Law School found that “the most consistent, albeit not uniform, finding to emerge from the array of models is that aggravated assault rises when RTC laws are adopted.”

Now, before anyone gets on their high horse, I do not advocate gun bans. (Most gun enthusiasts immediately jump to that conclusion even when the opposite is clearly pointed out; it’s the knee-jerk straw-man argument.) But I do advocate firm, reasonable gun control, of a nature that minimizes any impact on the law-abiding citizen but maximizes impact on those who would purchase guns for illicit use. As has been pointed out, at the very least, we know that lives would have been saved had Loughner been restricted to a 10-bullet clip rather than a 30-bullet clip; the larger-capacity clip had been banned before the Republican congress let it die, and let’s face it–it is the epitome of the reasonable gun control law. No hunter or home protector needs a 30-bullet clip, it’s an accessory for people who are either too lazy to reload more often, or for people who want to kill the largest number of human beings before they have to pause before killing more.

I also question the legitimacy of the assumption that simply putting more guns in the hands of more people more of the time–especially when there is no mandatory safety training–will result in less violence. Something about that just doesn’t ring true for some reason.

Right now, a lot of the people who would still defend preventing even eminently reasonable gun control measures say that it’s about controlling the gunman, not the gun. The problem is, Loughner should have been denied the ability to buy guns and ammunition–it’s not like his unbalanced state was a secret or anything–but the same people who fight reasonable gun control measures also fight against laws which would, in fact, control the crazy people who fire guns at crowds of people. Background checks, mental instability provisions, efficient networks to register and keep track of such individuals, and other checks that could have at least slowed Loughner down are just as hated by the gun crowd, who argue that such laws either inconvenience them or could be abused by the government to disarm normal law-abiding folk.

Having armed people nearby could–potentially–save lives, if those people are properly trained. It almost certainly did in the Detroit police station. However, having more guns around is not always the best way to deal with the problem, and reasonable gun control laws are probably a much better idea.

Eric Cantor, Republican House Majority Leader, said this about the GOP’s futile attempt to repeal health care reform:

The Senate ought not to be a place where legislation goes into a dead end. … The American people deserve a full hearing. They deserve to see this legislation go to the Senate for a full vote.

After Republicans spent the last four years in a historically unprecedented campaign of obstructionism, blocking votes at every single turn, even for legislation they themselves had approved of not long before, and abusing the filibuster to extents never seen before–suddenly they hate it when a bill can’t come up for an up-or-down vote in the Senate.

Had this come from a satire web site, I would have laughed. Coming seriously from the Republican leadership, it is at the same time pathetic and outrageous. They have no shame, and must assume that Americans are all unbelievable morons without the barest hint of memory.

Sarah Palin claimed that criticism of her was “blood libel,” implying that not only was the criticism false, but it was putting her in physical danger. Later, her office claimed that there were “unprecedented levels” of death threats against her after the Tucson shooting, apparently evidence to back up the earlier claim–but did her office did not report anything to the authorities, nor change security one bit, making it apparent that the claim was a flat-out lie.

Following that, the right-wing Washington Times took the “we’re just as persecuted as the Jews” meme one step further, claiming that there is an “ongoing porgrom” against conservatives. Pat Buchanan, apparently wanting to add that conservatives are also a persecuted as blacks in the 1960’s South, said that the left is conducting “something of a lynch mob” against right-wingers.

Those poor right-wingers, they are just being persecuted like there’s no tomorrow! It’s rather surprising that they haven’t been completely wiped out, considering the massive violent offensive being perpetrated against them.

Of course, the most interesting thing here is that these people insist that their own violent rhetoric has absolutely nothing to do with actual violence against others. At the same time, they claim that the act of other people just criticizing them, even with cautions against violence, means that suddenly they’re all in mortal danger. Get that? The use of gun metaphors against political opponents is not a problem and could not possibly be connected to actual gun violence; requests to tone down the gun rhetoric, however, is dangerous and could get them killed.

It would be quite spectacularly hypocritical–if it weren’t for the fact that they say stuff like this as a matter of course. So, by now, it’s only routinely hypocritical.

To those on the left, this is a matter of principle and public safety, as well as maintaining civil public discourse.

To those on the right, it’s all about taking political advantage.

Fortunately, Palin’s message is not resonating too well; according to recent polls, she has taken something of a plunge following the shooting and her handling of it. Palin has recently defended her use of the term “blood libel”; you can always count on her to never apologize, never back down. Naturally, she continued the characterization of recent criticism as trying to make her “shut up.” Of course, it’s a completely false charge–people are just asking that she not use gun metaphors within political debate. That would be a call for her to “shut up” if the only things that came out of her mouth were violent rhetoric. Although if anyone is trying to say she should stop saying stupid crap, that would entail her having to stop talking more or less completely.

