What is government if words have no meaning?

Here he issss...Misster Ammerrricaaaaa...Ready for his close up!

Some-fuckin-body thank he tha joker?

And so the circus goes on. I had read (via Tom Tomorrow via Barry Eisler) that the right-wing noise machine is using it's usual tactic, "Deny everything, admit nothing, make counter-accusations." Also well illustrated with an older Tom Tomorrow cartoon, I have been seeing a lot of angry, angry, angry ducking and weaving.

"How dare lefty lunatics point their soiled fingers at we innocent right wingers and accuse of us of using "violent rhetoric?' Why, you dirty liberals DO IT TOO!?!?"

"Obama said we need to take the fight to them! HE DID!!! He said you don't bring a knife to a gun fight! HE DID! AND THAT'S JUST LIKE SARAH PALIN's PERFECTLY INNOCENT MAP WITH GEOGRAPHIC SURVEY ICONS SHOWING WHERE THE DEMOCRAT CONGRESS PEOPLE ARE ON A MAP!"

"Besides, some blogger (Markos of Daily Kos fame) used Bulls-eyes as a graphic once tooOOoooOo!?! Then there was the 1960's and Jim Jones and communist lefties who hated America *starts sobbing* it's not just us? We are not too blame for this horrible incident?!?!"

"Wait a minute? I see what you are doing here...You lefty, socialist, America-hater!? Why, why, why...I am OFFENDED that you would DARE try and politicize this god awful national tragedy like this. HOW DARE YOU?! How dare you insinuate that this lunatic, whack job murder might possibly be linked to the GOP or the Tea Party?! I saw his youtube page and he said some of his favorite books were The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf and, and, and he smoked drugs and that's PROOF POSITIVE that he is left wing fringe nut. Because that's what I believe what left-wing nuts read and do...DRUG SMOKING HIPPIE LEFTY LIBERAL TRAGEDY EXPLOITER! YEAH! LEAVE POOR SARAH PALIN ALONE!?"

Now, allow me to restate that I do not actually believe right wing hate mongering is to blame for the murder in Tuscon on January 8th. I do believe right-wing hate mongering is imbecilic and generally awful but it alone is not the perpetrator here. It certain is true, however, that the rhetoric and energy from the right is a lot like the now famous Sherrif Clarence Dupnik said:

"When you look at unbalanced people, 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 this country is getting to be outrageous and unfortunately Arizona has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

It feeds the fire. Stop it? Nah, that's free speech like it or not. What would be nice, I suppose, might be some more civility as I mentioned in the previous post. What might be nice if that those on the right will not recognize this for what it is and say the spade is a spade. Instead, deny, admit nothing, counter-accuse...Point that finger right back and make it bigger, yell louder and send out e-mails and bullet points to your media-drone army so that all will be on message appropriately!

the Tea Party Nation group e-mailed its members Sunday warning them they would be called upon to fight leftists in the days ahead and defend their movement.

TPN founder Judson Phillips, in an article linked off the e-mail "The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and the left's attack on the Tea Party movement," described the shooter as "a leftist lunatic" and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik as a "leftist sheriff" who "was one of the first to start in on the liberal attack." Phillips urged tea party supporters to blame liberals for the attack on centrist Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was shot through the head and is now fighting for her life, as a means of defending the tea party movement's recent electoral gains.

"The hard left is going to try and silence the Tea Party movement by blaming us for this," he wrote. Clinton used the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to "blame conservative talk radio, especially Rush Limbaugh" and "The tactic worked then, backing conservatives off and possibly helping to ensure a second Clinton term."

"The left is coming and will hit us hard on this. We need to push back harder with the simple truth. The shooter was a liberal lunatic. Emphasis on both words," he wrote.

Did you get that? HE WAS A LIBERAL LUNATIC! I have also seen numerous commenters state he was a registered Democrat! Though I can find no official documentation anywhere stating that he is, in fact, a Democrat. According to Digby, he is actually registered an Independent...Just like me!(?) From what I saw in the few things he posted on Youtube and what now is being chronicled and examined all over the internet, is shit that reminds me of Lyndon LaRouche more than any Republican or Democrat horse shit. I also saw some others, again commenters, saying that a lot of his ramblings sounded more like this Sovereign Citizen Movement.

The "sovereign citizen" movement is a loosely organized collection of groups and individuals who have adopted a right-wing anarchist ideology originating in the theories of a group called the Posse Comitatus in the 1970s. Its adherents believe that virtually all existing government in the United States is illegitimate and they seek to "restore" an idealized, minimalist government that never actually existed. To this end, sovereign citizens wage war against the government and other forms of authority using "paper terrorism" harassment and intimidation tactics, and occasionally resorting to violence.

I think the friend interviewed in Mother Jones has it right:

"More chaos, maybe," he says. "I think the reason he did it was mainly to just promote chaos. He wanted the media to freak out about this whole thing. He wanted exactly what's happening. He wants all of that." Tierney thinks that Loughner's mindset was like the Joker in the most recent Batman movie: "He fucks things up to fuck shit up, there's no rhyme or reason, he wants to watch the world burn. He probably wanted to take everyone out of their monotonous lives: 'Another Saturday, going to go get groceries'—to take people out of these norms that he thought society had trapped us in."

So, while this tragedy was political, it wasn't political in a way convenient for an attack by other side. Or put more succinctly by James Fallows in a post on The Atlantic titled, "The Cloudy Logic of 'Political' Shootings."

Shootings of political figures are by definition "political." That's how the target came to public notice; it is why we say "assassination" rather than plain murder.
But it is striking how rarely the "politics" of an assassination (or attempt) match up cleanly with the main issues for which a public figure has stood.

