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“Guns Don’t Kill People. People Kill People” — Still Stupid

The old phrase goes “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” No doubt whoever said it first thought it was quite profound. It was stupid then and in light of last Saturday’s massacre in Tucson, AZ, it is all the more stupid now. So let’s see, someone needs to defend the poor innocent little gun. It’s gotten a bad rap. It’s not the gun’s fault that it falls into the hands of criminals, lunatics, suicides and klutzes who accidentally shoot their own foot off or worse. This is an absurd asinine argument. The fact is the way you control misuse of guns is to limit people’s access to them and control by legislation, their allowed use of them in a civilized society.

In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson last Saturday, several remedies have been proposed by law makers.

  1. Two law makers have said they will “pack heat” from now on when they give town hall meetings. Yeah, that really solves the problem to have politicians shooting civilians.
  2. Peter King of New York wants legislation that bans the carrying of a firearm within a certain perimeter of the President, Vice President, Congress member or Federal judge. This is a more reasonable solution although it explicitly protects only elected officials, which comes off a bit self-serving.
  3. Carolyn McCarthy of New York (who lost her husband to gun violence) has suggested banning the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips. The gun used in the Tucson killings had a clip that allowed for 33 rounds to be fired. For what normal legal purpose would such a clip be necessary? Ms. McCarthy’s suggestion seems to me quite reasonable. She is also for reinstating the ban on assault weapons that lapsed during the Bush administration.

Last Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Arizona Republican Representative Trent Franks argued that we should not be disturbed by the type of gun Jared Lee Loughner used in the mass murder because that is a standard gun used by police. You’ve got to be kidding me right? Used by police is the key phrase here folks! You don’t justify what the average Joe can carry on his hip by what police carry on theirs. Police are entrusted with the protection of the public. Jared Loughner and folks far less crazy than he, are NOT entrusted with the protection of the public. Very simply, there are folks who should, by the nature of their job, have a gun and those who should not.

This brings us to the concerns of hunters. Do hunters need a 9mm Glock? Wouldn’t a good old-fashioned rifle do the trick? And wouldn’t it have been a lot harder for Loughner to get that close to Ms. Giffords carrying a rifle than carrying a Glock? Surely we can limit the type of guns sold to average citizens such that they can enjoy “gun sports” and not be as great a danger to the general public.

Of course the other issue with the easy availability of guns is the difficulty of doing adequate background checks. Loughner obtained his gun legally. This despite the fact that he had been rejected by the army and suspended from community college for bizarre behavior AND had run-ins with the law. We Americans love our guns almost as much as we love our dogs, so heaven forbid a little more regulation keeps guns out of the hands of a Loughner because it might impact the cultural values of Billy Bob who wants to carry his gun wherever he damn well pleases.

Gabrielle Giffords’ husband, Mark Kelly, is an astronaut and her brother-in-law is one too. Scott Kelly made the following statement from the International Space Station this week:

We have a unique vantage point here aboard the International Space Station. As I look out the window, I see a very beautiful planet that seems very inviting and peaceful. Unfortunately, it is not.

These days, we are constantly reminded of the unspeakable acts of violence and damage we can inflict upon one another, not just with our actions, but also with our irresponsible words.

We’re better than this. We must do better.

via Astronaut Scott Kelly’s Tucson tribute from space.

Scott Kelly saw one world, seemingly without division and without conflict. A beautiful sphere where land yields to water and then back to land again, beneath a panorama of blue and white. For some reason, his comment reminded me of an old episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone called “To Serve Man”. In that classic episode aliens from space come to Earth and offer us peace and advancement. As the episode ends we learn their motives are far more sinister. As I thought about Kelly’s observation, I decided Serling got it wrong. Any alien race that visited here would be shocked to find out how quickly the beauty seen from space transforms to the violent ugliness seen on the ground all over the world every day of the year. A large part of that ugliness involves how easy we make it for one man to kill another.

The fact is people kill people with guns. If we control the guns, we control the people who might misuse them. A nine-year old girl was killed on Saturday attending Ms. Giffords’ rally. You have to ask yourself, is a nine-year old’s life the price you’re willing to pay for your “2nd amendment rights”?

Respectfully,
Rutherford

WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance

284 thoughts on ““Guns Don’t Kill People. People Kill People” — Still Stupid”

  1. I guess in this case, you decided to jump from the fire into the frying pan. You’re getting better and still mostly wrong. 😉

    The police can’t defend us anymore Rutherford, if they ever could. The genie was out of the bottle long ago concerning clips and ammunition, and I don’ t like the idea of having a police force, many whom I do not trust any more than the criminals, being armed better than the “well regulated” militia.

    Your point about Loughner being issued a gun is a legitimate one and an obvious breakdown in the system. Fix the system.

    Where we really fail in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. It’s been a problem for almost 50 years and is epidemic – including most homeless.

  2. The fact is the way you control misuse of guns is to limit people’s access to them and control by legislation, their allowed use of them in a civilized society.

    And we get another entry in the list of “Stupid Things Rutherford has said in a very short time in 2011.”

    Rutherford, criminals don’t care if there are gun control laws. They are criminals, remember? If they have the desire, and the money, they will always have access to guns.

    But if you take away the average person’s right to own a gun, all you do is disarm a populace so a criminal element can run wild. It also doesn’t make anyone safer.

    This time it was a gun. It could have just as easily been a knife. (Look at Great Britain’s “experiment” in gun control). As someone pointed out on the previous thread, it could have been a stick of dynamite. It could have been a bomb. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of chemistry can make their own, Rutherford. Set me loose in a supermarket, and I can get everything I need to make one myself. And it doesn’t take someone very creative to take one and make it more deadly. What are you going to do? Monitor people’s groceries?

    You want to prevent bad things from happening. I get that. But you are trying to regulate the wrong behavior if you want a positive result.

    In this case, we had a nutjob. Someone who had to be escorted from the local community college on multiple occaisions by law enforcement. They could have gotten him involuntarily sent in for a psych eval…in fact, anyone could have done it:
    http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/anyone-could-have-requested-mental-health-evaluation-jared-lee-loughner
    And had he been diagnosed, he would have been reported to the authorities as someone who would not have been eligible to purchase a firearm. Of course, as far as I know, no one has reported on whether or not he had been reported to the local authorities, who would have had to then forward the information to the Feds. The point is, that while he wouldn’t have been able to purchase a gun, the rights of law abiding citizens to do so would not have been restricted or eliminated. If you want to find someone to blame for this, it just might be that the local LEOs have some guilt to bear here.

    I also notice that you play the hunting canard. Hunting is only one reason to own a firearm. Another is self defense…especially in a world where the bad guys will have them regardless of the law. What do you think deters them more…a law, or not knowing if the gal they want to rape is packing and knows how to use it?

    Self-defense was also one of the reasons considered when drafting the Second Amendment. After the ratification of the Constitution by Pennsylvania, the minority that opposed ratification because it lacked a bill of rights prepared an address that was published in not only Pennsylvania papers, but papers throughout the colonies as an unofficial statement of the Anti-Federalist position. Article 7 states:

    That the people have a right to ber arms for the defense of themselves and their own state…

    Taking away guns from the law-abiding will not make society safer, nor would it stop killing, especially by people who intend to kill.

    Your “solution” is nothing more than another example of solving a problem by addressing the wrong element.

  3. Here in Arizona we released plenty of “crazies” because we no longer had a state budget for providing adequate care. They warned us there would be a backlash. But we Americans got our priorities straight. As a nation, we can spent 800 billion a year on our military’s budget. We make weapons and train warriors. That seems to be our forte. From the very basic to the extremely complex. We got this death and destruction thingie mastered, for sure. And it means jobs, baby. Jobs. Sacred jobs. Live by the sword…

  4. “Peter King of New York wants legislation that bans the carrying of a firearm within a certain perimeter of the President, Vice President, Congress member or Federal judge.”

    Yeah, because assassins are known for their respect of bans.

    “The fact is people kill people with guns. If we control the guns, we control the people who might misuse them.”

    How are you going to control black market guns?

    What I’d like to know is why you aren’t being more critical of the police who should have done something about this guy on the MULTIPLE times he was put on their radar? Which would have made it so he was not issued that weapon.

    I’m sure if Sarah Palin was the chief of police there you’d be all over it.

    “You have to ask yourself, is a nine-year old’s life the price you’re willing to pay for your “2nd amendment rights”?”

    Her father believes it is.

    Hear it for yourself.

    Oh that’s right. You can’t watch that video anymore, because MSNBC has made it unavailable.

    If only he had blamed Palin…

  5. Wow, double down on stupid.

    “If guns kill people, then spoons made Rosie O’Donnell fat”

    “When you have seconds to react, police are minutes away”

    Washington DC has one of the highest murder rates in the US AND one of the strictest gun laws. Until recently, you couldn’t even have a hand gun, so it was amazing HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE SHOT BY THEM.

    Which brings us to one little interesting fact: people who break the law, criminals, will not respect or follow stricter gun laws. That’s why they’re criminals.

    I have a concealed carry permit and yes, I carry a gun. Not always, but enough of the time. The one time when I’ve needed a gun, I didn’t have one because of Hawaii’s insane gun laws. That left me, a baseball bat, and two black guys in my dining room. They got away, with a bruise or two, to plague and harass society some more.

    The next person to break into my house, won’t.

  7. Congrats, you’ve managed to contribute absolutely ZERO to the discussion. Surely, you hold the record for the most words used to say so little…

  8. Pingback: Doubling Down on Stupid « The 800lb Gorilla

  10. Wait just a minute.

    Rutherford had convicned to blame Palin for this tragedy.

    Then Limbaugh.

    Then Fox.

    Then conservatives generally.

    Then myself for being conservative.

    Then everyone in here for not accepting Rutherford’s point.

    I think Fakename had me convicned it was the NRA. You know, the one that ddin’t write something different on its website about the tragedy presumably accepting blame.

    Poolmna threw in something about Homeland Security.

    Now it’s the guns and those that want gun rights (incidentally, that would include Obama that accepts the meaning fo the 2nd amendment for what it is).

    Well, since I don’t even own a gun nor do I want to, then let’s enact a law prohibiting private onwership of them.