Last October, I predicted that, due to a built-in 9-month lag in the unemployment rate reacting to actual job growth levels, the unemployment rate was bound to drop somewhat following good job performance in early 2010. I also predicted that Republicans would take credit for it despite having done nothing to generate it:

If unemployment lags as predicted, this will be bad timing for the Democrats, and very good for Republicans: if they win the House in November, it will probably be to news that unemployment is dipping, a trend that should continue until early 2011. They would, of course, attempt to take full credit for the change, acting as if it were the euphoria over their election wins and the expectation that they would pass tax cuts for the wealthy that spurred the gains–despite the fact that it would be the tail end of the stimulus and the special employment due to the census. Even more ironically, the trend would have continued far upwards and might even have taken us out of our dire economic straits had not the Republicans cut the stimulus down to well below what it should have been.

The news out today:

Top Republicans are claiming credit for a variety of metrics showing that the economy is improving. Expect this meme to snowball, particularly as Democrats have done little, so far, to stop it. On Fox News today, House Rules Committee Chair David Dreier (R-CA) contended the GOP deserves all the credit for recent economic growth.

“[W]e can get our economy growing. And we’ve gotten some positive numbers. I think it’s in large part because we won our majority and we’re pursuing pro-growth policies,” he said.

In December, the Department of Labor announced that unemployment had fallen from 9.7 percent to 9.4 percent. Its data suggests private sector job growth has been increasing since the fall. The GOP has controlled the House for just over two weeks, but has yet to enact any major economic legislation — and economists agree that even enacted fiscal policy will not be immediately reflected in economic growth.

Wow. I usually don’t call it so well.

Let’s see if my predictions last Fall continue; I said:

Nor would I be surprised if (a) the downturn in unemployment ends somewhere around February or March 2011, and (b) Republicans attempt to blame it on the Democrats for not going along with all the crap they will try to ram through the House the moment they have the gavel.

So far, their agenda has mostly been limited to repealing the health care act. They likely won’t succeed much on that, which will give them something to blame Democrats for if the numbers go bad again.

Last week, an entire nation, joined in mourning, almost learned how to spell “Tucson.”

Have you ever been surfing the web in a quiet place, maybe at home where others are sleeping, or maybe even in a coffee shop with gentle jazz playing over muted conversation–and then stumbled across a web page that starts playing loud music or some stupid ad and you forgot your volume had been turned up all the way? Beyond startling yourself, it can be pretty damned embarrassing. Worse if you just opened six or so links and you have to figure out which new page is blaring at you, before you remember that you have a mute button for the computer itself and scramble to hit it.

There are some things web pages should never do, and one of them is to start playing unsolicited audio content.

The schmucks at ABC News now load a 30-second video commercial on every single news story page you access. I don’t mean that when you try to access video, I mean when you try to access print. A video window accompanies every story, and it starts playing video, whether you like it or not. And the audio is always on by default, no matter what you set previously. The pause button is grayed out, so you can’t stop it. If you let the news story run, it plays for 2-3 minutes–and then you get another commercial, followed by the next news story in the queue.

The only more annoying thing I can think of are the long commercials–sometimes also 30 seconds–run before videos on “Funny or Die,” where sometimes the clips themselves are only a few seconds long.

Such “must endure” commercials are bad enough usually when you ask for video content (the same commercial tends to repeat every time, for example). It’s even worse when a 10-paragraph story is divided into three pages so you have to reload and get the commercials all over again every time you “turn the page.”

But to start playing video, with no warning or option to turn it off, is simply asinine.

I’ve said it before, I would not use an ad blocker at all if the ads would simply stay still. For appropriate ad content, I would even voluntarily sign up to some kind of service where I would tell them what kind of stuff I want to buy so they could ad least make the ads less irritating. But that’s not an option. So instead, the more intrusive they get, the more I avoid those sites. The scripted “pop-up” rectangles you have to dismiss (got around the pop-up blockers, didn’t they?), the floating ads which annoyingly bounce up and down the side while you scroll–these are getting more and more distracting and maddening.

I had backed off on my ad blocking, but now I am ramping up again, as well as adding to my do-not-visit list. I know they gotta pay for stuff, but it’s as if they completely ignore the annoyance factor. If movie theaters have to advertise, for instance, they would get no business if they stopped the movie every five minutes, had people go up to every patron and thump their shoulders, and then shout an obnoxious ad message at them before resuming the show.

