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Partial screenshot of January 11, 2011 Washington Post Opinions page.
Tuesday’s Opinions page in the Washington Post is dedicated almost entirely to the tragic shooting in Tucson on Saturday. A screenshot of a portion of the Opinions webpage shows us the lineup of writers and their topics. In addition, one of the three editorials by the Post’s editorial board also addresses the issue and has the title “Gun control: It’s not a political impossibility”.
To summarize, then, we have Eugene Robinson and the editorial board arguing for improved laws to keep guns out of the hands of those who should not have them, Dana Milbank hitting the violent rhetoric from Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck for their contributions to politically-based violence and threats of violence while George Will, Michael Gerson, Richard Cohen and Marc Thiessen all write columns that are telling America to stop blaming conservatives for the violent political landscape that they have created with their incendiary language and actions. Cohen does touch on the insanity of how easily disturbed people can get guns, but puts much of his energy into chastising anyone who blames the hateful environment created by the right wing.
Eugene Robinson’s column is a powerful argument for improving the background check process to make sure those who shouldn’t have guns don’t get them:
We may not be sure that the bloodbath in Tucson had anything to do with politics, but we know it had everything to do with our nation’s insane refusal to impose reasonable controls on guns.
/snip/
According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, about 80 percent to 90 percent of disqualifying mental health records are not in the background-check database. Some states simply don’t bother to submit the information; others do so haphazardly. Arizona is neither the best nor the worst on this score.
/snip/
We must recognize the obvious distinction between rifles, shotguns and target pistols used for sport on the one hand, and semiautomatic handguns designed for killing people on the other. We must decide that allowing anyone to carry a concealed weapon, no questions asked, is just crazy. And for heaven’s sake, we must demand that laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of lunatics be enforced.
The remarkably good editorial jumps in on the gun control topic:
THERE’S A WEARYING pattern associated with gun-related tragedies in this country. An assault, like the shooting Saturday of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) and 19 others, sparks discussion about America’s lax gun laws and the ease with which mentally unstable people can buy weapons of wholesale destruction. Then come rejoinders centering on the political impossibility of common-sense legislation. And then, a lapse back into an indefensible but seemingly inevitable status quo.
/snip/
The type of magazine used by Mr. Loughner was once banned in the United States. But that brief era of sanity came to an end in 2004, when Congress refused to renew the assault-weapons ban passed in the summer of 1994. Democrats suffered huge defeats in the 1994 midterm elections, and many blamed their support for the gun-control measure, which the National Rifle Association adamantly opposed. Although that election turned on many controversies, including taxes, health-care reform and gays in the military, many Democrats took away a single message: Endorsement of even modest gun-control measures can spell political defeat.
/snip/
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a nonprofit organization that advocates for gun control, noted that in the recent midterm elections, 27 Democratic incumbents endorsed by the NRA lost reelection. By contrast, only two of the 101 Democratic representatives who co-sponsored a gun-control bill in the last Congress lost their seats. Support for sensible gun control need not spell the end of a career. If Mr. Obama would lead the way in making the argument, poll numbers on the issue also might begin to shift.
So, as the Post and Robinson point out, a strong case can be made for improving gun control laws and Democrats who could be seen as supporting these improvements fared very well in the most recent Congressional elections. However, an example of one of the biggest reasons gun control efforts in response to this tragedy are likely once again to lapse back into the indefensible status quo is the prominence given to the paid shills who make their livings trying to whitewash the craven ravings of our country’s right wing lunatics in order to present them as a “reasoned” political movement. With an onslaught right there on the same Opinions page of no less than four apologists for the right wing, all wringing their hands and just asking America to leave those who spew violence-laden, hate-filled rhetoric all over our political landscape” alooone”, it’s no wonder that no real progress can be made. Since Will, Gerson, Cohen and Thiessen all wrote virtually the same column, I’ll only address the one by torture-apologist Marc Thiessen:
Over the weekend, the Tea Party detractors were at it again – this time blaming the movement for the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others. Within hours of the attack, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman had issued his own (admittedly) unfounded verdict: “We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was . . . she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist.” So Tea Party activists are prepared to kill those they cannot defeat at the polls?
Yes, Mr. Thiessen, if you really look at the way the right wing fuels America’s gun fetish, there really do appear to be Tea Party-associated groups that only very thinly veil their threats of gun violence if they don’t get their way.