    Oh well, other than the shooter that has gotten almost no lip service from you, who else to blame and how else can be we be of service through this tragedy?

    I for one will start by acknowledging that Palin is to blame. She should never have spoken and her rhetoric is acidic and her message of hate should be banned and denounced by the right. To not discuss Palin is just ignoring the elephant in the room. Thank God someone pulled out that cross-hair map to remind all of us about her culpabality. I never liked her, but I now H-A-T-E her for her hand in all of this.

    Do you feel better now, or is just maaaaaybe possible you want something else out of this?

  14. Will they bring back the Greek Temple Styrofoam columns for the big speech tonight at the Death rally, where Obama like will use the opportunity to score some political points?

    The memorial service, called “Together We Thrive: Tucson and America” will include a Native America blessing, a moment of silence, a poetry reading and the presentation of a chain featuring messages from members of the public.

    Anybody ever remember a memorial service with a Title? Sounds like a political rally to me, perhaps out of the Unitarian Church.

    Don’t ever wonder how libs like Dawg can come to the conclusions they do. When these empty shirts turn tragedy into a new Brady Bill, it’s another indicator of their depravity.

  19. “Tigre, this post was about gun control … you bring up Palin. Not obsessed are you?”

    Oh. Sorry. Please move the part about circular blame (the whole thing) to your prior post too. For this one replace the Sara PAlinn bit with the following:

    I for one will acknowledge that Guns are to blame. Guns are dangerous and kill people — like those people killed here. To not discuss Guns is just ignoring the elephant in the room. Thank God someone pulled out the fact that people can buy guns as the real reason this tragedy happened. If only there were gun laws, this NEVER would’ve happened. Although not a gun owner, Tigre, as a conservative, is culpable too. Hell, a guns advocate, Giffords herself is culpable for own shooting. I never liked Guns, but I now H-A-T-E guns and their hand in all of this.”

    Say, this will work as a template for your future posts on this topic too. When you get there, replace “Palin” or “Gun” with “Tax Cut.”

    Thanks for the catch. 🙄

  20. Say, this will work as a template for your future posts on this topic too. When you get there, replace “Palin” or “Gun” with “Tax Cut.”

    No, actually the next replacement would be poor health care system that inadequately handles the mentally ill.

    MSNBC’s Ed Schultz who has been remarkably restrained in the first couple of days after the event, identified three issues that need to be discussed relating to the shooting:

    1. Gun control
    2. Political discourse
    3. Care (or lack thereof) for our mentally ill

    Since Tex started down topic 3, I’d be curious to hear more of his opinion on this. What can we do to decrease the likelihood that nutjobs like Loughner can wreak the kind of havoc they do?

  21. “What can we do to decrease the likelihood that nutjobs like Loughner can wreak the kind of havoc they do?”

    Answer: Nothing. They’re whack jobs.

    Now, what can we do to keep the left from exploiting a tragedy like this to further their agenda?

  22. Huck, even though MSNBC wiped the interview of John Green, I did watch an interview of him on Fox (via YouTube ..I don’t generally watch Fox). I give him major points for being a principled man and saying that the loss of his daughter is the price we pay for living in a free society. His nobility should not be used as an excuse for societal apathy. He is noble but he is wrong. He shouldn’t have to lose his daughter because some wackjob can legally buy a pistol capable of firing 33 bullets without reloading. That high capacity clip should not have been in the hands of anyone besides law enforcement.

    I don’t know when Christina Green got hit, but can you live with the possibility that she got the 11th bullet, or the 30th bullet? The motherf*cker only needed one bullet to make his statement. 20 people killed or maimed for nothing. At least with a limit of a 10 bullet clip, the dude would have done less damage.

  23. BiW, the grocery store bomb is a bullsh*t diversion from the point. We control what we can reasonably control. NO, we can’t reasonably control your trip to Stop and Shop to buy all the ingredients for a bomb. But we can limit your access to a 30 bullet ammo clip. And we should.

  24. It is interesting that John Green’s interview with Fox contradicts Ms. Palin’s video released today. Green said he was concerned with the restriction of freedoms post 9/11 and wanted no more of them in the name of his daughter. Yet today, Palin bragged about how America resisted the temptation to restrict freedoms in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Interesting how two people can see the world so differently,

  25. This notion of “the lone wackjob” — his fault and his fault alone basically means we throw every sociology book ever written out the window. No man is an island. When we encounter monsters like Loughner, we MUST ask how did he become what he was? What responsibility does society have in creating these monsters? Unless of course you all believe Jared was born evil.

  26. “Sell guns to any idiot – flog hate 24/7 on hate radio and faux and folks get killed imagine that.”

    Copy and paste comments from blog to blog. Imagine that.

    Since you didn’t bother to respond over there, I will ask you here.

    What 24/7 hate-flogger influenced this nutcase? And what about the law enforcement who ignored him all those times they had him in their radar?

    “Thanks for the video G … you’ve proven that I AM moderate in my disgust for Ms. Palin.”

    Too bad you didn’t watch that one when I posted it in the last thread….

    “This notion of “the lone wackjob” — his fault and his fault alone basically means we throw every sociology book ever written out the window. No man is an island. When we encounter monsters like Loughner, we MUST ask how did he become what he was? What responsibility does society have in creating these monsters? Unless of course you all believe Jared was born evil.”

    This takes it. Now it is EVERYONE’S fault. I guess that comes from your lack of being able to actually PROVE that it was ANYONE’S fault.

    “At least with a limit of a 10 bullet clip, the dude would have done less damage.”

    Yeah because taking the 2 seconds to pop in another clip is just too damn long, right?

    You still don’t have a clue….

    And notice that Rutherford, like his puppy, has STILL not mentioned the law enforcement who could have done something about this guy before it happened. Like I said, had Palin been that sheriff they’d have been screaming about it from day 1.

  27. “This notion of “the lone wackjob” — his fault and his fault alone basically means we throw every sociology book ever written out the window. ”

    I highly suspect you got this bullshit from your pal Olby. Let’s test that…

    Can you cite even 1 sociological theory that supports your claim?

  29. You have not backed off your idiocy, so I will not follow through with my personal promise to you, until you leave well enough alone. I simply can not let your grandstanding go without response.

    No man is an island.

    True. And no President a king, no sheriff worthy judge of speech, no media outlet or blogger arbiter of definition and morality.

    When we encounter monsters like Loughner, we MUST ask how did he become what he was?

    And what do you propose if we find that there is no discernible reason for Loughner? What if we find his childhood otherwise normal but lonely, his mother not to blame and even tried intervention, only to fail? That the problems were simply the making of Loughner himself? Perhaps the young man’s father was abusive or disinterested? Millions have abusive fathers, absent fathers, disinterested fathers and don’t have the inclination to shoot a multitude of people.

    What responsibility does society have in creating these monsters?

    It’s a liberal arrogance to believe a rule or regulation will solve every problem. Most like you speak in code, expecting the rest of us too stupid to understand the intent. Most of us accept bad things happen, sometimes for no rhyme or reason.

    If this had happened, and a member of Congress who happened to be a Democrat weren’t involved, this point of contention about gun laws would not make mention on the Rutherford Lawson blog. By the numbers, the VT shooting was even more egregious.

    The media has wallowed in vile, vicious and provocative rhetoric long before George Bush or Bill Clinton. Don’t pretend like this started with Barack Obama – it preceding Obama by at least 50 years. Sarah Palin is no more responsible for Loughner’s behavior than you and I are responsible for Loughner’s behavior.

    The gun was the weapon of choice. McVeigh’s choice was three tons of ammonium nitrate, diesel fuel, blasting caps, and a Ryder Truck. Our response, without much advertisement mind you, was to so limit availability of fertilizer, now you can’t buy urea at Home Depot. Stupid. I’m almost shocked you didn’t push to disallow the renting of moving trucks.

    It is you that has to make everything political. It is your religion, your god, it drives your life, and it has failed you miserably as indicated by your opinions concerning this whole sordid affair.

    And you desperately need to get over your hysteria – immature, unproductive, and personally damaging.

    You want a solution to many of society’s problems? Perhaps we can start by bringing back a sense of shame? It seems to be a emotion that many from the Left never learned is innate, but can be shelved over a period of time when bad behavior normalized.

  31. What about the guy that had a gun on him, but decided to buy cigarrettes instead so was late to the party.

    Here your resident genius interviews him:

  32. Tex, feel free to use my template.

    This isn’t about solutions to the tragedy by any stretch. It’s about an agenda, plain and simple.

    Here’s something I wrote at the Gorilla’s blog:

    ” The damnest thing is that we “are” having the discussion he damands we have at this moment. Where’s he? Hiding out somewhere in an echo chamber.

    We’ve been snowed in down here in Atlanta. I can tell you an idle mind is a dangerous thing. So dangerous in fact, I watched MSNBC this morning. Rutherford’s window on the world (and apparently only window). Since it tells him what to think, I wanted a preview.

    They pound their fists, claiming to be upset about a discussion that we are supposedly not having, extra mad that the right won’t engage them in their liberal orgy over the event (really strange when there was not one single right-wing guest invited on to have the discussion they claim to want). I mean spit-flying pissed. Like a little kid screaming “listen to me, damn it listen to me,” then when someone says “what is it” they forget the point.

    Unbelievably (not really), Bubbles Brzezinski points to a CBS poll showing that 32% of the country believes that the right-wing rhetoric was partly responsible for the tragedy as proof that he discussion should take place. This is then followed by, ” we all know there’s no direct link and there’s no proof that Palin’s map caused this.” In other words, they trumpet a poll that shows 32% of the country is wrong as proof that we should be having a discussion about its merits. WTF??????

    So, what do the Rutherfords-of-the-world really want out of this? Not a discussion. They have it already. They want — no demand — acceptance of blame for the tragedy (at the same time they admnit there’s none to be had). Until there is agreement that the left’s political philosophy is correct from the right they will continue to scream. That’s what is being insisted on here. Period. How old are these people and why won;t they just admit that’s what this all about?”

  33. “Sell guns to any idiot – flog hate 24/7 on hate radio and faux and folks get killed imagine that.”

    And Bville arrives to make the point.

  34. “At least with a limit of a 10 bullet clip, the dude would have done less damage.”