He goes on to illustrate that John Hinckley shot Reagan for Jodie Foster, and others that have been shot, or shot at, for political reasons though often other than those that might be considered mainstream, or relevant at the time.

Loughner is no liberal, he's not in the Tea Party and he could give a fuck what Sarah Palin says or does. He is an obsessive loser who lives with his parents and he's smiling for that very reason in his mug shot. He put those books in his list to list those books and probably believed he was going to die doing what he did. He probably expected the maelstrom of stupidity to play out not unlike it playing out and that too is possibly why he is smiling in that shit picture on top of this post. I think it has merit to call out the right on their bullshit though it serves no purpose they will just spit and kick and puke back and this will not change anything. To sit here and watch the right collectively cry and moan and say the desperately that "the left do it too!?" is what makes this part of this messy response so weird. Dare I link to the lefty horror that is an anti-gun violence website?

I dare. And these, surely coincidental, non-right, nor racially fueled occurrences are purely coincidence and likely over-blown by evil liberals and their evil liberal media. Silly liberals, America is for lovin'! You should leave it, apparently.

Base speculation and media frenzy for the new year

What better way to post for the first time in 2011 then right in the middle of a media frenzy/national tragedy?!

And so the speculation train has begun!

SARAH PALIN SHOT A BUNCH OF PEOPLE, INCLUDING A LIBERAL DEMOCRAT, IN ARIZONA TODAY!!!

Now, that is a baseless accusation if I ever saw one. Completely based on so many jumped to conclusions that it literally makes my head spin. Now, it is obvious that someone else did the shooting and, at this point in time, it is not obvious why the "suspect" did do the shooting this morning. What is obvious to this sometimes blogger/pretend journalist/opinionated-doofus-with-an-internet-connection is that the media has not had a nation wide tragedy to jump all over for the rest of the weekend, if not the month, in quite a while.

It's exciting, as my better half pointed out to me this afternoon, I am addicted to this kind of thing. It's the kind of thing that got me interested in "politics" in the first place and it's the kind of thing that has partially dragged me away from it some in the last year or two as well. Particularly, the spectacle of it all folks seem so lost and unable to account for any facts and it is always bizarrely intriguing (and disheartening) to watch as the live TV people try and assemble a chaotic "happening" on the air while attempting to remain coherent and (in their minds) non-biased and fact based and so forth. In just the first hour of coverage it was announced that Gabrielle Giffords had died, was in surgery fighting for her life, had died again, was moving on the stretcher at the scene, and was dead along with 5, no 6, maybe 12 other people...Including a federal judge who was at the event, happened to be shopping at the Safeway and a 9 year old child (the biggest tragedy, if true, of the day). For myself, the distant, uninvolved, dispassionate layperson watching on TV...endlessly entertaining.

2010 was a rough year for politics and it tried my very last patience. While the Tea party did provide me with a lot of laughs I explored in posts in the past spring, it did sadden me to see such a blatant wave of pure ignorant stupidity take hold in a significant percentage of the populace yet again. Not surprising, just sad. That combined with my general disillusion with the direction the administration was predictably heading lead me to put down the Bob Woodward and pick up a Star Wars expanded universe fantasy series for the old reading list. I had thought too much and too hard about this shit in the past and needed to let go a little bit. I say a little bit because once you are in, you are in, and I still followed along with some of my favorite bloggers and kept a finger on the pulse just in case something big happens...Like say a confusing attack, assassination attempt that will so muddy the waters for the first part of this year.

A year from now when we are casually watching the year that was 2011 on whatever TV station/website/news entity du jour we will be reminded of how the year begun with 15 to 20 shots fired in Arizona. Likely, by then, we will have been past the resolution of this case. We may know the whys when it comes to Jared Loghner (a dreamer who knows what the his new currency is?); is he just a whack job? Is he a part of the Tea Party? Was he inspired by the Sarah Palin bullshit I posted at the top of this page? These are things that interest me most at the moment.

The rest will be an endless well of "lets see what happens..." as I wager the NRA will have a convention soon in Tuscon. I bet there will be TONS of talk about more security for government officials. Some of those officials will be afraid and some will be brave and still do all their public constituent meetings. I bet at least one of them will be armed, openly and a bullshit-a-palooza will begin then. The "health care issue" will be heavily involved in all sorts of ways. The angered political environment, high emotion, threatening notions, and the general stirred up-ness of the "far right" will be sited ad nausea. Immediately followed by numerous retorts about the "far left" and their apparently similar awful "attacks/radical actions." And who knows what other issues, events and what not will be derived/inspired by this heinous act!? By summer it's probable that few will care anymore.

The one thing I would like to see...Perhaps wish for? A calming down of the rhetoric. It would be neat if this served as a teachable moment for those in politics on any side that flapping their gums like assholes, listening to/encouraging violent rhetoric and those that spew it, and continuing the useless atmosphere of conflict, division and "us vs. them" mentalities all underscored by disgusting, unabated greed...That it's time to evolve to the civilized society we pretend we are. This is horrible for the victims and victims families and as of this writing the Congresswoman is alive and apparently may live through this. Hopefully, she will be the voice to lead this fantastical, fair and fresh discussion I am alluding to here.

That's a nice thought but will it happen? Unfucking likely. Next week will see a lot of bullshit posturing as radical, Tea Party types politely pretend they never would or did condone this sort of behavior and use the term, "whack job" a lot. The NRA will probably have a gun rally in the same parking lot the shooting happened and resurrect the body of Charlton Heston and demonstrate that even after 3 and half years in the grave they still can't pry his gun from his cold, dead hand. Couple of months and this will blow by and the right and left will be at it again over whatever ridiculous, horrible kerfluffle we have to watch the media endlessly patter on about.

But whatever, I am just speculating and fantasizing just like them, I am no better.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011!!!