Palin on why a Sufi group wishing to build a community center on private land had everything to do with a mass murder:

This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pieces by Islamic extremists. I think that it is incredibly insensitive and audacious really for them to build a mosque, not only on that site, but to do it specifically so that they could be in proximity to where that atrocity happened.

Six months later, Palin on why her own violent imagery had nothing to do with a mass murder:

Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them.

Hmm. Something doesn’t compute here, but somehow I can’t put my finger on it. Must be my imagination.

I was just looking over some old posts, and stumbled across this from 2004:

But it is a classic political weapon, used down the ages. Make the people afraid, and then tell them you are the one who can save them. … Fear is not only a weapon, it is perhaps the most powerful weapon that can be used in politics.

I was referring to the “terror alerts” that the Bush administration regularly issued throughout the election in order to push up Dubya’s numbers in the polls and to deflate Kerry whenever he was due for a bump. Strange that all of those alerts turned out not leading to anything. And we all remember how, after Bush won the election, we rarely saw any terror alerts again.

I mean, that couldn’t have been a trick, now could it have? Oh, of course not–conservatives would never think of using some scare tactic purely to make people vote for them?

It’s not as if there was a huge scare about some sort of terror mosque being built near Ground Zero that was all over the news last year but then we never heard about it again once the election was over.

No, conservatives never use fear tactics. Just like they never use violent imagery or suggest gun violence is a way to handle political disputes.

Conservatives, in the wake of their inappropriately violent references and the more recent Palin “blood libel” fiasco, seeking some kind of handle on the Tucson shooting that will allow them to attack Democrats successfully, tried to pull a Paul Wellstone: they tried to claim that the memorial event presided over by Obama–widely recognized as not just appropriate but excellent–was turned into a political campaign rally. In particular, they criticized t-shirts being given to members of the crowd, and reacted in disgust to the fact that people cheered. These points, they insinuate, show that liberals are politicizing the event, trying to gain from it. The term they seem to have settle upon is “pep rally,” but overall, are blasting the event from every conceivable angle.

The reality was quite different–a president getting a stricken community back on its feet:

Asked if the mood was appropriate, Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup, a Republican, didn’t hesitate: “Oh yes. Yes! If there was one thing that was appropriate, it was cheering. I’ve been in the hospital, and the people that are healing, they want to hear people cheer.” …

Obama himself gave the crowd reason to cheer, when he departed from his prepared text to announce that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) had opened her eyes for the first time since the shooting, just hours before. “She knows we are here, she knows we love her, and she knows we are rooting for her,” he said.

They cheered for Daniel Hernandez, the intern who many credit for saving Giffords’ life who also happens to be a junior at the university here. Hernandez, 20, later delivered a speech of his own in which he dubbed “e pluribus unum” — “out of many one” — the credo of the night.

They cheered for prominent native Arizonans in the crowd who have made much of themselves, from former Gov. Janet Napolitano to 2008 presidential nominee John McCain to former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

And, perhaps most markedly, they cheered for the members of their community both living and dead who were unknown until this week. Among those who received the warmest applause were the first responders who rushed to the parking lot of the Safeway where Giffords “Congress in your Corner” event ended in tragedy, the medical team from this university’s medical center that saved 10 lives and Giffords’ slain staffer Gabriel Zimmerman.

Yes, how dare they cheer. That bastard Obama.

Additionally, it appears that the university where the event was held–not Obama, Democrats, or liberals–was responsible for the t-shirts, which simply read, “Together We Thrive: Tucson & America.” Which, of course, is an incredibly left-wing political–even possibly communist–sentiment, as we all know. People seeing such shirts will instantly think to vote Democrat in the next election. Right.

Can conservatives do even one thing in the wake of this tragedy that doesn’t make them look like complete idiots, knowing hypocrites, or unbelievably callous partisans?

On the left, no persons of note that I know of have claimed that Loughner was a through-and-through right-winger or Republican. His reading list, if even accurate, was all over the map, and with people who are as apparently deranged as he is, it is doubtful that political affiliations mean very much in any case. The most claimed on the left that I have heard is that the atmosphere created by preposterously insane conspiracy-theory mongering and the accompanying violent rhetoric at least possibly helped spur Loughner into doing what he did, and even if not, it is time to recognize that violent imagery is inappropriate for political discourse.

Some people on the right wing don’t stop so short, however. Of course, you have the knee-jerk reaction of Freepers to automatically paste “Registered Democrat” before the name of any miscreant (Loughner was, in fact, a registered Independent)–but crazies can be found in the comment sections of both sides.

One expects more from people with larger followings or, especially, elected office. That didn’t stop a Republican member of the House of Representatives from saying this:

This guy appears to be a communist. His beliefs are the liberal of the liberals. There is no evidence whatsoever that this man was influenced by Sarah Palin or anybody in the Republican Party. This man is not a conservative; he’s a fan of communism – that’s the opposite of conservatism.

–Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC)

Not to be outdone, the Tea Party Express released this:

During the past few days friends of the shooter, Jared Loughner, have stepped forward to say that they knew him to be a political liberal. He admired the Communist Manifesto and burned the American flag.

And, of course, we have Rush himself claiming that the Democratic Party is Loughner’s best friend:

What Mr. Loughner knows is that he has the full support of a major political party in this country. He’s sitting there in jail; he knows what’s going on. He knows that a Democrat [sic] Party — the Democrat [sic] Party — is attempting to find anybody but him to blame.

–Rush Limbaugh

Many right-wingers are assuming that he’s a liberal because he listed The Communist Manifesto on his reading list on YouTube. All too often, conservatives seem to think that anyone who even reads The Communist Manifesto is of course a liberal–which is about as stupid as assuming that anyone who reads “Mein Kampf”–also on Loughner’s reading list–is a right-winger. And yet, many on the right seem to think reading Hitler’s tome also marks people as liberals, so that’s kind of what we’re dealing with. The reading list also included “We the Living,” an Ayn Rand novel which was anti-Communist. Just as much can be discerned from his listing many children’s books as well.

Some point to the friend calling him a liberal (it was just one that I know of, and as an aside, he didn’t burn a flag, nor would this mark him as a liberal either)–but she also called him a Libertarian, and said pointedly that this was three years ago and he may have changed–and many of his more recent ideas, such as using the gold standard, government taking over and controlling everything, that abortion is terrorism, have a right-wing flavor to them. As stated before, he was all over the map. Assigning a single political affiliation to the man is not really even an issue, nor should not be.

On the left, we’re basically saying, “This atmosphere of hysteria and violence is going too far, possibly contributing to acts of violence such as this, so let’s dial it back some. Disagreeing, even vehemently, is no problem–just don’t use violent language or imagery.” On the right, the ones speaking out seem to be saying, “The shooter’s a liberal! This has nothing to do with our rhetoric!” Let’s observe for a moment that even Keith Olbermann did not excuse himself from his observation that things must be toned down; he apologized, and removed and is reworking his popular segment “Worst Persons in the World” as an example of how things should be toned down. I can only suppose that we don’t see outward motions like this on the right because they would feel doing such is an admission of culpability.

And as you know if you read this blog regularly, I do believe that the rhetoric is relevant. Stoking the anxieties of the public with unfounded, often completely fictional scare stories to make the public irrationally fear organizations or specific people, simply to gain political traction, is relevant. Elected officials and nationwide political figures using thinly-veiled–or completely unveiled–references to violent action as an acceptable response to political dissatisfaction is relevant. You create an atmosphere in which people fear far more when no rational basis for that fear exists, you create an environment in which it is considered all but patriotic to arm yourself to the teeth, and then you have respected figures saying that if the person you want to see elected doesn’t win, or if a desired measure doesn’t pass, people should respond with guns.

To suggest that this does not even slightly, tangentially affect the cultural mindset in such a way that could spur unbalanced individuals to violence is, I believe, pure nonsense. Of course it has an effect. Nor am I the only one to think so:

“It’s a reasonable question to ask,” Dr. Marvin Swartz, a psychiatry professor at Duke University who specializes in how environment impacts the behavior of the mentally ill, said in an interview this morning. “The nature of someone’s delusions is affected by culture. It’s a reasonable line of inquiry to ask, `How does a political culture affect the content of people’s delusions?’”

Now, does this mean that Sarah Palin is directly responsible for Loughner shooting Giffords? Of course not. Nor have I heard anyone of note claiming a direct connection, only that violent imagery has an influence–the accusation that she’s to blame for the whole thing is a straw man made up by the right wing.

Can we even know, as an incontrovertible fact, if the rhetoric of Palin and others like her had any effect on Loughner specifically? Not yet, and we may possibly never know for certain.

But are Sarah Palin and others like her responsible for creating an environment in which such violence is more likely to happen? Absolutely. You cannot be a widely respected national figure with millions of charged, angry people taking your words as gospel, claim that the government is literally planning to kill off babies and seniors, or that there is a massive conspiracy to destroy democracy leading to your children being killed by black people, and expect that there will not be any real-world consequence to your hyperbole and violent imagery.