    Or he might have purchased a second gun and used BOTH hands, shooting twice as fast.

    See? I can play a “what if?” game too.

    It is a magazine, and not a “clip” btw. A clip is what your wife puts in her hair. A magazine is what allows her to keep a rapist from finding out if the carpet matches the drapes.

    But who gets to decide how much is enough? You?

    I admit its gracious of you to finally recognize my right to own a firearm…I suppose I should consider that progress, but this notion that you and not I should decide how many rounds I can fire before reloading is silly.

    Next you’ll be telling me that I can own a gun, and the magazine can hold 2 rounds, so when 3 people bust into my home, I better have another gun, or hope that I have the other magazine handy.

  35. Yeah he spouts unsupported crap like that and then offers no followup to add to discussion, but it is the rest of us who are the ban-worthy trolls around here….

    “So, what do the Rutherfords-of-the-world really want out of this?”

    They made that obvious a month ago. They want this to be an “opportunity” for Obama to “reconnect” with the country.

    Rutherford and dog have ignored that, as well.

  38. Tigre,

    Welcome to my world. 🙂

    ———

    How old are they? Old enough to know better, and by the age of your children, I’m guessing older than you. They are without excuse.

    This was started by a generation of spoiled rejects raised in the 60s and 70s, the latter who I grew up with but claim no association, who have never realized their own failure as leaders and parents. They currently hum John Lennon tunes like Imagine, believing they’ve changed the world for the better or will shortly change the world for the better in their false sense of utopia. In their mind back then, it was tune in, turn on, drop out, and free love – their legacy party to chaos, bankruptcy, moral relativism and pandemic STDs.

    Now it’s the “profundity” of Yes We Can!, we are the generation we’ve been waiting for, and Together We Thrive: Tucson and America. Same inanity, older crusted faces.

    I seldom turn on MSNBC anymore, though I’ve noted that sometimes their morning program more interesting than FOX. If they left it there, MSNBC might be okay. Starting sometime around the middle of the afternoon, the mentally insane, the anarchists, the self-absorbed, self assured living dead begin to arrive.

    If anyone is watching MSNBC after about 4:00 PM EST for any other reason than perhaps morbid curiosity like watching a train wreck; or like I do when the news bad for their persuasion and the shows more resemble WWF in suits; and a person actually chooses to formulate their personal opinions from the propaganda and abject stupidity, it is a gross indicator of consumer mental instability.

    I think I called it political porn yesterday, and that is about as close as I can come in accurate description. Watching it habitually is cumulative and obviously destructive to one’s well being and mental health.

    Basically what we have witnessed here and elsewhere starting last Saturday morning.

    ——–

    And I would commend Obama that he has so far been the one very visible liberal that kept the tone just about right.

    I am very glad that you, BIC, Huck and Rabbit have all chosen to not let them get away with the juvenile and divisive deviancy used as political club this time. It actually gives me a measure of hope that we may turn this ship around. I am not sure I would have said that even two years ago.

  40. Now, what can we do to keep the left from exploiting a tragedy like this to further their agenda?

    Their agenda? What does that mean in the context of this article? What’s the agenda Tigre? We libs want to take all guns off the street so we can then round up conservatives and put them in concentration camps? What’s the sinister agenda?

  41. Yeah because taking the 2 seconds to pop in another clip is just too damn long, right?

    Yeah 2 seconds is two seconds. In two seconds a ballsy lady grabbed the 2nd clip Loughner was trying to load while the others were restraining him. I don’t know how much experience you have with guns Huck but being an academic I suspect you don’t have much more than I do. You get your reload timing from watching too many episodes of Quick Draw McGraw. 🙂

  42. Just in time for the article…

    The Washington Post noted the shooter “listed Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s The Communist Manifesto and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf among his favorite books.” Giffords is Jewish.

    Here’s how the Marxists measure up on gun control:

    * The Soviet Union enforced strict gun control, which enabled leaders to murder about 62 million of their own people.
    * The People’s Republic of China enforces strict gun control, enabling leaders to murder about 80 million.
    * By comparison, Hitler, another gun control proponent, murdered “only” 21 million civilians.

    Here are the American facts:

    The FBI reported 15,241 murders for 2009. The murder rate has declined 46.8% since 1990, and the number of murders declined by 35%.

    Just reported, at least 10 times the sheriff called out to the Loughner household.

    No wonder Clarence Dupnik is looking for someone to blame.

  43. Can you cite even 1 sociological theory that supports your claim?

    I’m not the academic here. Are you really telling me there aren’t hundreds of sociology (and criminology) books written about the factors that influence both insanity and criminal behavior? You must be kidding me. (And no … I haven’t heard Olby mention any sociology books.)

    I don’t need to cite a single one to know your challenge is full of crap,

  44. (And no … I haven’t heard Olby mention any sociology books.)

    Not surprising. That might require him to actually read a book. The Progressive Primer of FASCISM!!!!!11!! Doesn’t really count. Not only is it inaccurate, but the picture to word ratio is much, much too high.

  45. Yeah 2 seconds is two seconds. In two seconds a ballsy lady grabbed the 2nd clip Loughner was trying to load while the others were restraining him. I don’t know how much experience you have with guns Huck but being an academic I suspect you don’t have much more than I do. You get your reload timing from watching too many episodes of Quick Draw McGraw.

    After had taken the extra time to fire the extra rounds and had give more people time to react to what he was doing.

    Again, it doesn’t lake long, and he always could have brought TWO guns instead…

  46. not one single right-wing guest invited

    Tigre, if you’re gonna watch, at least watch carefully. Tim Pawlenty and John Shadegg were on Morning Joe this morning. Pawlenty said crosshairs are “not my style” and left it at that. I don’t recall Shadegg saying anything too profound. But they were there. And the show is hosted, I hate to remind you, by a right-winger. Did you also miss Chris Christie?

    Thanks for playing.

  47. Next you’ll be telling me that I can own a gun, and the magazine can hold 2 rounds, so when 3 people bust into my home, I better have another gun, or hope that I have the other magazine handy.

    So BiW, why don’t you buy a machine gun and be done with it? Then you’re prepared for any contingency, including that one you’re not talking about …. when the Fed oversteps its bounds and comes to get you. 🙄

  48. They made that obvious a month ago. They want this to be an “opportunity” for Obama to “reconnect” with the country.

    Rutherford and dog have ignored that, as well.

    I’ve deliberately ignored it because it is f*cking disgusting. But then, you consider my view of this disgusting so I guess we’re even.

    P.S. Mark Penn is an assh*le so please don’t quote him to me.

  49. A couple of things:

    I don’t have the stats handy but the US is one of the most gun-violent civilized countries on the face of the Earth. So much for Tex’s decreasing homicide rate. (I will confess from what I heard the largest number of gun deaths are suicides which surprised me).

    The sheriff’s culpability is an absolutely valid factor to raise. All too often local authorities ignore warning signs that lead to disaster. His conduct in the case deserves scrutiny.

  50. Hi, all–interesting discussion. I have a difficult time understanding why the rhetoric on both sides can’t be toned down, and don’t know that saying “but THEY do it” really accomplishes anything.

    I also found Sarah Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” as pretty awful. And it does seem to have offended a number of people.

  51. “P.S. Mark Penn is an assh*le so please don’t quote him to me.”

    See #189 of the previous thread for quotes by others.

    “I’m not the academic here. Are you really telling me there aren’t hundreds of sociology (and criminology) books written about the factors that influence both insanity and criminal behavior?”

    I am telling you that you are talking about stuff about which you know nothing.

    Don’t forget to check out MAO-A gene.

    “So BiW, why don’t you buy a machine gun and be done with it?”

    Why don’t we just cut off everyone’s hands and be done with it?

  52. It must be incredibly simple (but I would think unfulfilling) to make statements like this as rebuttal…

    (So much for Tex’s decreasing homicide rate)

    Why don’t you post your sourced facts that say otherwise? Or are you going to continue using Flake’s policy of making unfounded statements, then dancing away until the next discussion hoping no one noticed?

    We can all do that, but it won’t be much of a discussion, which I thought the idea of sharing your “blog” in a dynamite thread. 🙂

    Contrary to the tone of the dialogue characterized by Graychin’s running, Flake’s incessant whining of atmosphere, Dawg’s incoherent bird droppings, and your appalling backpedaling upon posting – and you’ll excuse the metaphor – out of ammo and have lost the battle of not only wits and solutions, but politics and 2011 reality.

    I have plenty of “statistics” from around the globe that prove gun control in no shape, form or fashion decreases the murder rate.

    So I am left with providing this in amusing anecdote of fact that Americans have known as early as 1870 that gun control will prevent murder a wives tale:

    Myth: The Wild West was violent (and a frequent metaphor of the Left’s description of the Right):

    It’s portrayed that in way in Western movies because it is dramatic. But during the heyday of the Old West (1870-1885) the five major towns of Dodge City, Ellsworth, Caldwell, Abilene, and Wichita had a combined total of 45 murders.

    That’s a rate of 1 per 100,000 residents. Contrast that to the present day 2007 murder rate of 5.6 murders per 100,000 – or more than five times as dangerous as the “Wild West.”

    Cowhands, bar drunks, cattle, and whores of yesteryear were always smarter than present day liberals. 🙂

  53. The sheriff is limited in what he can do. Unless someone commits a crime, he cannot arbitrarily pick someone up and hold them. The sheriff and the local police are different entities and do not always cooperate. In Maricopa county where I live, we have Sheriff Joe Arpaio, which I think everyone knows as he is controversial and loves the media. He and local police compete in a lot of ways. Funding and jurisdiction is always an issue.

    Also we have scaled down tremendously on any social services. You conservatives would be real happy to know that due to your types of policies and votes, we cut back mental health, education, and welfare services to where we cannot adequately provide anywhere near what the need is. It is almost impossible to get help for anyone through social services. There are several churches and nonprofits like the Salvation Army, but no one wants to touch the mentally unstable. You generally have to commit a violent crime and be incarcerated to hope for some care. Even then it is crowded and contracted out to corporates that do not have a good reputation in the area of rehabilitation or reintroduction into society. Additionally, Arizona has a lot of transcients because the weather is very decent this time of year.