Thiessen then relies on the most disgusting practice in hackery, trying to build a false equivalence in his desperate attempt to shield Sarah Palin from responsibility for her violent rhetoric:
Left-wing bloggers and commentators blamed the attack on Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin because she had “targeted” Giffords for defeat during the 2010 elections. The New York Daily News published a column headlined “Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ blood is on Sarah Palin’s hands after putting cross hair over district.” And an hour after Giffords was shot, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas actually tweeted: “Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin.” He conveniently failed to mention that his Daily Kos had put a “bull’s eye” (their words) on Giffords in 2008 – including her on a list of centrist Democrats who should be “targeted” in Democratic primaries. Mission accomplished, Markos?
I will agree with Thiessen that Moulitsas should not have used targeting terminology. And I will also agree with Thiessen that Moulitsas’ actions were as irresponsible as those of Palin–just as soon as he shows me that Moulitsas also said something as provocative as “Don’t retreat–reload“, that he gets his jollies shooting defenseless animals from a helicopter and that he has provided a videotaped message of support for a lunatic fringe group that advocates violence and secession. The sickness in Washington that would try to paint equivalence between Moulitsas and Palin in terms of provocation to violence is a big reason why our political landscape has become completely devoid of consequences for action. As long as hacks like Thiesssen are out there painting false equivalences between people as diametrically opposite as Markos Moulitsas and Sarah Palin, Palin will be able to get away with fomenting violence and Thiessen’s former associates will never face prosecution for torture.
How on earth does Marc Thiessen sleep at night, given the evils he helps to unleash on the world?
124 Comments
Good job. Also, please remember Horowitz’ claims that academia is a bastion of dangerous librul ideas that infect our youth and destroy society as the right prefers it. I do notice that the shooter showed his underlying mania in declaring academic assignments ‘tyranny’ that denied his constitutional rights to free speech.
In so much as I strongly advocate for requiring thorough background checks for firearm purchases, I’m in agreement with Robinson. However, beyond the ready availability of high capacity magazines like those Loughner used, I fail to see how the horiffic events in Tucson had “everything to do with our nation’s insane refusal to impose reasonable controls on guns.”
From what has been revealed so far, Loughner’s “history of drug use” was documented by a failed screening during an attempted military enlistment. Though he assuredly exhibited bizarre behavior, by Robinson’s own admission “there is no indication that Loughner was ever officially deemed to suffer from mental illness.” He was suspended from a community college and the admnistration decided, informally, that they wanted an evaluation before they would allow him to re-enroll. He subsequently withdrew from classes.
I’m not sure what sort of background check, however thorough, would have uncovered any of that. The anecdotal evidence has certainly piled up as the media has gone investigating, but it’s noteworthy what **wasn’t** found: a felony record, a personal protection order, psychiatric hospitalization or diagnosis. No background check is going to uncover the sort of suspicious personal accounts an army or reporters can.
As far as Arizona’s (ridiculous on its face) lack of special permit for concealed carry goes, let’s be serious: someone planning an assassination/mass murder is not going to alter his plan or dutifully obey gun laws and carry the weapon openly pre-massacre just because he can’t get a CCW permit.
Loughner makes an appealing target, but the facts of his case aren’t the argument for revamped controls that Robinson thinks they are.
I pretty much agree. I’m listening to democracynow on replay. They interviewed a student who took a poetry class with Loughner & tried to befriend him. It sounds like, though Loughner was ‘off’ emotionally, it had not reached a level that some kind of external intervention would have been required even in the most ‘advanced’ mental health awareness situation. And without some sort of professional evaluation, gun permits could not be withheld. Not to mention, as you point out that the ability to get a gun outside of any permitting system is not that difficult.
Laws are generally not enough to prevent crime, that requires a system of enforcement. By going outside legal channels the incipient lawbreaker puts him/herself into channels that those who enforce the laws recognize, and notice. In Mexico, for example, gun licenses are very hard to obtain, so by purchasing guns the lawbreakers put themselves into recognizable channels.
This reaction from the right says one thing very, very clearly. They have a guilty conscience. They were screaming “don’t blame the right” before anybody was. These are educated people so they can count the number of attacks on left leaning people and places vs the absence of attacks on the right.