All of this has become notable since the 2008 elections, when the Republicans took their gloves off and started making up ludicrous crap about Obama. How he was either a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer. He was a Muslim, born in Kenya, and a communist fascist dictator. It got to the point where people in the crowds at these rallies started shouting things like “Kill him!” That doesn’t come from nowhere, that doesn’t happen without provocation. After Obama was elected, things only ramped up, and birthers were not even the most extreme. Right-wingers started showing up at Obama appearances armed with guns and rifles, bearing signs which made it clear they favored killing him. T-shirts were sold with a “prayer” for Obama’s death. All of this based not on anything Obama did–he was still two months away from taking office–but based upon the spectacular lies and gross exaggerations spread by his political opponents.

Thus, it is of extreme irony that Palin now accuses her critics of “blood libel”:

If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re free to propose better ideas. But especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

This woman has some fracking gall. The same woman who stirred audiences to shout death threats against her opponent as she shouted blatant lies about “palling around with terrorists” accuses her opponents–who only say we should tone down the violent rhetoric–of placing Palin in physical danger? Somehow, her use of outright vicious smears and repeated violent imagery had nothing whatsoever to do with the rising levels of national paranoia and violence, but calls for her to stop using the violent imagery places her life in imminent danger?

I think one thing is clear: it is indeed possible to cause violent action with inflamed rhetoric and violent imagery. Case in point: Dr. George Tiller, a doctor who performed abortions, was intensely vilified by Randall Terry; he was called a Nazi, a terrorist, and a murderer. Terry even went so far as to publish Tiller’s home address. Tiller was shot dead by a man with links to Terry’s organization, one who–like Loughner–was mentally unstable and had been driven to fear his government. One cannot directly blame Terry, but it would be a matter of great surprise if he had carried no influence in the matter, and no surprise at all if he had a great deal of influence in it. Had Terry argued against the issue rather than painting a target on the back of a specific doctor, had he spoken urgently and passionately in favor of treasuring life instead of using such outrageous, fear-sparking hyperbole about the actions of a single individual, it is not unthinkable at all that Tiller would probably still be alive today. But Terry probably has learned from long experience that terrorism, committed behind the veil of legitimacy and carried out by the extremism he legally stokes, has a far greater real effect and so does not flinch at its use.

What worries me is that instead of toning things down, the right wing only seemed amped to turn the volume up. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), who previous railed about terror babies and spoke in the House itself about death panels and Obama wanting to get older people to “die off more quickly,” actually told Sheriff Dupnik to “tone his rhetoric down.” He also joined the right-wing chorus in painting Loughner as a liberal:

It may be that if the things that we’re reading — that he’s a liberal, hates the flag, supports Marx, that type of thing, turn out to be true, then it may be embarrassing to some of the current administration’s constituents, and, heaven help us, we wouldn’t want to embarrass any of the president’s constituents.

Even worse, among the people spouting ridiculously transparent lies, spinning insane conspiracy theories, popularizing irrationally bizarre hyperbole, and using suggestively violent imagery, there are far too many elected officials in their numbers. Maybe I’m romanticizing the past, but was there not a time when national politicians’ lies had to be at least halfway credible or they would be discredited? That if they suggested armed violence as a political tool, even in jest, they would have no hopes for re-election?

As the left wing goes about saying we should have more peaceful and responsible public debate, the right wing only responds with more incendiary hyperbole–offensive hyperbole at that–and an implied promise to continue their practice, if not outright denial that the practice exists.

In the past, I have spoken out often against this, and as the only solution I can think of, I offered the possibility of civil suits. I admitted that they were a long shot, but I see potential value in them. I think Dr. Tiller’s family might have had at least a presentable case against Randall Terry, for example, and the Tides Foundation, to a lesser degree, against Glenn Beck and Fox News.

I see civil suits as the best course of action because, if I am not mistaken, they require less direct evidence than criminal cases, as we saw in the O.J. Simpson trials, and thus may not be as difficult to pursue as the laws which are easily danced around.

I do not see them as a threat against free speech, as they only would address the more onerous examples of violent speech–something which, at least in spirit, is supposed to be illegal in any case. It would never silence anyone on an issue, it would only serve to pressure them to be careful about staying with the facts–again, supposedly what the law now mandates–and not using violent rhetoric, something not only completely divorced from, but in fact, inimical to the free expression of ideas.

As it seems unlikely those on the right will voluntarily stop using hyperbole and violent imagery, short of civil suits in the more extreme cases, I see no way to stem something which I perceive to be a very real threat to free and unhindered political discourse in our society.

One thing is certain: violence has no place in our politics.

My apologies… I have been out with the flu for the past four days. Just went back to work today. Coming back online later tonight.