    This guy likely bought the bullets at Walmart the same morning. He was stopped in his vehicle by police and was issued a warning, but no search of the vehicle was performed. He went back home and had an altercation with his dad and fled into the desert. He then took a cab to the location before the deed.

    This guy believed in a dream consciousness. He was recording all his dreams and was convinced the dream world was more real than the real world. I wonder who is going through all his recorded dream messages as we speak, sorting them out. This is a future Hollywood goldmine. Chaa-ching! Who gets the book rights? The movie rights? The American Dream baby! Capitalize on it all. The more sensation, the bigger the bucks. Come on, get on the band wagon. Follow the media carrot. That’s how we do it.

  54. I’m sorry, but I can not get over “the fact” this post so reminds me of Graychin preaching to the rest of us about our racism against Obama earlier this year….

    …Only to find out later there are no people registered as “African-American” in Graychin’s entire zipcode. 😆

    Part Woody Allen, part Marie Antoinette.

  55. By the way BiW I did some research and clip is often used to mean magazine so while I was technically incorrect, I was using commonly used language. Folks on TV are referring to clips. But, as with Mohs scale, thanks for educating me on the more precise language.

  56. This local paper claims he bought the “clip” the same time as the gun. They are not illegal to purchase in Arizona. There was a ban on them that expired several years ago. I guess we are one of the most gun-friendly states right now.

    And one thing Arizona has plenty of is bullets and guns. In fact, just about the only thing standing between the next Jared Lee Loughner and the power to cut down a crowd of people — say, at the Legislature — with a semiautomatic handgun, or worse, is the “instant” FBI background check mandated by federal law for gun buyers (which didn’t block Loughner from purchasing his Glock).

  57. “Their agenda? What does that mean in the context of this article? What’s the agenda Tigre? We libs want to take all guns off the street so we can then round up conservatives and put them in concentration camps? What’s the sinister agenda?”

    That answers itself.

  58. “Tigre, if you’re gonna watch, at least watch carefully. Tim Pawlenty and John Shadegg were on Morning Joe this morning. Pawlenty said crosshairs are “not my style” and left it at that. I don’t recall Shadegg saying anything too profound. But they were there. And the show is hosted, I hate to remind you, by a right-winger. Did you also miss Chris Christie?”

    wow. Sorry I missed them. How many appeared on the shows I was watching? Your Olbermann and Ed show?

    Are Pawlenty and Shadegg the right-wingers the ones you’re accusing of causing this?

    Thanks for playing.

  60. OMG! 😯 I just watched the Palin ABC clip. Is she doing the presidential pirouette, or what? What’s with that? I guess her handlers felt the need after all the insinuation. I just don’t get the “blood libel” part. Is that naive or intentional? Whoever wrote that statement chose the words carefully. Hmmmmm. I think it an intentional diversion.

  61. Rutherford, your position on this is shameful. Shameful. Saying “this post is something different” than what I said before doesn’t absolve you of the outrageous, hate-filled Palin rant on your prior post and “radio” program.

    I think your exploitation of this tragedy is dispicable. Absolutely dispicable. I mean that. You had around 200 posts yesterday responding to what you said ans asking questions. You diodge and weave, but never answer them. Why are the irrelevant now? This is the “discussion” you want to have on the issue because of the shooting. Have at it.

  63. Blood libel was not only accurate, but perfect. Though it’s original meaning has been modified over the years and expanded, Palin used the phrase correctly and accurately.

    Because that is exactly what the scumbags from the Left are attempting to do here. Falsely accusing Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, FOX News, Mark Levin etc…. of having blood on their hands.

  64. Sorry Tigre, she is up to her elbows in this now. The left may have drawn her in initially, be it fair or not. However, now she has stepped up to the microphone. Did you see that video clip?

    Tex, you think that is accurate? Do you understand what it means?

    Even BiW’s buddy Jonah Goldberg has this to say:

    I should have said this a few days ago, when my friend Glenn Reynolds introduced the term to this debate. But I think that the use of this particular term in this context isn’t ideal. Historically, the term is almost invariably used to describe anti-Semitic myths about how Jews use blood — usually from children — in their rituals. I agree entirely with Glenn’s, and now Palin’s, larger point. But I’m not sure either of them intended to redefine the phrase, or that they should have.

  65. sorry, Tex–I am not sure of the basis of your statement that the original meaning of the phrase has been modified over the years. Perhaps you could explain?

    This is one where I believe you are wrong. I may think it’s wrong to suggest (much less blame) Palin et al for the shooting–but I don’t believe that’s equivalent to using this phrase. It was and is still used to refer to a claim that the Jewish people killed Christian babies and used their blood to make matzoh or in rituals. We obviously disagree but I think this is crossing the line. And I don’t think that the “well THEY did it” response is particularly productive. There are jackasses on both sides and that fact doesn’t lessen anyone else’s jackass-ness.

  66. I was being sarcastic Poolman. Obviously Palin is at the center of this controversy, and Rutherford ws on it before the bodies made it to the morgue.

  69. And here’s Pawlenty at 5:50.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/vp/41038305#41037814

    Wow. I overlooked it. Incredible I didn’t watch closely enough through 3-4 minutes within the hours and hours of self-serving soliloquy dedicated to trying to link the right to the attack. How many interviews with Dupnik were aired I wonder.

    Hard to imagine Joe might carry the the dialogue (dare I say rhetoric) his network has invested itself in for day after days beginning moments after the shooting before the shooter’s name could even be pronounced properly.

  71. Poolman and MeriBeth,

    Of course you both disagree with me. You’re both rabid Palin haters suffering from chronic Palin Derangement Syndrome.

    When it comes to Sarah Palin, I find neither of you objective, trustworthy, or rational. And while you Poolman may use one source of Jewish disagreement, I can counter with a secular, liberal Jew that disagrees with your assessment (see below).

    It doesn’t matter what Palin does – the both of you will find fault; you Poolman because you’re a hardcore lib; MeriBeth because Palin is beautiful, pro-life and a threat to liberal women that like to reside at Fat Grannie’s blog.

    The only jackasses in this tragic episode are people from the left, people like you both that have no sense of shame.

    http://biggovernment.com/publius/2011/01/12/exclusive-alan-dershowitz-defends-sarah-palins-use-of-term-blood-libel/

  72. it’s not the first time I have disagreed with Professor Dershowitz and it won’t be the last. Sorry–the fact that he has used the term other than in its original way doesn’t really sway me.

    The fact is that the blood libel WAS an accusation of committing murder, including of children, and defiling their bodies. Certainly, to say that one (Limbaugh, Palin, etc.) caused someone to commit murder is reprehensible and I abhor it. But the difference to me is in the impact of the reprehensible statement–Jewish people were tortured and murdered because of it. I don’t equate criticism of people who–in my opinion–appeal to the worst in others (Limbaugh, Beck, etc.) or who regularly put themselves in the public eye (Palin) as being in the same universe.

    Don’t get me wrong–the statements were wrong. I do believe that the rhetoric is ugly and destructive on both sides and I dislike it no matter who uses it. But to draw a connection where there isn’t one is also wrong. However, to use a term (blood libel) to mean “unfair criticism” is to cheapen the term in a way that I believe is unacceptable.

  73. Tex–you are absolutely full of shit, I mean it. You have ZERO idea how I feel about Palin (I actually feel a mild disdain for her) and, as it happens, I am very strongly pro-life. As for her beauty, so frigging what? She’s a nice looking woman but that’s no skin off my nose and I certainly don’t bear her any animosity because she’s pretty.

  75. Tigre: I don’t care whether she thought it meant dish pan hands. It is so offensive to so many people that I believe it shouldn’t be used. Now, did she have a Constitutional right to say whatever she wanted? Of course. Should she? I don’t believe so.

  76. And you have captured the essence of this debate in its totality. The meaning you supply to toehrs words ends the analysis. Got it. That sure makes it easy to imply/infer motives and win a debate, like the one were having here, doesn’t it?

    I’ve quoted this one to juries, and Rutherford who liked it at the time. I find it apropos:

    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
    “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
    “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”

    -Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6

  78. OMG! 😯 I just watched the Palin ABC clip.

    I read her speech once and watched it twice. I’m still trying to absorb it. Even in prepared remarks the woman speaks word salad so I have to piece everything together. I’ll comment more later but needless to say “blood libel”, a phrase with which I was heretofore unfamiliar has just gotten her into even deeper hotter water.

    Ya just gotta love her! 😀

  79. I must not have been clear–it’s not the meaning I use that’s the issue. This is not something idiosyncractic to me. It’s the meaning that a large number of people who were horrifically persecuted use. It’s the historical origin of the phrase. And, again, Palin has the right to say what she wants. In this case, it was a lousy choice.

  81. Well, “It’s [not] the meaning that a large number of people who were horrifically persecuted” as well.

    You may chose to be offended all you want. It’s your constitutional right.

  82. Let me try again: It’s the meaning that is used in connection with a large number of people who were horrifically persecuted. And to use it in a comparatively trivial context is offensive to a large number of people. Both have a constitutional right–to use it and to be offended by it.

    You are a lawyer and it sounds like you speak to juries. Do you deliberately choose to say things that you know will offend and upset at least some of your jurors? Or do you try to present your case without offending the people who will be the decision-makers? While that’s not a great example, the use of a term which does carry the connotation that this one does shows–in my opinion which is clearly the minority on this blog–crappy judgment and insensitivity on Palin’s part. [and were she dumpy, in favor of abortion, and anything else Tex would like to come up with I would feel exactly the same way].

  83. MeriBeth, don’t tell me I don’t know how you feel about Palin. Since you arrived here always the airhead, a dingbat requiring explanation for everything, you’ve dredged on about your disdain for Palin, including saying as much.

    You are an upstanding member of Fat Grannies – quivering and wet with delight in every Palin bashing post. You can’t wait to dig in the nails and pull hair with the rest of the shrews, harpies, silverbacks, and Planned Parenthood assistants. Enough said.

    So I give you and the rest of the predictable, weak ass Palin bashing idiots that reside there at Grannies the big “Kiss MY ass and consider me your enemy.”

  84. Obama did the unforgivable tonight. He’ll never win me over now.

    He preempted my basketball game and when it finally came back on, my team is losing. Of course, I turned the channel so I didn’t have to look at him either. He comes on, I tune out – especially something like this.