George Will’s opinion piece is the most meaningful. Curiously, the national handwringing engendered by the Giffords tragedy is never as apparent when the authorities themselves engage in it. The Branch Davidian affair, Ruby Ridge, and countless incidents in which law enforcement has filled innocent people with bullet holes never seems to inspire a call for decreasing the firepower of the police. Drunken cops administer the death penalty to motorists that have offended them. They execute with Glock semi-autos persons that refuse to drop a knife. A paranoid-schizophrenic with a badge has 24/7 access to high-powered automobiles and lethal firearms, drunk or sober. But catastrophes caused by these monsters only make the local papers and nothing is changed.
I’m not sure about gun laws in other states, but in my state you may buy the gun then and there. Yes, they do take your personal info and run it through a national system, but it is quick and easy.
I would think that the waiting period of a week or two weeks before walking out the door with the weapon would help to more fully vet a buyer.
I’m not sure you do yourself a service by using Mexico as an example of the efficacy of gun control.
My more important point, which is tangentially related to gun control, is the difficulty of diagnosing & treating mental illness in general, and keeping guns out their hands in particular.
That’s a valid point but after listening to that guy Ed Schultz interviewed yesterday, it’s going to be a cold day in hell before I go to Arizona. And that was on of the “heroes” at the scene. For myself, what bothers me a lot is that Loughner didn’t break any laws until he actually pulled the trigger.
In reflecting on the large number of trolls who showed up here yesterday, it seemed clear in retrospect that the wingers were out in full force, on orders from their masters, to blanket not only the media but also the internet, with as much rationalization & denial as possible. However, it seems that drew more attention to their role, so I’m not so sure it was a savvy thing to do. But time will tell.
Efficacy of gun control was not stipulated, simple facts were all I was addressing.
Is Theissen linking to the bullshit Hillbuzz photoshopped lie, or to Markos’ actual post?
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2011/1/10/935177/-Tea-party-group-fundraises-off-of-Giffords-shootings
‘national handwringing’
The image of blubbering sensitivities is duly acknowledged and compared with the actual shock and horror caused by seeing murder of responsible public servants, and sickens.
Gosh darn it, I just keep forgetting how innocent David Koresh and separatist militias are. Thanks for that reminder.
And in a state that denies terminally ill patients their organ needed transplants, what’s the likelihood of diagnosing, much less treating mental illness? I think we can all be safe if we say that sane gun restriction may not have stopped this, mental health resources might not have stopped this and toned down rhetoric might not have stopped this but a combination of all three almost certainly would have.
For Pete’s Sake! The guilt is hanging out for all to see.
Gun laws aren’t going to make a difference. Canada has strict gun laws, but illegal guns still stream in from other countries including/mostly the US. The more the media is carrying even more stories of threats, and other cases, the more it is looking not just a lone gunman ideal. Giffords could have been Republican, and I don’t think it would have mattered. This young man was mad at government, not at Dems or Republicans, but government. The way the economy is right now, with so many losing everything they’ve worked for and now have nothing, I wouldn’t be surprised if these incidents don’t increase. It just may be the opening volleys of a classwar, started by a young man that didn’t have the mental capacity to realize it. Government and left/right responses are what will make the difference and so far, it looks like this will get very ugly.
I say cut the crap and confiscate the guns. Then the wingers can talk as violently as they want.
Maybe I am just tone-deaf, but I do not get why the Arizona shooting has gotten so much press for now 4 days. Everyday many get killed by guns (and other means) in the USA. Many get killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those barely make the news. It seems to me that as many times before the media and the politicians are manufacturing outrage to push some issues. More important news for me is that Tom Delay has been sentenced to 3 years prison term, and that also is barely making the news. As I said, maybe I am tone-deaf, coming from a different culture….
They might as well have held up a neon sign: “Yes. We are aware of our culpability in this”. It’s like the child who goes in and tells his or her mother, “I didn’t break the lamp”, before the mother discovers that it’s been broken.
If a politician and a judge, hadn’t been involved, this wouldn’t even be on television any more.
Because law enforcement bungles something badly, as they did at Ruby Ridge and at Waco doesn’t mean that the people their actions were directed against were innocent little babes. Or maybe it does in black and white conservativeworld but that’s not he way it is in the universe I live in.
There weren’t any politicians or judges at Columbine. Just sayin’.
Nothing like demonizing 95% of the cops who do their jobs, put their lives on the line, and follow the rules in order to make a point about the 5% who don’t.
Can we try to avoid the broad generalizations, please?
I disagree. I don’t want the government telling me what to do with my body, my personal protection, or my thoughts.
The problem as I see it is that mental instability has been overlooked for so long that even our elected officials suffer with it and from it.