As you undoubtedly know, Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot today, along with several others, 6 of whom are dead. The shooter seems to be someone who is mentally unbalanced. Assigning a party title to the shooter is likely nonsensical, but what is relevant and indeed important is the level of violent rhetoric related to current politics. And despite media attempts at false equivalency, we all know where the violent rhetoric is coming from. In the words of the Pima, Arizona County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik:

I’d just like to say that when you look unbalanced people-how they are-how they respond to 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 is getting to be outrageous and unfortunately Arizona, I think, has become sort of the capitol. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

Giffords was one of the lawmakers referenced by a rifle crosshairs on Sarah Palin’s infamous “Hit List” map, which she introduced with the message, “”Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!“ Giffords has had more than her share of violent rhetoric aimed at her by the Tea Party and others, including indirect wording by her Tea Party opponent.

Debate is fine, disagreement is fine, argument and opposition are fine. But this whole wave of ”Second Amendment solutions“ and other violence-based hot air coming from the right wing is simply and clearly unacceptable. To claim it’s not relevant is bullshit, and if you have your opinions to to opposite, fine, but You. Are. Wrong.

Remember the GOP freshman who had campaigned against government-run health care who threw a fit when he couldn’t get his own government-run health care package right away?

We have another entrant in the “Biggest Hypocrite in the GOP Freshman Class of the 112th Congress”: Michael Grimm (R-NY13). Grimm also campaigned virulently against government-run health care, and yet is now insisting that there’s absolutely wrong with his having the same government-run health care he is trying to deny his constituents.

His excuse:

What am I, not supposed to have health care? It’s practicality. I’m not going to become a burden for the state because I don’t have health care and, God forbid I get into an accident and I can’t afford the operation…That can happen to anyone.

Here is a case of someone who didn’t expect to have his hypocrisy called out and so did not have time to think of a good excuse. There are several things wrong with his claim:

1. What applies to him applies just as well to the tens of millions of people who would go uncovered by health care should he be successful in repealing the ACA–should they be burdens for their states?
2. He acts as if he has no other options aside from taking government-run health care or having no insurance at all, as if there is no such thing as private insurance–the same “free market” insurance he so valiantly defends. What’s wrong with the exact same insurance option he claims is good enough for everyone else? Or does he think that private insurance is too expensive or just not good enough for himself?
3. If he believed government-run health care is a bad thing, then it is a bad thing when he gets it too.

Clearly what we have here is a hypocrite who will take what he feels he has “earned” even though he “earned” it by telling people that it is an evil that will lead to the downfall of the country, excusing it with a logically invalid load of crap. To top it off, he told Diane Sawyer in regards to making cuts, “the pain should be shared by everyone”–except, apparently, himself. And at a salary of $174,000 plus benefits and a generous retirement plan paid for by the taxpayers, one would think that of all people, he could pay his own way.

Yet another piece of evidence that these people don’t believe in what they’re selling, but are instead following what is now a full-blown Republican tradition of saying and doing whatever will benefit them personally.

OK, this is getting spooky. Maybe.

We first heard about it when hundreds of blackbirds were reported falling from the skies in Arkansas–and the number kept growing, now estimated at about 5,000. But that wasn’t the only incident; among the mass sea and air deaths:

1. the 5000 blackbird falling dead with physical trauma from the sky in Arkansas;
2. not far away, hundreds of thousands of drum fish–but no other species–showed up also dead;
3. 100 tons of dead fish washed up on the Brazilian coastline;
4. 2 million fish dead in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland;
5. 500 more blackbirds in Louisiana;
6. a large number of dead snapper fish in New Zealand;
7. hundreds of grackles, starlings, and robins fell dead in Kentucky, these with no signs of trauma;
8. 40,000 velvet swimming crabs washed up dead near Kent in England;
9. 50 Jackdaws fell dead on a street in Sweden, with no visible signs of damage.

Add to that the most recent case in Italy, where 8000 turtle doves fell to their deaths in a town, with blue stains around their bills.

Google is now mapping the mass deaths, which seem to include up to 30 incidences worldwide over the past several weeks.

Now, not all of these incidences seem really strange; a few dozen birds dying a a strain of bird flu in eastern Japan doesn’t seem too unusual. Which leads one to ask, is this really so unusual, or are we just noticing this more than we have in the past? The USGS says this is actually normal, with mass die-offs reported almost every other day, or 163 each year on average. Perhaps all this is is one story with an unusual twist making headlines, and then all the rest of the stories standing out because of the first one.

Occam’s razor suggests this is probably the case–we’re just paying attention to something that was ignored previously. That does not, however, stop the stories from raising some hairs on your arm (especially if you’ve seen the movie The Happening), or feeding conspiracy theories in those who live in a much more interesting world than the rest of us.