    Did Caesar have the Styrofoam Greek columns tonight?

  85. Tex–for someone who sometimes sounds very intelligent, you can sound remarkably stupid. And just did.

    I have very rarely posted at Margaret and Helen’s and have not used my name when I have done so. And I have never posted about Sarah Palin. But you insist that I do–as though you are monitoring my computer. I can’t really argue with your statements since they’re based on nothing. All I can do is tell you that you are wrong and that you are acting like an asshole. A feckless asshole, to borrow one of your favorite adjectives.

  86. As to your original post, R (imagine that), you left out that other memorable slogan “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” The deal with that slogan is…it’s true. You can’t ban individual ownership of guns in the U.S., even if you think it’s a good idea. (NOT that that is what you said. I do try to respond to that, rather than what I think you said. So call me…embellishing.) I think the Supreme Court has settled that issue. And even if you could come close to it with restrictive legislation, the real life consequences would be that you hamstring the good people who care about laws. What do criminals have to lose? Their jobs? Their reputations?
    It’s gun CONTROL that is the issue. How much, how far does it go. The NRA tries in every way that it can to ensure there are no limitations whatsoever, under the same sort of reasoning whereby the ACLU defends the KKK on the issue of freedom of speech. The NRA views gun laws as a slippery slope. And they are wrong about that.

  87. “Do you deliberately choose to say things that you know will offend and upset at least some of your jurors?”

    Never. As I said, I have used the phrase. Never offended a juror nor was it intended to. I suspect Dershowitz might say the same (although he tries few cases).

    I have no doubt that Palin wouldn’t choose to deliberately offend the jewish community in response to all of this. However, I would not hesitate to say that there are those like yourself that would accuse her of it for purposes other than to arrive at the truth.

    And that was MY point.

  89. MeriBeth,

    I have very rarely posted at Margaret and Helen’s and have not used my name when I have done so. And I have never posted about Sarah Palin

    Are you a betting woman? I already know you’re a liar as I proved the first day you arrived, but I can prove that little statement wrong and never leave the comfort of this board. How much would you like to wager you’re the one full of shit with that statement? And don’t give me the bullshit this time MERIBETH you posted under some other name. We don’t have two Mother MeriBeths here.

    Come on! Show me what a brave lass you are and let’s make a large bet. I’ll give 10% of it to Rutherford so he can buy himself something to eat.

  90. Tigre,

    Nah. A&M vs. Oklahoma State. Pissed me off. Of course, Heidi Klum could have appeared naked on the screen and and it still would have pissed me off. But Bongo on the screen? Now that is just sheer torture.

    I’m actually toggling back and forth between that one an KU, debating dingbat, and typing. No telling what I’m saying, but these people are so dumb, it doesn’t require much thought to debate.

  92. A feckless asshole, to borrow one of your favorite adjectives.

    I do love that word. Like the word Christian or George Bush, it just chaps the fire out of worthless libs. And I will continue to use it to describe butt ugly, feckless spinsters like you and the insufferably weak Flake on purpose, and frequently.

  93. I see you’re stalking again, Tex. What if you’re wrong about Maribeth? She seems pretty gentle and reasonable to me. Based on your comments, I conclude you’re on a slash and burn mission, to drive away anyone who supports R in any way. You have said that in the past, that you basically want to crush “liberals”. So you leave him with no support and his blog will be wiped out. Good luck. Not happening. By the way, get your own life.

  94. I return a shaken man. Rutherford and the left’s response to the killings have been the biggest political eye opener of my life.

    My first instinct was to run, as some here already know.

    Make no bones about it. Rutherford intellectually joined forces with the killer. He has a right to. It’s his choice. But, on that day, Rutherford and the Killer were a tag team.

    The killer is evil chaos. He is the Joker. He sits in jail relishing the tornado of chaos he caused. Chaos tramples logic. It loves destabilizing the flow of discourse.

    In many ways, the killer hijacked Rutherford’s mind. Rutherford was the killer’s proxy, he was the killer’s instrument of chaos. Come to find out, there is no Rutherford Lawson firewall.

    Rutherford gave into hate. He gave into intellectual fast food. Pre-packaged bull shit. Super fast. The bodies were still warm.

    I know Rutherford. I read it 10 times. Your not linking Palin to the shooting your just linking her to the shooting. Or was it Rush? Oh no…was it Obama? No. Can’t be. Ok, Palin.

    Super fast. Your logic tastes like chicken. Tweet it, dude.

  96. Tex is certainly the king of the ad hominem.

    What did you think about this Loughner’s words, “Thus, the argument to call me a terrorist is Ad hominem.”

    Palin sure gets your dander up, Tex. And just like you accuse Rutherford, you are emotionally charged by the mention of her name. Nothing is said about her, only criticism of her choice of words in a prepared video for press release. Don’t you get it? This is what SHE put out there for the public’s scruntiny. Then you go ballistic when the public scruntinizes her speech.

    Meribeth points out Palin’s incorrect word choice (because it clearly is) and you jump all over it like a personal attack. The fact that the word DOES have historical significance to mean what it does isn’t going to sway you. Stay the course even if we’re going aground. Roger that. Facts be damned. Even being liberal and expanding the meaning to cover other peoples acts of ritualistic human blood sacrifice, it is still the wrong word for what she is trying to describe.

  98. “Rabbit…you need to get back on your medication. Or if you don’t have any, you need to get some.”-fakename

    Other then my choppy writing style, curve ball metaphors and weird music, what so nuts about what I said?

    Rutherford was, himself, an agent of chaos. He linked the killer to Palin, devoid of any evidence. This is just what people like that killer want. Rutherford was part of a giant, unproductive ripple that tore through the national forum.

    His entire thesis, that political rhetoric cause the man to kill, has been proven false. So, not only can Rutherford not pin it on Palin, he can’t pin it on anyone.

    And he’s too much of a coward to come clean.

    And I’m nuts?

    How else am I to have dialog with someone that outrageous?

  101. I’m only here to cast my love to you Flake. MeriBeth is trying to come between us. 😈 Isn’t that what sociopaths are supposed to do Flake? Slash and burn?

    Well, you people have shown your own decency, or lack thereof this weekend. Rutherford, trying to desperately to capture some political momentum and mask the failures of Obama, you with your smarmy horse’s ass routine goosestepping along for the ride; Poolman and Meribeth the chronic Palin bashers, too gutless or too ignorant to recognize the only one really at fault is not named Sarah, but Jared.

    This week has been a reminder of why people like you, Rutherford, and to a lesser degree Poolman, and sweet, innocent MeriBeth (gag) need to be crushed. And I mean dusted…

    I got a reminder this weekend of why I disdain you people after the lull of the election and Christmas. Your philosophy has been on trial and you have been abject failures in every measure, so now you’ll dig at anything to try and hide that fact, your charred asses still smoking since November.

    Fortunately, this one blew up in libs face, the scum from the MSM no longer able to control the narrative by capitalizing on the deaths with the lies. You have been summarily rejected by 2/3 of Americans and you damaged your perverted and bankrupt philosophy further. I should play the game, encouraging each of you to yell a little louder, but it’s personally difficult to do when a nine year old girl lie dead in coffin. Rutherford’s behavior has been deplorable, a pathetic commentary, himself a father.

    Everyone both rational and fair is starting to now understand what I’ve know for years about your type – empty, unedifying, wicked, and never to be trusted.

    We owed you for eight years of horrid behavior, trashing the military through Bush, calling them mercenaries and defiling the memory of their deaths while you parade through the streets calling it patriotism with Bush’s paper mache neck in a noose; movies with Bush being assassinated while still in office; lying, and rank propaganda to gain advantage, not having a clue how to run things.

    That’s all you slugs know how to do – criticize, patronize and condemn.

    I do sincerely hope America has finally learned its lesson about liberalism and it’s another generation before we allow it to raise its ugly head again.

  102. I admit it. I was oblivious. Rutherford taught me the biggest political lesson of my life. I still can’t believe what the left tried to pull of, all within 20 minutes of the mayhem.

  104. Before I go beddie-bye, a couple of observations:

    Some things never change: Tex is still betting people stuff. LOL Tex has anyone on any blog ever taken you up on your challenges to wager some money on some topic or another? I keep waiting for my 10% cut and it never materializes. 🙂

    Rabbit, glad to see you even if you are pissed at me and consider me half the man you once did.

    As for those of us who understand that “blood libel” was not the best choice of words, I think you missed another dicey point — Gabby Giffords is Jewish. If I’m not mistaken the first female Jew to serve from AZ. So that makes the choice all the more tasteless.

    But I will say this — I don’t think Palin is anti-Semitic (any more than any other Christian whose interest in Jews is invested in the End of Days scenario). I think Palin speaks in constant word-salad. She doesn’t understand the impact of half the stuff that comes out of her mouth. I’m doubly sure of this if speech writers are involved. Do you really think she spends the time to analyze what her speech writers have written?

    Another interesting nugget from the Palin speech — our political discourse used to end in duels. I’m noticing this odd trend of bizarre historical references to justify positions. Another example was the famous Sue Lowden of Nevada who harkened back to the days of bartering chickens to explain her opposition to health care reform. Similarly, Sarah suggests “my crosshairs are light stuff compared to the duels of the old days.” So I guess we should be thankful she didn’t go on a tour of all the toss up states and challenge each “crosshaired” candidate to a duel. 👿

    I won’t bother to comment on Obama’s excellent speech. Any defense of it I might give will fall on mostly deaf ears here.

  105. Here you totalitarian assholes, desperately trying to recapture the momentum. Remember all you turds telling us for 40 years that violent TV and video games are no part of societal behavior? What happened to that theme?

    Watch three men destroy your hypocrisy in twelve minutes. And every one of them are right on.

    P.S. to R – I’ve never lost a bet on a blog, because I can never find a liberal sure of the truth once there’s something personally to lose. Note that she just conveniently disappeared Ironic, hey? Not…

  106. Tex’s idea of spreading the gospel…

    This week has been a reminder of why people like you, Rutherford, and to a lesser degree Poolman, and sweet, innocent MeriBeth (gag) need to be crushed. And I mean dusted…

    Step away from the media.