Also, I don’t care what the wingers say the media capsules they have created cause anger and distress. When your fellow countrymen are designated as your personal enemy there is a HUGE problem.
It is no longer just difference of political views, it becomes an inflamed hatred for people.
Waiting periods and Brady restrictions are needed – as well as restrictions on “open carry” and a permit system for “concealed carry” (“concealed carry” gets a permit system because “open carry” was honorable but concealed carry was sneaky).
Meanwhile WBZ talk in Boston had a fellow call in and note that newspapers were getting better – more balanced – as they treat corporate spokespersons for everything from oil to guns as fact givers without analysis by the paper – indeed the Globe likes its position as a “former left wing Newspaper” it seems.
Read a book on Athens and its navy – and how taking military ownership out of the hands of the rich allowed the first democracy. Given the rich’s control of government and the post Dulles the defacto control of the military and intel goal/decision making, we are rapidly becoming the Athens of before – or after – Democracy.
I agree with nomolos’s comment yesterday:
This is not to say, of course, that we shouldn’t TRY to do something.
Americans get upset when the US military targets enemy combatants with drones in Waziristan but are willing to accept the use of flamethrowers against American children. In this country you’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, law enforcement doesn’t have the right to perform extra-judicial executions. And cops and alcohol shouldn’t be mixed.
“Dana Milbank hitting the violent rhetoric from Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck for their contributions to politically-based violence and threats of violence”
who said this: ‘If They Bring a Knife to the Fight, We Bring a Gun’…
That is ludicrous..
Again, those measures wouldn’t influence a case like this.
What restrictions are going a stop someone without a criminal or mental health record? How does a waiting period affect a premeditated act (Loughner bought his gun months ago)? Is someone with mass murder on his mind going to be troubled by illegally concealing a weapon on his person?
The one issue that bothers me the most is the army for hire companies. Our State Dept. and Government has allowed this to happen for political and monetary gain. It has become something of an overtaking of our military and it’s rules. They do not have to follow the military code or any rules. They are also free to operate on US soil and should be done away with. In fact, the largest chunk of our current military spending is going to paid for armies.
In the case of Waco, some of them actually were babes.
the quote, that is
Rush wants to rid the country of Librals. He says it all the time.
Columbine, while tragic Margaret, did not receive more than a day’s headlines in the global media. Even the Canadian CBC is still talking about this tragedy.
The trolls are baaaack!
Or for that matter, at most of the other shootings that Rachel documented last night.
Heard the phrase “Going postal”? In 1991 a postal worker in Royal Oak, MI shot and killed 5 people after being fired for “insubordination” (later events showed he was being harassed by his supervisor, I think). Not only was that in the headlines for weeks but I think permanently made “going postal” a catchphrase for becoming so angry one shoots people to death in a workplace setting.
I lived in Royal Oak at the time.
Now put that statement, the only one the reichwingnuts are using, against the non-stop rantings of Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, et al over the past decade.
Lame, troll, lame.
Why is that ludicrous. It’s true. And disguised as patriotism.
We’re blessed. We’ve got a twofer.
I’m not denying that nor that the law fucked up. But Koresh and his armed doomsday gang weren’t innocent people.
No problem demonizing anybody that doesn’t follow the “progressive” script. Law enforcement has armed helicopters, tanks, kevlar-clad swat teams, attack dogs, where does the line get drawn. Assuming that 95% of them are altruists is the height of naivete’.
Your opinion…
And you just eloquently proved what nom said was spot on. Good job!
False equivalence.
Go away, troll. Or better yet, do a side-by-side comparison and show us how equivalent it is.
In the US media. That is the difference here. Global media is still going on about this. Maybe it’s just the new electronic world, but I think it’s only because it was a politician and judge involved. Who died last night in Detroit with a gun? LA? New York?
Lucky us.
It’s the guilt that drives them back here day after day since this tragedy happened. They don’t need that neon sign.
Sure hope I’m not what you describe as a troll. Troll is an outdated term like liberal or conservative. I’ve been on here for a long long time now. To be called a troll, makes it sound like FDL does not embrace anyone but themselves. Would hate to see that. Doesn’t sound very liberal or progressive.