Democrats are apparently refusing to allow the incoming “We’re All About the Rules” Republicans to bypass the rules which would allow the GOP to more quickly attack the health care legislation the Democrats worked so hard to get passed.

Well, isn’t that what the Republicans said they wanted?

Only days from a mid-term election in which they are widely expected to take control of the House, the slogan of the nearly empowered congressional Republicans can be put into two words: “no compromise.” …

“This is not a time for compromise, and I can tell you that we will not compromise on our principles,” Boehner said during an appearance on conservative Sean Hannity’s radio show.

If this report is accurate, then the Democrats gave them exactly what they said they wanted: no compromise. Frankly, I think they had a hell of a lot of gall to go to the Dems and even ask them for that. After treating the Dems like crap and obstructing at every turn, they suddenly want the Dems to cave in even when the GOP trips itself up?

I almost hope that Pelosi and the gang gave Boehner a florid Cheneyism in response. He richly deserves exactly that.

There’s a rule of thumb which says that the more loudly something is claimed the more likely it’s not true. Fox News is an excellent example, making the loudest claims about how objective it is.

This applies just as appropriately to Republicans in the House, who carried out a big grandstanding stunt by reading the Constitution aloud, in essence implying that it was being ignored by Democrats, and that Republicans were committed to carrying out the letter of the law, all part of their larger movement to emphasize how they are all about rules and order. Following the rule of thumb, one can assume that the implied message is indeed not true.

It did not take long for evidence of this to materialize. Two Republican House members–including the chairman of the Rules Committee himself–participated in debate and votes in committee without being sworn in. Not only against the rules, but against the Constitution itself. Apparently they were too busy reading the Constitution to actually bother to follow the document’s rules. This put them in the embarrassing position of going to the Democrats–specifically, Nancy Pelosi–to beg for an agreement to let the whole incident be ignored by agreement so the GOP could ram through it’s pathetic attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act sooner, without having to take the time to follow the rules properly. (One does not have to guess what the Republican’s answer would be were their positions reversed.)

All this as Republicans get on another grandstanding high horse, reducing the budget deficit–as if they are all about reduction and Democrats are about ballooning it. This just weeks after they forced a 2-year extension on tax cuts for the rich which will cost us a hundred or two billion, with the full GOP intent of making those cuts permanent–even though a majority of Americans see raising taxes on wealthy people as the most popular way to reduce the deficit.

How else are Republicans going to “reduce” the deficit? By trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. The problem: the CBO says that doing so will actually inflate the deficit to the tune of $230 billion, and will only get more expensive as time goes on and the ten-year cost-saving estimate of the act begins to encompass more of the money-saving that will come at the far end of that estimate. Republicans predictably responded by calling the CBO estimate an “opinion” while couching the name of the ACA in the obligatory right-wing “job-killing” epithet.

Oh, and the Constitution reading which was ignored by Republicans themselves? That cost about $1.1 million. Not to mention all the time wasted in the health care repeal legislation that they know will just be killed in the Senate or vetoed by the president.

If the Republicans were actually interested in cutting costs, they should have immediately worked to fix a budget error, caused by the Republican obstructionism last year, that forces NASA to spend $475 million on a rocket they don’t need. But that would mean actually doing work that means something, rather than pulling PR stunts that play well to their base.

So, good job, Republicans, in showing the American public exactly how wasteful and stupid you all are.

Remember how the filibuster was unconstitutional and evil, until Republicans lost the majority and abused it like never before in history? Remember how Republicans thought reconciliation was fine when they used it, but was outrageous when Democrats used it?

They’re at it again, this time with a process called “deem and pass.” When Democrats used it, Republicans almost literally “demonized” it, calling it every name in the book; some called for Pelosi’s impeachment over the issue, even though Democrats eventually did not use the measure for health care passage.

Now that they’ve got the gavel back, guess what procedure is suddenly OK again?

Not that this is a surprise. When Democrats used the procedure in the 80’s and early 90’s. Republicans railed against the procedure. But when they took over in the mid-90’s, they used the procedure at about double the rate Democrats did.

This is the Republican SOP: call Democrats villains for doing something, then do it twice as much themselves. Because, after all, IOKIYAR, and the “Liberal Media™” which greatly publicizes Republican outrage will rarely if ever say anything about the hypocrisy once Republicans do the same thing but worse. Note the virtual absence of reporting on Republican filibustering in the media after the extensive coverage of Democratic filibustering at far lower levels.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

According to Supreme Court “Justice” Scalia, this wording in the 14th amendment does not apply to women. When the amendment was drafted, women were not afforded equal rights, and so presumably were not included in the group referred to as “people.” And if women’s rights are not covered by this, Scalia added, then certainly gays don’t have rights either. Apparently, in his view, old prejudices trump out the literal wording of laws as well as modern legal conventions. If women were not “people” when the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted, then they are not “people” now, at least so far as that amendment is concerned; either that, or being promoted to the ranks of “people” does not, apparently, endow you with the rights associated with that group. his distinction is even more interesting when one considers that elsewhere in the amendment, “male citizens” are referred to specifically so as to differentiate them from the more general “persons” which includes women, women being clearly included in the “persons” mentioned later.