    You are responsible for your message. We try to instill that in our kids. It is a basic skill we call communication. Although we are technological giants, sending messages in multiple formats at realtime speed with impeccable accuracy, we are losing the basic skill of real communication which goes along with understanding the message. Comprehension. The real intent, or heart of the matter.

    Because of free speech, we are able to criticize the message given to the public, either hers or anybody else’s. She (or her people) has set up her own podium. If you cannot distinguish that from a character attack, you need to step back and reboot.

    Everyone who speaks from that platform is subject to public scrutiny. That is part of the job description. Personal attacks should be out of bounds. Content of message is what matters. That content includes the choice of words and their known and generally accepted definitions. MANipulation of words and events including falsehoods should be highlighted by true critics or the press. Quit pointing to the past or other sinners. What good does that do? The only thing you can change is the now and the future. Make wise choices. Choose the right words.

  107. MANipulation of words and events including falsehoods should be highlighted by true critics or the press.

    Why by them? It isn’t like they’ve done a fantastic job up to this point.

    Perspective? Zero.

    Historical Context? Not by them or their eleventy million layers of fact-checkers.

    Intellectual Curiousity? Only if they are shamed into it.

    Refraining from a rush to judgment? Hahahahahahaha!

    Yeah, I think I’ll take a pass on that. I’m not inclined to reward failure by asking them to do it some more.

  108. Watch three men destroy your hypocrisy in twelve minutes. And every one of them are right on.

    Tex, those guys are so……arrogant. Yeah, I’ll stick with that. What are their credentials? Are they doctors? Sitting there reading blogs and making their commentary. Love the language. Love the script. That is the fringe, baby. You’re definitely riding the fringe there. They already got this case diagnosed and solved. That PJ lays it on thick for sure.

  109. Why by them? It isn’t like they’ve done a fantastic job up to this point.

    It is a tragedy. The fourth estate is essentially dead. At least MANipulated in the hands of a few who control the message.
    My statement was toward the ideal.

    Remember Karl Marx? History could have been different.

    President and the Press. Awesome speech!

  111. “As for those of us who understand that “blood libel” was not the best choice of words, I think you missed another dicey point — Gabby Giffords is Jewish. If I’m not mistaken the first female Jew to serve from AZ. So that makes the choice all the more tasteless.”

    New template coming soon. I’ll include “word salad” and the wotd “hate” a few more times to describe Palin. Let me know if Olbermann gives you permission to use anti semitic and I’ll include that too.

    Glad you someone who never heard the term was able to declare it inappropriate.

    R, her use was perfectly appropriate. Your frustration that she won’t indulge you by admitting she caused the shooting is not. Maybe if you keep criticizing her word choice as your response to the tragedy the pretend dialogue you claim to want will make her fess up.

    Thanks for bringing this worthwhile dialogue to us. Imagine what could have been if anything Krugman said proved to be true.

  112. Disappear? Because I have other things to do than park myself in front of the computer? I think not, Tex.

    Actually, there are some interesting points that are made here. Sometimes they are made by you. Not last night.

    I don’t know why you enjoy trying to upset people. But when one steps back from your over the top rhetoric, you do exactly what you accuse other people of doing. Complain about people having an irrational hatred of Palin? How about someone who can’t bring himself to look at the President on television? Harp about how people “criticize, patronize, and condemn?” It’s exactly what you do.

    Rutherford–it has been an interesting couple of posts. I did disagree with you drawing a connection between this particular incident and the Tucson shootings because there was no proof to support it. However, I believe that the ugly rhetoric on both sides does contribute to a climate in which other people are influenced to violence. And I believe that Palin showed poor judgment and great insensitivity.

  113. MeriBeth, you’re big on mouth and small on thought. It’s like debating with a well school but juvenile child.

    If I’m wrong in my charge from above, place your bets coward. Honesty doesnt’ seem to be in you. If you were a man, I’d say you’re missing a set, but being you’re a fan of Fat Grannies, I’m guessing you might actually have a set.

    ——

    Since you don’t know jack about me, let me explain something to you MeriBeth so there is no misunderstanding this time.

    I don’t care for Obama because I find the man an empty suit, incompetent, a phony, a liar, cold, a malignant narcissist, and political opportunist. I don’t care to listen to his bullshit, because I see right through him and have from the start. From his racist church, to his affiliations with anarchists his entire life, he’s a teleprompter led mouthpiece and puppet on a string for some really powerful, really wicked people – one named Soros.

    But I will give Obama this and I have mentioned it here since you believe I’m totally unfair. For whatever self-serving reason because I don’t think Obama has a thought without thinking about Obama first, Obama has been able to strike the right cord in his tone concerning the tragedy. That’s more credit than I will give you, Rutherford, or Poolman Loughner.

    And there’s a big difference between disliking someone and tuning them out, and accusing someone of having blood on their hands like Rutherford has Sarah Palin. I tune a lot of Hollywood out – I don’t accuse them of killing people.

    If you can’t figure out the mountain of difference, then I don’t doubt why you struggle with my demeanor or my responses. And frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn what you think of me. I hope I have made that perfectly clear, because I don’t care for you and have no intent of making peace or being nice with any of you folks from the Left.

  114. Actually, there’s no reason to accept your bet since you already have offered your claimed proof and, short of disclosing my actual name and location (which I won’t do), I can’t do more than say you are wrong. Poolman does know who I am and he could tell you that I am not the “meribeth” that you claimed to quote or anyone else with whom you would be familiar at Margaret & Helen’s. But you won’t accept that either. So it’s a non-issue, launched so you can indulge in the insults you so enjoy directing at other people. Ho-frigging-hum.

    You find the President “an empty suit, incompetent, a phony, a liar, cold, a malignant narcissist, and political opportunist.” I say that I am unwilling to make such generalizations, particularly about people I don’t personally know. However, I can say that Sarah Palin strikes me as potentially qualifying for each of the qualities you attribute to the President. And, in fact, I can think of virtually no politician, on either side of the aisle, who I don’t view as, at a minimum, narcissistic (which, by definition, is malignant) or politically opportunistic. It’s the nature of people who are drawn to politics.

    Now, I’ll take the analogy a bit further. I have problems with what I have seen about Palin’s church, including the “casting out of demons” video and her supposed belief that the Rapture will occur in her lifetime. I admire her convictions on certain issues, not on others. She is a bit of a victim of the internet, since it has allowed her less than attractive behavior (such as laughing at a cancer victim) to be publicized. On the other hand, without the internet, she’d never have become a force to reckon with.

    I’m not persuaded that the President’s affiliations with anarchists are as strong as some like to suggest and won’t substitute rhetoric for actual facts. Use of a teleprompter? Sure–who doesn’t? Including Palin, during her “blood libel” speech. Led by some really powerful, really wicked people? Murcoch qualifies in my book.

    One difference between you and I is that I don’t suggest that anyone who supports or responds positively to Palin is defective–mentally or otherwise. She clearly is a powerful force and, while she doesn’t do it for me, you can’t deny her impact on many people. I have friends and relatives who like her and they are good, decent, intelligent folks. I also know Obama supporters for whom I don’t have a lot of use.

    As for you caring for me or not, I don’t give a rip. I find this blog interesting, I enjoy Rutherford’s posts even though I don’t always agree with them, I find some of the perspective interesting. I don’t expect you to make peace and I don’t care–but the fighting is only on your part and I’m not interested in participating.

  115. You clowns from the Left really do both amaze and humor me. Really, you do.

    For at least 30 years of my adult life, you have made a mockery of our judicial process (Robert Bork ring any bells), bad mouthed and disrespected the military and their families under the guise of dissent while Bush President and the country at war in Iraq, lied about everything from violence to immigration, celebrated an adulterous, feeble narcissist named Clinton, never having the decency to be aghast so the leader of the free world could be that reckless and vulgar, propagandized politics in the lowest accord like we again witnessed this weekend, made memorials into hysterical campaign plugs and orgies of discontent, accused many of us as being racists, homophobes, misogynists, and hypocrites, mocked our religion at every turn, aborted the unborn under euphemisms called “reproductive rights”, yourself threatened violence, ruined public education turning it into a den of deviants, thieves and rejects and still….

    …can’t understand why you’ve earned my wrath and why I consider you the enemy.

    It’s like going to war again a troops dressed in red, bulbous rubber noses, Ronald McDonald wigs, size 64 plastic shoes, each of you filling your weapons with water. Lord only knows what you must think we look like in uniform.

    And the only thing I really struggle with is do I hate you for your vile inanity, or should I just continue to laugh at y’all and point fingers as wannabee comics and critics.

  116. Gawd MeriBeth, you still don’t get it. What in the hell did you major in while at college? Gender studies?

    My bet has nothing to do with what you’ve said at Fat Grannies Dummy!!!!!!!!

    My bet concerns what you previously said here about Sarah Palin. You accused me of not knowing a damn thing about how you felt about Sarah Palin.

    Clearly you’re deluded as you’ve already said here what you thought of Palin numerous times, you dolt.

    Pull your head out of your colon and place a bet, because I’m just itching to buy Rutherford a dinner at McDonald’s. He needs a Happy Meal, or two.

  117. As I said, I don’t have any interest. You have claimed that I “hate” her–I don’t. You have claimed that it’s because of her “beauty”–it isn’t. And you have claimed it’s because she opposes abortion–wrong again.

    I’ll freely admit that I don’t particularly care for her as a candidate but that’s a far cry from your characterizations of my feelings. So, again, you’re wasting your time and energy.

    Oh–and I don’t believe they had gender studies almost 40 years ago.

  118. Thinking, thinking…

    Maybe a pop psychologist or sociologist…. 🙂 Got to be something along those lines.

    Any minute now they’ll drop the tired rhetoric of logical fallacies, indicating their “intellect”, or some other meaningless and existential screed (channeling Timothy Leary) never understanding Sarah Palin isn’t President, nor do I want her as President….blah, blah, blah.

    Why are you f*cking wasting time with these imbeciles when you could be (1) watching a movie, (2) reading a book, (3) painting your daughter’s room, (4) recreating yourself to get your ass out of the house, off the internet and back into reality (5) cleaning the toilets – and promised yourself after Christmas you would knock this crap off like your wife told you to do?