Here are some particularly ‘colorful’ examples of righty extremism from their major spokespeople, which comes from this morning’s Juan Cole:
“Glenn Beck playfully spoke on his radio show of murdering Michael Moore with his own hands. Rush Limbaugh suggested that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were worse than Middle Eastern terrorists and that maybe our Pentagon has the wrong people in its sights. Ann Coulter expressed the wish that Timothy McVeigh had bombed the New York Times building rather than the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. ”
Oh, the reichwingnuts are also using the map from the election that “targeted” states that might be swayed to the D column as an equivalent map to SarahPAC’s gunsights map.
They’re having to dig reallllly deep.
The problem as I see it is that mental instability has been overlooked for so long that even our elected officials suffer with it and from it.
Also, I don’t care what the wingers say the media capsules they have created cause anger and distress. When your fellow countrymen are designated as your personal enemy there is a HUGE problem.
It is no longer just difference of political views, it becomes an inflamed hatred for people.
Malkin described the blogs to prove that both sides do it. Well, there is no public tv or radio figure of the left that I know of that continually spills rhetoric to harm or rid the world of the opposite political party. People say all kinds of things on blogs. That’s not the issue.
A troll is someone who parachutes in to drop their masters’ talking points without being intelligent enough to defend them.
I don’t particularly agree with some of your comments, canadianbeaver, but I wouldn’t call you a troll. Speaking just for me…
Well I’m pretty sure it wasn’t six in one lick and at least fourteen others injured. You’re comparing one orange to a grove.
Some people seem to be allergic to any thoughts but their own. And incapable of defending their own positions. But reinforcement of their own opinions by others of the same ilk must prove to them that they are indeed right! If others believe as I do, it must be true! Who needs logic, truth or reality as long as I can find psychic support. And stay away if you don’t agree!
Well I don’t have a “master” eCahn. I have a brain. Least I hope I do.
You know that people can follow you electronically right back into your bunker don’t you? Best thing to do is to shut it all down. We’ll let you know when it’s safe to come out. Promise.
Yes, and Coulter has been called on her speech as well.
I don’t think anybody’s confused you with a troll.
Man! I wish somebody would pay me to be a troll! I can put together much more cogent and rational responses and I really need the money!
‘Assuming that 95% of them are altruists is the height of naivete’.’
You appear to pull all your hypotheses out of your hindquarters.
Sigh! Me too! However, it would be shameful to me that it was my job classification.
Do you remember this Margaret? Me either.
http://articles.cnn.com/2000-04-13/us/detroit.killings_1_detroit-police-murders-john-e-armstrong?_s=PM:US
Except that map is a fraud and yesterday Blankley cited his own column as “proof” that “the left does it too”.
Ditto me.
The difference between a troll & someone who disagrees with you is in the tenor of the dialogue. Most easily recognized by the ‘talking point’ nature of the trolls’ comments. You can also tell them instantly when they call WJ because their points are so rehearsed and repetitive. Trolls are out to provoke, not discuss.
I don’t have probs having a discussion with someone who disagrees with me.
Nobody’s innocent when everything is illegal. The Branch Davidians didn’t steal anything from you or me. They didn’t harm anyone that I’m aware of, just the opportunity for salvation of WJC and Janet Reno.
And assuming they’re jackbooted thugs insults people that I know and am friends with. It insults people like the Sheriff of Pima County, who stood up and called out the right for their hateful speech.
It insults the men and women who died doing their job because someone has to stop the bad guy before the bad guy kills, rapes, or robs someone, and the ones who have to pick up the pieces afterwards.
Sadly for you, having the facts to work with doesn’t require mammoth financial support; it’s the attempt to promote a P.O.V. that is demonstrably against the public good that militates the big $.
Considering that the link doesn’t work, I have no idea if I remember it. And believing that you know what I can or can not remember? That’s heading into troll territory now…
As someone typed yesterday: You mean you don’t get your checks from Soros? *g*
Yep. I wouldn’t do it proudly but I’ve done some pretty distasteful things because they were part of my job description before.
Exactly! If money were in the truth, we would have to completely redo our news media.
No. That fucker never writes or calls…. and after that lovely fruit basket and Code Pink tee shirt I sent him for Xmas!
Good point.
You know, I has a slight insight during Sunday’s book salon. The USG is now owned by all the industries that are completely economically malfunctional: MIS, energy, PhRMA, med insurance, etc.
Yeah…’cause I wanted a private army waiting to create the apocalypse an hour’s drive away from me….Just doin’ their thang…..
You are talking through your rear end as usual. If you looked at something outside the pre-established concept you came in with you would notice Eschaton and I disagreed and talked it out at 6:46 and 6:50. Tho being fact-free you go on and insist things are the way you like to believe.