Of course, if one takes Scalia’s contention to its logical conclusion, we get all sorts of interesting effects. Are women not protected by any right referring to “persons” prior to a time when they were socially accepted as equals? Since the Fourteenth Amendment was about granting rights to black people, does that mean that non-black minorities were not included and therefore still do not have equal protection? In parts of the Constitution and amendments where “the states” are referred to, do the references only apply to states that existed at the time? How about First Amendment religious rights–surely they did not intend to include Muslims, and Mormons didn’t even exist at the time; surely they don’t have rights. Certainly the founding fathers didn’t vote for the rights of these groups. [Update: here’s a thought–where in the Constitution does it say that corporations are people, or that money is free speech? I’m pretty sure those weren’t voted on, either; nevertheless, Scalia recognizes and upholds these concepts in his decisions.]

In the meantime, RNC Chair candidates jockey to see who can make the most earnest-sounding claims that voter fraud (i.e., when minorities and poor people vote) is rampant, so they can justify the application of “anti-fraud” laws that will disenfranchise millions of Democrats. Note the code words used, such as “urban areas,” and the more overt references to how this will help Republicans win elections. Still missing: any actual evidence that voter fraud is rampant, or even more than just a tiny blip. Not that this bothers them; the entire issue has been one weapon in their arsenal of winning elections, which in Republican terms is not equivalent to respecting the actual votes of Americans legally entitled to do so.

Sachi and I went to the nearby Tanashi Shrine today, hoping to do our hatsumode, or new year’s shrine visit for the season. When we got there, however, we saw this:

Yep. A huge, long line. And what you see above is just the start of it. We have been going to Hie Shrine in mid-town the past couple years, but decided to go local–little did we know that the lines would be longer here. The line went way down the path to the rear entrance, then went down the block and around the corner and snaked back up almost to the side entrance of the shrine. Here’ a video of less than half that line:

The movie above ends about halfway through the entire line. So, instead, we just went to a small side shrine (actually, nicer than the main one) where almost no one was going, with the idea that we’ll go back again tomorrow or the next day for our “official” visit.

Of course, we chowed down on matsuri food; Sachi had okonomiyaki while I had yakitori and a frank. We returned last year’s charms for burning, and bought a few new ones, as usual.

A nice shrine visit, despite the line thing.

Sheriff Grady Judd of Polk County, Florida, is offended by how good prisoners have it. As he drove by the Polk County Jail not too long ago, he saw inmates playing basketball, and that just royally cheesed him off: “I’m working for a living and these guys are sitting around on my tax dollar and playing basketball.”

Yeah, imagine that. These guys are locked up in overcrowded jails, and for a whole three hours a week they get to go outside into a chain-link cage and shoot hoops. Posh! “I’m not going to have an environment where they feel like they’re at a fitness center,” Judd complained. Yeah! What did they do to deserve such luxury? Committed crimes, that’s what they did. I bet they even broke the law just for the chance of playing basketball for 3 hours out of every 168. Totally worth it. Slackers.

After all, they’re all criminals. “Inmates come to jail because they violated the law,” Judd pointed out. Except that the jail also holds people who are awaiting trial and are not convicted of anything–some of them could be completely innocent. This makes no difference to Judd. “They’re all there because of probable cause that they committed a crime,” he points out. “The solution is if you don’t like county jail, stay out of it.” The message, boys and girls, is don’t become suspected because of probable cause. Exactly how one does this I have no idea.

Nevertheless, Judd was having none of this coddling-of-mostly-criminals-and-maybe-some-innocent-people crap, and so decided to take away the basketball hoops. What he did with them next created a bit of controversy: he took the equipment, paid for by taxpayers, and (in front of local news cameras he invited) gave it away to churches, where they will attract the use of children.

Sounds OK, except for the part about giving public property to churches and the First Amendment and all that. That did not sit well with a secular group, which said that the equipment should go to local parks and schools, where kids can use them just as well, without having to go to a religious institution. Judd chafed at that, asking why he should “kowtow” to the atheists’ “silliness,” looking forward to fighting a legal battle with them.

Everyone, meet the next Republican congressional candidate from Polk County and future presidential candidate.