    Pondering…pondering…..pondering. “You can’t even make up an excuse, can you Tex? Get off your ass and do something useful….” {But I can’t} Smiles to himself. It’s like being addicted to cocaine, or something.

  119. On the other hand, without the internet John McCain, she’d never have become a force to reckon with.

    Meribeth, I corrected that for you slightly. While I agree that Sarah has been a master at using the Internet to extend her 15 minutes of fame, it is John McCain we have to thank for her emergence in the first place. Without McCain, she would be one of a long list of forgotten Alaska Governors. McCain unleashed a plague upon America for which he should never be forgiven.

  120. Good Grief! you all are feeding each other’s hate.. can’t you see this.. it is ridiculous.

    Rutherford, if we lived a couple centuries back.. you would be putting up Bows and Arrows don’t people, People kill People.. go back further.. the Sword and Spear doesn’t kill People, People kill People, Stones don’t kill people, People kill People.. oh wait.. don’t forget man’s own hands.. there ya go..

    As time progresses.. we will be coming out with a more progressive way to kill.. a more efficient way to murder.

    Rhetoric has always been the OLD way of feeding and also murdering. Kinds and rulers have done it in the past.. note the famous quote.. “Let them eat cake”

    I think this tragedy tell those who have the power and control over media and blogs a message.. to stop feeding the trolls. Start concentrating on other shit.. If you ignore the Palins and Obamas.. they will go away.. just look at Brittany Spears.. or Pelosi.. she will be fading out soon.. the images and jabs.. all will be gone. Who knows.. we may see her on Dancing with the stars.. we have seen Blago on commercials.

    For all those English profs.. please excuse my english and mispells.. I just don’t feel like correcting today.. this is blog.. and I don’t get paid for this ca ca.

  121. MeriBeth,

    You present yourself as the soft, gentle soul, though I don’t buy it in its entirety. It was never my intent to make you the enemy, but you did come barging into the room one morning, insulted me directly, corrected me, which I fully admit I misspoke, though my general statement 99% accurate.

    My comment was certainly less dishonest than your claim, “criticizing ladies who mostly trade recipes”, about the pitiful “Margaret and Helen” blog, which by the way you never retracted.

    People like you and Poolman Loughner are not really my target, as I find both of you about as useful as navel fluff in the big war.

    But I am the curious type. Exactly what is your intent here? With most posters I can figure it out, but you seem to be a person of unknown purpose. Is it to share information, provide political commentary and opinion, or just to continue to critique?

    Sometimes, I feel like I’m debating with my school counselor when you and I go at it. With Flake, I keep waiting for her to write “Margins, Margins” or “I before E except after C” in her responses to me, always third party like she’s talking to my mother.

    But with you, most of what I’ve read starts like this. “That was really well written Rutherford….” “Can you explain this to me….”

    Do you gather information and blog yourself about things that interest you?

  122. I’m tempted to devote a post to analyzing Palin’s speech paragraph by paragraph but in doing so I would get accused of feeding my own PDS, so I hesitate. I guess this video will have to do: (“Say 2nd amendment until 9 year old gets shot, then say 1st amendment”)

  123. Happy to respond. I’m interested in both politics and the pyschology and behavior of groups. I have a particular interest in the way that the internet has affected both. It’s not my profession–it’s purely for personal enjoyment. Because of that, I really enjoy hearing different points of view and watching the way that comments ebb and flow in a blog.

    I’m not a blogger–frankly, I don’t have enough to say to fill a post. I do enjoy this blog and some others. Some are political, some aren’t at all. Some are really conservative, some aren’t. I’ve gotten some great recommendations for books from blogs, including this one, and it’s good for me to try to keep learning.

    I’m interested in religion and history, as well as politics. I like trying to figure out why people react as they do.

    Nothing more complicated than that. No interest in picking fights. No interest in changing anyone’s mind. If I ask someone to explain it’s because I have a horrible habit of jumping to conclusions and am trying to force myself to check things out. I’m not naive and don’t consider myself a dingbat but I suppose that my asking for explanations can come across that way.

  124. Since when did you care about being criticized for your PDS? You have painted cross-hairs on her.

    Bluebird, your point is a valid one only if we ignore the backdrop in which it was brought to the fore.

    Rutherford is the Genius of the Crowd.

  125. “McCain unleashed a plague upon America for which he should never be forgiven.”

    He may have unleashed the plague, but it is people like you, Rutherford, who continue to feed it and make it grow.

    I have told you this before. You want to blame someone for Sarah Palin…look in the mirror, bub.

  126. MeriBeth, fair enough and I will accept that as fact. Thank you for answering that.

    I was a little taken back at your surprise I would tune Pres. Obama out. I actually find that healthy, as I have no respect for the man and believe little that comes out of his mouth. So why bother watching or listening? This wasn’t a matter of national concern.

    I was aghast at the small part I was forced to watch. Clapping and cheering at a memorial? That is not Obama’s fault as that a bunch of college students. But this was not a political rally, and provided further testament to me that many of the followers of Obama are more groupies than like minds.

    I’d rather watch a basketball game. There was no malicious intent last night on my part. I simply can’t stomach looking or listening to Obama or his inane sycophants anymore.

    ——–

    However, I don’t hate Obama either like some might think. Obama is way down the list of liberals I despise. He’s simply the figure head and I think he has gravely damaged the country, possibly irreparably with his misguided and self-serving philosophy.

    It burns Rutherford’s rear end, but I believe Dinesh D’Souza nailed the true Obama. That’s pretty much what I think of him.

    http://www.amazon.com/Roots-Obamas-Rage-Dinesh-DSouza/dp/1596986255

    ——-

    Obama is a figure head, a plan in the making over the last 20 years. But the real power brokers are behind the scenes. And I think I could pretty much prove at least a part of that by simple example. I did it here once before…and I’d have to give it some thought to taking the trouble again.

    But the opportunities afforded Obama from a young man, where no real accomplishment garnered, is unusual to say the least.

    Two autobiographies before graduating from law school when few outside the scope of academia had heard of him? Community activist at 25, dispensing hundreds of millions of dollars with little prior record of achievement? No record of even a girlfriend, and the only personal accomplishment of note hearsay?

    Sure, he’s an accomplished speaker with a written script. Many are, and Obama is far from the best orator I’ve heard.

    His personal story is a little hard for me to swallow of one of great achievement. To me, he is more fraternity President than real President. And yes, I do find him a megalomaniac. A gift with one liners, but he is shallow and vain.

    So there’s my little conspiracy. 🙂

  127. I thought this was a good comment about Palin that I wished I had said to all the Palin haters here. It pretty much summarizes how I feel about the woman, and her detractors.

    ———–

    “Palin’s Not Complicit in Loughner Shooting, but she sure Ain’t Presidential, Either”.

    Has any other public figure ever had to try to act “Presidential,” though, while being accused of complicity in mass murder?

    On the other hand, if (as isn’t clear to me) she actually wants to be President, she’ll have to learn to be Presidential. Barack Obama has had his problems in that department, too, and unlike Palin, he’s had the benefit of a desperately supportive and eager-to-please mainstream media.

    Palin, on the other hand, has been royally screwed-over by that same media, and has managed to come back and beat them again and again, from “death panels” to “blood libel.” And that engenders considerable sympathy. A musician friend of mine who’s not especially political emailed me the other day: “I don’t particularly care for Palin, but every time they do this to her, I find myself hoping she becomes President, out of pure spite.”

    I understand the sentiment, but being screwed over by the media, while it may breed sympathy, isn’t a qualification for being President. Richard Jewell was royally screwed over by the media, too, but he didn’t belong in the White House because of it. if Palin is to be elected President, it’s not going to be on a sympathy vote.

    But here’s what’s going on in the dance between Palin and what she calls the “lamestream” media: Every time they attack her, they wind up doing something that hurts them worse than it hurts her. She may not become President, and she may not even want to be President — though, regardless, it’s in her interest to keep everyone guessing as long as possible — but with little more than an Internet connection and Facebook she’s done more lasting harm to their position than anybody else. Last night Barack Obama threw them under the bus over the whole “rhetoric” question, just hours after she had managed to work them into a snarling frenzy with an Internet video. Even though it’s hurting them, they can’t — and I mean, literally, psychologically can’t — leave her alone. And she’s getting rich the whole time.

    So I don’t know about “Presidential,” but who’s dumb, here?

  128. I’m sorry Tex–I can’t identify with you. On the other hand, if it had been a FOOTBALL game (just kidding).

    As for Palin making money, more power to her. She’s proven herself a genius in that regard.

  129. While I don’t expect any right wing conservatives to accept any of the information in this article from a left liberal site, I did find the information consistent with what I have read regarding Palin. It goes far to explain the video she released yesterday that had me scratching my head in wonder. I think it is accurate. Of course, I have been labeled a lib here. But I’m not too concerned with labels others attach to me, and there have been many. I will continue to research left and right to see both perspectives. Both are distortions, imo, but even in a distorted imagery one can see true characteristics.

    As I have often stated, truth can be found in many places. Neither the left nor the right own it exclusively. The pendulum will always rest in the middle after traveling to the extremes. Moderation is the best and truest path in most instances. From the center perspective is less distorted.

  130. So, I just read a transcript of Obama’s speech, and to give credit where it is due I have to give him props for that one.

  131. Poolman, your last paragraph very telling about you. I’m not simply labeling you for sake of discussion when I call you a Lib. I’m just telling you with a simple word that it obvious where you stand. I only label you as identifier of a political belief. I don’t care how you’ve posted you voted in the past; I care about how you believe in the present. And it is wrong-headed.

    As I have often stated, truth can be found in many places.

    No, it can’t. Truth can be repeated in many places. It is misrepresented in many more.

    Neither the left nor the right own it exclusively.

    Neither own it at all. Truth is not owned. If the sourcing right, and that is the key, it is learned, accepted, then properly applied. And I don’t believe you apply it right. That is opinion – not truth.

    The pendulum will always rest in the middle after traveling to the extremes. Moderation is the best and truest path in most instances. From the center perspective is less distorted.

    You mean straddling the fence? Better to be hot or cold. Moderation is for eating, exercise, an entertainment. It serves little purpose elsewhere.

    There are issues of discussion – and then there are issues of division. And on the latter, while your sourcing correct, your application both inconsistent and muddled. How do you moderate abortion? How do you moderate war?