Echan, I had that same insight. I’m so terribly sick of public support and private profits.
But let’s not “retool” it. There are already too many tools in the media…
Here’s one of many examples: http://www.sctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011101030048
At a gun show–or at a garage sale, for that matter–a private individual (not an FFL dealer) can sell their guns with no record keeping or background check on the purchaser.
If the social cohesion, mutual respect, civility and reciprocal altruism of a community has broken down, all the laws in the world won’t fix the essential problem. At best they are band-aids.
Alcohol prohibition worked out pretty well. Prohibition of drugs sure is doing the job. Convicts in prisons can’t get drugs or cell phones. Yeah, prohibiting guns would definitely keep them out of the hands of undesirables.
Agree. Certainly did seem that way, esp as some of the trolls were quite “pushy” with their arguments that it wasn’t the “fault” of conservatives, and then they trotted out the old faithful memes that the “left” was just using the tragedy to the “left’s political advantage.” Certainly sounded like dogs barking out their masters’ orders to me.
The troll was the one who repeated the Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck…etc. argument that some democrats at some times also made some fighting comments…while ignoring the VOLUME and FREQUENCY of those comments from the far right…trolls are only interested in provoking a reaction…not in advancing a discussion.
I suspect you are right. I wonder how those guilty consciences will play out?
He took my SASE and returned me a bill! (okay, made that up)
Thawed out enuff to go out for a new brick of bird seed, back later.
TPM put together a partial list just from last campaign season. You can read it here. It makes for quite the list of shame.
Allergic to any thoughts but their own, but they need others’ validation. Complete nonsequitur. Complete gibberish. With such a faulty syllogism, it’s obvious who lack, logic, truth or reality. Come as often as you like, your proving your ineptitude.
Considering your “example” was armed with a deadly weapon, refused to respond to commands to drop said weapon, the officers responded in the way they were trained. If they tased him or pepper sprayed him, there was a significant risk that the weapon would have discharged when he started thrashing.
Unless you’re suggesting they should have waited until he blew one of their heads off before firing.
It’s easy to Monday-morning quarterback the situation, isn’t it?
You do know they “pay” in bags of Cheetos and bottles of Mountain Dew, right?
To produce false equivalency, you must ignore the quantities and the quality.
I offered to trim Oblerman’s bushes. No reply.
Are you sure you know the meaning of the words, syllogism and non sequitur?
They’re supposed to be trained professionals, capable of perhaps talking to the guy, using some psychology. But no, all four of them emptied their guns into him. Pretty heroic.
non sequitur-”it does not follow” You provided the example above.
a syllogism is a form of reasoning in which two statements are made and a conclusion is drawn from them.
You made two statements that that are logically incompatible, and no logical conclusion was or could be drawn. Hence, faulty.
You’re not even a player.
How much talking should they do before they act? What’s the threshold before they can use force to protect themselves from someone who is armed and refusing to cooperate with equally-armed law enforcement?
They had, at most, seconds to decide if the guy’s going to shoot or not. Most police who die in the line of duty don’t even get that.
This isn’t the movies – they aren’t going to put a hole in his knee or his shoulder. When police are trained to shoot, they are trained to shoot to kill.
Does anyone know why Huffington Post yanked Cenk Uygur’s excellent blog about the Giffords shooting?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/was-jared-loughners-act-p_b_807178.html
It was a level-headed, astute assessment, and I’m stunned that HP would censor one of its own bloggers like this.
It’s easy to call something a non sequitur or a faulty syllogism but you fail to explain the reasoning. You’re not playing at all.
Ms. Huffington is in a bad mood after the cops chased off the plane.
Found his blog elsewhere, here:
http://www.ma3hd.net/vb/ma3hd3/arab255308/
Found it elsewhere, here:
http://www.ma3hd.net/vb/ma3hd3/arab255308/
Rule #1 with the mainstream media: consider the source. Of the six Washington Post pundits listed in the screenshot, four [!] are on the Salon Hack Thirty list:
* Eugene Robinson (not on the list)
* George F. Will (#11)
* Michael Gerson (not on the list)
* Dana Milbank (#24)
* Richard Cohen (#1)
* Marc A. Thiessen (#6)
The Hack Thirty is a “don’t bother” list. These pundits have been discredited again and again, to the point where their opinions on specific issues are simply not worth listening to or evaluating. If you don’t believe me, follow the above links and check out their Hack Thirty list entries for yourself. My personal favorite is the following, from George Will’s entry:
If you must write about members of the Hack Thirty, please at least be certain to mention their Hack Thirty membership, and focus on evaluating them and their credibility – not their opinions on specific issues. Evaluating specific opinions of theirs – as if their opinions ought to matter – merely reinforces the efforts of the mainstream media to get their worthless hacks taken seriously.
