Rep. Giffords (D-AZ) Shot In The Head

After years of increasingly violent rhetoric by the right-wing directed at Democrats, someone finally took action.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head while serving her constituents at a public event in Arizona today.

Details are at this time sketchy, which is to be expected.  Some earlier reports claimed Giffords had been killed, but she is now reportedly in surgery but in critical condition.  12 other people on scene were also shot.

The suspect?

The man was young, mid-to-late 20s, white clean-shaven with short hair and wearing dark clothing and said nothing during the shooting or while being held down.

This is a disgusting act of cowardice.  This tragic event was presaged by numerous, escalating incidents:

The New York Times writes that Giffords’ office was vandalized in March “a few hours after the House vote overhauling the nation’s health care system.”

Matt Yglesias points out that an anti-Giffords event was held in June with the billing: “Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”Rep. Giffords was also on Sarah Palin’s “target list.”

The right-wing has not been held accountable for their anti-American speech filled with hate and threats of violence.  I have written since before Obama was elected that unless public leaders took responsibility and worked actively to defuse tensions within the country, someone would eventually be hurt and killed.  This event, while incredibly tragic, doesn’t surprise me.  By Monday morning, right-wing pundits will be claiming that the fault lies with the radical left, that it was people like Giffords who brought it upon themselves.  That will not be acting responsibly.  That will not be exercising American values.  It will be a continuation of public displays of moral cowardice.

My thoughts and prayers are with Rep. Giffords, her family and her staff.

More Right-Wing Violence

I just wrote another post of right-wing violence by white men the other day.  Then yesterday, I saw another disgusting example, and this one has distinct political overtones.

One of the leaders of the tea-baggers was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly raping a 7-year-old girl, who could be a close family member.  How freaking lovely are these characters?

Does anybody want to take a guess what police found while searching his home?  If you’ve read anything about right-wing violence in the past couple of years, it’s not hard to guess correctly.

A Colt M-203, 40-mm grenade launcher.  Bomb-sniffing dogs also indicated that explosives had been stored in his house recently, though it doesn’t look like the search turned up anything.

These clowns are calling themselves patriots and everyone else traitors.  These are the outstanding members of our society who are stocking up on guns (legal and illegal), assault rifles, grenade launchers and explosives.  While a few of them are being appropriately handled by the FBI and ATF and no events like Waco or Ruby Ridge have occurred in a while, it will only be a matter of time before it does.

The corporate media’s silence on right-wing violence continues.  If this guy had been brown-skinned or named Muhammed, they couldn’t cover it enough.

Stay classy, patriot wanna-bes!

T-shirts vs. Guns

Back when Bush was busy running the country into the ground, he had events around the country, kind of like what President Obama is doing today.  There are some important differences, not that the corporate media is going to get into them.  Among them:

Democrats couldn’t attend Bush events if they wore the “wrong” t-shirt.  On more than one occasion, they were removed from the area.  Sometimes, they were removed by people who didn’t have the legal authority to remove them.  More than one spent time in jail.  That’s what “free speech” amounted to in the Bush years: agree with Bush or go to jail.

Right-wing cranks are protesting near Obama events with guns on their hips.  Yes, you read the right: a civilian (not a law enforcement person), with a gun on the hip in a holster.  Are you freaking kidding me?!  Right-wing shock jocks will insist that this person had the undeniable right to exercise his 2nd amendment rights – possibly his 1st amendment rights if they strain really hard.  Um, that’s great.  What about those Democrats who didn’t show up to Bush’s events with anything but a t-shirt?  The Cons didn’t stand up for their rights, did they?  I know what would have happened if a Democratic civilian had showed up to a Bush event with a gun in a holster on their hip, and you should too: they’d have been carted off to Gitmo and withheld indefinitely.  Such is the hypocrisy of the Cons.

[Update]: Cenk Uygur sums it up quicker than I did.  Think a Muslim-American could have been anywhere near a Bush rally with a gun on his hip and a weapons permit?

Bush events were carefully screened so that the Cowardly Boy King didn’t have to face opposition to his bat-shit insane policies.  Every single event for years was screened very carefully.

Anti-Tax Crowd Demonstrates Against Republican Tax Rates

The obvious question to the anti-tax crowd’s planned parties today is why didn’t they demonstrate against the Republican tax rates when Republicans were in control.  There is an easy answer, of course.  They weren’t told to do so by their propaganda outlet, Fox.  Now that Fox is in a tizzy and Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey are working their hypocritical little butts off to reformulate their party after 8 disastrous, mis-managed years, the “crowds” are coming out.

Also of interest to me is how little the crowds truly understand what the Boston Tea Party was all about.  Of course, since they haven’t believed in public education for a couple of generations, perhaps that shouldn’t be too surprising.  They’ve been too busy remaking their own history to actually learn what happened in reality.  These fools have had representation for their taxation, which completely rejects the premise they’re basing their little whine fest on.

Moreover, these herd-mentality-driven non-grassroots “activists” are showing up (if they really do) to protest the lowest effective tax rate on the top 2%.  Not their own tax rate, which happens to be higher in many cases than the top 2%.

I will also point out that it is hilarious to see homophobic, rights-hating “conservatives” prop up an event that has a clear man-man sex-part basis.  The Cons have had a bizarre fetish with man parts and man love for a long time.  While they’re celebrating ensuring a portion of population not having the same rights as everybody else, they’re using man-on-man activities to protest the top 2%’s tax rate that their representatives and President put into place.  Bizarro world, I’m telling you.

I’m glad to see some appropriate coverage from the corporate media about these events.  It’s not the top story, but some people at MSNBC are talking about how top-driven the Republicon party remains.

And while those “activists” are carrying around signs attacking “socialism”, some of their fellow party members are actively planning to recruit returning servicemembers to their extremist cause.  The irony continues to bubble to the top, doesn’t it?  The “activists” are being told by Faux News that President Obama is a socialist.  Too lazy and brain-washed to think critically about such a ridiculous statement, the “activists” ignore the true socialists in their midst; socialists that have already acted in violence against members of their community; socialists that are obviously continuing to plan violent attacks against other Americans and perhaps the President himself.

So let’s call them what they are: these activists are cowards.  They choose to ignore the evidence of violent socialists in their midst (and do anything about it) because it’s easier to follow instructions from TV personalities.  Can you imagine the uproar we would hear if these same cowards were being told of violent extremists within the Democratic party recruiting for attacks on a Con president like Bush?  The world would damn near be ending for these fools.