The fundamental fact about the mainstream media is that it is every bit as much a noise machine as Fox News. It confuses the issue by mixing in legitimate journalists with its hacks, but so, occasionally, does Fox (didn’t Jane Hamsher appear at least once on Fox?). The false balance and false equivalences documented in this post are merely the standard operating procedure of the MSM.
Now that we’re on the topic of these hacks, another thing should be noted about Marc Thiessen: in the last days of George W. Bush’s presidency, freely downloadable books glorifying his “achievements” were available from the White House website as PDFs. I downloaded one of these: Marc Thiessen’s A charge kept: the record of the Bush presidency, 2001–2009. The very title is a dog-whistle to fundamentalist theocrats, referencing the hymn A charge to keep I have, just as Bush’s speeches had done. I don’t know where to find this in the Obama White House website, but I’m sure it’s still there somewhere in the archives. If you want to know just what kind of apologist Marc Thiessen is, check it out.
It’s easy to look up the definitions too, but I had to provide them for you. If you want to sit at the grown-ups’ table, don’t expect to be spoon-fed.
Washington “reforming” its corproate owners’ lucrative profits is a hilarious prospect.
The Washington Post is a pro-forma “fair & balanced” corporate marketing rag. Its exists to facilitate, hone and vend corproate expansion, simple objective is continuity of US corporate terror sales domestic & worldwide. Its NSA-CIA terror mobilizations are War-Industrial-Complex profits lavishing god lifestyles for Washington’s corporate whores inhabiting the cash whorehouse.
The US government whorehouse does not deviate from its deadly-profit model. Democrats, Liberals, Progressives and thinking people of any moral content dreaming reform fantasies are children-The Talented Mr. Obama’s malleable flock. Barak Bush Obama, his media handlers, his Likud cabinet with his GOP Corp masters strategically plan on passive decent children.
We are prey, bedrock weaklings groomed by The Washington Post et al as corporate food-welfare prey. Our programmed passivity is the harvest harvested by corporate Washington’s corproate Warlocks. We are integral tools, their submitting coward victims eager to believe in futility. This is trash-change marketed by Obama. The latest fresh tiny whore…with corporate megaphones called “campaign funds.”
The Washington Post, its Washington Dem-GOP-Teaparty corproate Whores the designers of multinational terror believe that moral civil people, citizens bothering to vote are hilarious.
… Me too after Barak Bush Obama-his benefactors.
The US corproate whorehosue IS the Washington facade. Its corporate paymasters are Wall Street-Likud, Bejing, Houston and London in that order.
Barak yields the net facade of “reform, change, bipartisanship” on the corpse of a dead economy. Today The whorehouse is perfecting US corporate relocation into its freshly colonized war opportunity zones of corporate planetary expansion.
Bejing owns the game now. Everything else is facade….especially the GOP’s polished gelding shoe-shine-pimp Barak Bush Obama.
==edited by mod, no suggestions of violence are allowed===
With all due respect, I disagree. Metaphors equating political conflict with armed conflict have always been a standard part of political discourse, and in themselves are not objectionable at all. The problem is the ridiculous extremes to which Sarah Palin has taken the metaphor – and Markos Moulitsas has not. Palin and those of her ilk have gone out of their way to push violent metaphors to the point where there is a serious risk of their being taken literally.
This is a threshold phenomenon, not a matter of degree. Kos has not crossed the threshold; Palin is so far across the threshold that you can’t even see the threshold from there. She and her apologists should not be allowed to shift even the most infinitesimal portion of the blame onto liberals who have made occasional use of violent imagery.
“Dana Milbank hitting the violent rhetoric from Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck for their contributions to politically-based violence and threats of violence”
who said this: ‘If They Bring a Knife to the Fight, We Bring a Gun’…
answer: Barack Obama at a Philadelphia fund raiser
who said this: ‘If They Bring a Knife to the Fight, We Bring a Gun’…
answer: Barack Obama at a Philadelphia fund raiser
You still haven’t explained your analysis, because you can’t. Your little snarks don’t make up for it.
No restrictions stop someone intent on crime. It is a silly argument to use to determine what daily life should look like – people use what is “handy” – even the mentally ill do this – and making guns less “handy” lowers the risk to society. Nothing stops gun crime – even banning guns will not do this as we made guns in metal shop when I was a kid – it is not hard, one needs only a tube and a striker and a way to hold the weapon (granted shotting yourself was an occasional problem) and ammo.
You’d be amazed how many states have no restrictions on open carry.
I agree for-profit army – and for profit prisons – are the right wing gone mad – any way to rip a profit out of tax dollars is “better” than having government workers who can not be threatened into voting for “jobs” meaning voting the way you want them to vote.
Hopefully feeble-minded people won’t read your words and do something violent.
Silly me. Just like in the case of Markos, I completely missed the parts where Obama responded to being called out for his incendiary rhetoric, after his followers actually attacked the offices of his opponents, and told his followers to “reload”. I also missed his public displays of gun prowess, advocacy for killing animals from helicopters and his videotaped support for violent secessionists. You are just so right. Obama is probably even worse than Palin when it comes to dogwhistling folks to violence. Thank you so much for setting me straight.
See my comment that is the first one on Scarecrow’s post (http://my.firedoglake.com/scarecrow/2011/01/11/tuscon-heroes-unarmed-prevented-the-armed-from-killing-even-more/). I believe very strongly that peaceful resistance can be successful and that violence is not the best, or only, choice.
I wish someone skilled at graphic arts (that wouldn’t be me) would draw a yellow-and-black traffic-type sign, showing a snake with forked tongue flicking out, and the words:
PROFESSIONAL LIARS HARD AT WORK
I’ve been reading Wendell Potter’s Deadly Spin. In Chapter 11 (“The Playbook”), he mentions specifically (on page 232) the use of paid astroturfers on the Huffington Post, the Daily Kos, and Firedoglake.
Of course, not all of them are professionals; some of them do it for free, but in an equally controllable and robotic fashion, under direction from their local Tea Party headquarters or fundamentalist
churchmemehouse.George Will is a professional liar, and his opinions are utterly unworthy of attention, analysis, or response. See my comment on the Salon Hack Thirty below.
“You haven’t explained your analysis, because you can’t.” A childish ruse to obtain an unearned answer, but I’ll indulge you one last time. Here comes the choo-choo:
==edited by mod==, so I’ll draw you a picture. From your own post:
Another’s opinions cannot be one’s own. I’ll have to assume you understand that much.
“to be allergic to any thoughts but their own” -/-> “reinforcement of their own opinions by others”
ipse dixit. And don’t ask or insinuate, look it up for yourself. Take some responsibility for your own education, nailhead.
This is the Washington Post doing what it now does best. It pretends that it’s editorial skipper and the odd liberal deck hand are safely navigating its tourist boat through troubled waters. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew tell the passengers it’s safe to have a nice swim and then throw out buckets of chum for the sharks. The Post is a delicious exhibit for how to spread the vitriolic voices it claims ought not be heard.
Exactly. This would be predicted by economics – those who need a good or service most will bid highest for it, and acquire it. I’ve made the same point about insurance (and finance as a whole, of which insurance is one segment) and PhRMA in the past.
Although I remain convinced that socialism (with worldwide abolition of corporations, private capital, and trade secrecy) is the only answer long-term, I wonder if a stopgap for our current problems might be arranged by divide-and-conquer: persuading the more functional remaining industries to turn against the desperately dysfunctional ones that you mention. I believe something like this happened during the First Great Depression: manufacturing backed FDR against the finance sector, which they perceived (accurately) to be working their ruin along with that of the nation as a whole. Maybe we can arrange a repeat of this scenario for the Second Great Depression that is currently in progress.
There does seem to be a general problem with intellectual honesty on the Right, doesn’t there? I suspect that the few honest ones eventually wind up on the Left – as I did. Roger D. Hodge, Cenk Uygur, and Andrew Sullivan are also ex-conservatives.
He would have that Second Amendment (throwing aside that part about “Being for the necessity of a well-regulated militia…” part, as the right-wing has done) right to bring one, like the Pea Partiers so often do in fact to their rallies.
Ha ha, that’s ok, Mod. I think intelligent people can infer.
Check with a doctor, maybe there’s a vaccine for dyslexia.
And that’s all you’ve got. So sad.