    What confuses me most about you Poolman, is by all rights as a small business owner, you should be conservative in nature. Yet what little you’ve spoken, you would indicate your a big government kind of guy. What blows my mind is that you don’t realize it’s oppressive taxes killing your very specialized type of business. And that is not Republican candidates.

    Something always lost in the equation when “libs” complaining of losing manufacturing, never understand the concept of move or go out of business.

  132. So, I just read a transcript of Obama’s speech, and to give credit where it is due I have to give him props for that one.

    I’ve seen parts and agree. Obama did it the correct way. A very large part of the audience however, was beyond the pale and an embarrassment.

  134. With rules of engagement. 😆 Okay, you got me on that one – one arm tied behind the back would definitely be moderated.

    Huck, you figure these lefty economic wizards here might understand why President Obe quickly reading Reagan’s book?

    I just left this one The Two Useful Idiot’s Blog to answer Graychin’s rank propaganda. I’ll spare you the pain of looking, as he is using Nancy Pelosi as source to demonstrate how much better Obama’s economy is than Bush’s every was.

    I guess that’s moderate too if you use the FORMER Speaker of the House twice spoken, “Unemployment benefits is the fastest way to increase jobs.”

  135. You mean straddling the fence? Better to be hot or cold. Moderation is for eating, exercise, an entertainment. It serves little purpose elsewhere.

    Fences are separations keeping some things in and some things out. Confinement or protection. I’ll straddle the fence on many issues. The view is generally clearer from the top of the fence anyway. There are things I choose to be on the outside of and others I choose to be inside with. It isn’t the same with every issue. So I will sometimes straddle the fence. No apologies there.

    Better to be hot or cold applies to spiritual condition. Extremities don’t bode well for the flesh. Moderation is generally the healthiest and safest route when it comes to humanity. This is not only applicable for what we take it, but also for what we dish out. All things in moderation is generally wise advice.

  136. Hey Rutherford, better listen to her!

    The final lesson for the left is this: for the sake of a second term, the president is willing to throw liberals under the bus. ~ Jennifer Rubin

  137. Poolman, in your own kind of unique and blended counter-culture form of Christianity, I’ll assume you are familiar with Elijah and the slaying of the 450 prophets of Baal. I don’t assume you read this, or maybe missed it about moderation? Don’t fool yourself into believing somehow your “moderation” which I have yet to witness by the way, as you seem firmly entrenched down the left field line, is a good thing.

    “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.”

    I don’t believe our Lord is going to be impressed with your moderation.

    —–

    MeriBeth, last night you were critical of my sourcing as to the validity of Palin’s use of blood libel? Will another secular Jew do anything to change your mind?

  138. blockquote>
    What blows my mind is that you don’t realize it’s oppressive taxes killing your very specialized type of business.

    No. The banking industry made my business what it was and they destroyed it for the most part when they pulled the rug out from under the entire construction industry. What we failed to realize is that they piped the water in for this well of funding that all of us came to drink from and depend on. It flowed for so long and was so plentiful, we did not think it would run dry.

    Then in one day they shut of the pipeline. Not down to a trickle mind you, completely off. The government baled them out with the caveat that they continue to send water through the pipeline for the well that we were all so depending on for our livelihood. They did not. Still to this day they have not.

    I am fortunate in that I have low overhead and so far have survived. I have shifted my business to provide service and repairs for existing pool owners. I have done every job in my field so I am less limited than many of my peers. For that I am grateful. There will always be service needed, just as auto mechanics have weathered this crisis better than new car dealers.

    But it has nothing to do with taxes at this juncture. As a matter of fact, with the current tax laws in place, I will likely benefit more from my business ownership as opposed to being an employee of someone else’s.

  139. Tex–Nope. I don’t think that it’s appropriate to equate the real horrors of the original “blood libel” to what was, at most, unfair attacks on someone’s reputation. Yes, both involve false accusations. Yes, both harm reputation. But the impact from the different statements can’t be compared.

    I understand that some people, even Jewish ones, disagree with me. But I don’t use terms like “lynching” or “Holocaust” or “genocide” lightly either.

    “Blood libel” may be used in other contexts more than I had realized–I’ll concede that. But to the extent those other contexts weren’t comparable, I find using the term really distasteful.

    At bottom, given the fact that she obviously has professional speechwriters and consultants (nothing wrong with that), it’s surprising to me that Palin would use a term with this historical origin in this context. I think she would have been far better served to have focused on the families of the victims of the shooting, rather than to try to portray herself as one of them. Just my opinion and I am sure others will disagree.

  140. I’ll assume you are familiar with Elijah and the slaying of the 450 prophets of Baal.

    I am very familiar with the story. I often wondered what happened to the 400 prophets of Asherath also mentioned. This story doesn’t make your point about moderation. The Baal prophets were “on fire” for Baal. Elijah was “on fire” for God. It was a battle of spiritual allegiance. A test as to whose god was real and powerful. No one was a moderate here.

    But on the subject of “hot and cold”. Elijah was hot here. Yet read the very next chapter (2 Kings 19). After this supernatural move by God where all the survivors bowed down to worship Him, the woman Jezebel threatens his human life. That is cold. Elijah goes from one extreme here to the other. That is the meaning of hot and cold spiritually.

  141. Sorry MeriBeth,

    Though for the most part you seem pretty mild and gentle, even reasonable on occasion, I still believe that you play no small part in the collective neurosis that is Sarah Palin; one of the strangest phenomenons I’ve ever witnessed.

    Like I said, Sarah Palin is owed a thanks from me, not because she is my candidate of choice (not by a long shot), but she has done more to expose the blatant hypocrisy of both the MSM and its political readers than anyone of memory.

    If it were any other person, I find it hard to believe that you would even make mention of the words “blood libel”, as it used very frequently in conversation – and has been for years.

    I think Sarah Palin chose those words both carefully and with reason. And I think it clear now, that once again she has demonstrated the intent of her adversaries. She plays you guys and gals like a fiddle, and that tickles me, being the rest of you haven’t figured out she’s dumb like a fox.

  142. That is the meaning of hot and cold spiritually.

    The meaning of both hot and cold in Revelation is used in the positive relationship (a little known fact, by the way), but never is it made mention that “moderation” of morality a good thing.

    And that is what I believe you attempt Poolman under the guise of Christiandom to fit your politics. You avoid the tough subjects, by your refusal to address the tough ticket items.

    I could lecture you concerning your business, as it always foolish to believe the good times go on forever. But that not my purpose with you. I wish you the best in your business, as a matter of fact, and hope you return to whatever maximization you seek.

    And while it is true that credit now tight, and you have legitimacy in your claims of greed and corruption of the finance industry, that doesn’t excuse the greed of the benefactors either in construction and housing who were incredibly dumb to not recognize most all of it overpriced and overbuilt before the fall – Phoenix being a prime example.

    I predict the greed has caused most involved in the mess incredible harm, as it will be years before things stabilize. I only wish I had taken the gamble of shorting the real estate market like my friend and financial adviser did. 🙂 I could have made a small fortune.

    My real point to you was that I’m frankly surprised as a small business owner, you don’t realize how oppressive corporate taxes really are. While we can debate about the greed of executives and you would be right, you can not blame them for moving their businesses to places where taxes less than half of what they are in America, choked by ecological and health regulation, FICA, and the like. Those rules have killed manufacturing and are killing the Japanese industry as well. Look at their markets – 20 years of stagnation.

    This is not 1960, where America dominated productivity so the predictable talking points of Liberalism venturing back 50 years to make a point is specious. We are now in a global market, and the rules of 50, even 20 years ago no longer apply.

  143. Here’s the next short I ought to be investing in – the next big bubble to burst.

    Higher education – completely overrated, and most of it useless. I find the need for a PHD in anything but research and teaching a joke anymore.

  144. Well, all I can say is that you’re wrong–I really would be offended by the term, regardless of who used it. Just as I’m offended by anyone’s use of terms like “lynching” when they refer to, say, being ganged up on at work. Or “gypped” in connection with being cheated. Or “shyster” when used about a lawyer. I may be overly sensitive, but I’m an equal opportunity priss.

    I can tell you that “blood libel” has not been used in my presence and wouldn’t have passed unchallenged if it had been.

    As for her “playing” anyone, there I disagree. I think her poll ratings are pretty dismal. No question that she has a hugely enthusiastic following, but it seems pretty limited in its scope. Of course, if her goal is to make a lot of money, she’s being wildly astute–as I said earlier. If her hope is to hold political office, I think she’s not so smart.

  145. I think her poll ratings are pretty dismal. No question that she has a hugely enthusiastic following, but it seems pretty limited in its scope.

    “Limited”, as in assisting 69 New Republicans get elected in the midterm shellacking and winning approximately 80% of the races she endorsed? You not only underestimate Palin’s following, but you have forgotten the actual results. Understandable, being your a product of the collective neurosis.

    I’m afraid the appropriateness of the words “blood libel” continues to turn against your opinion too MeriBeth. If anyone should have been offended, it should have been Jews, should it not?

    Here’s Jew #3 on the list, and this is about as far from the “right wing” as it gets.

  146. Meribeth, I have responded to your response and I believe you will my comment null and void, but it feel into moderation because of the “Twitter Feed” I assume.

    Here’s a part of it….you’ll have to wait with bated breath for the remainder. 🙂

    ——-

    I think her poll ratings are pretty dismal. No question that she has a hugely enthusiastic following, but it seems pretty limited in its scope.

    “Limited”, as in assisting 69 New Republicans get elected in the midterm shellacking and winning approximately 80% of the races she endorsed? You not only underestimate Palin’s following, but you have forgotten the actual results. Understandable, being your a product of the collective neurosis.

    I’m afraid the appropriateness of the words “blood libel” continues to turn against your opinion too MeriBeth. If anyone should have been offended, it should have been Jews, should it not?

    Here’s Jew #3 on the list, and this is about as far from the “right wing” as it gets…. (more later)

  147. Tex, you’re on fire today. Your observations, especially about Palin, are extremely well put.

    Meribeth, I was thinking about frequently the term “political lynching” was used in the prior elections and the health care debates without a peep. Same with alot of other language intended to invoke a certain type of imagery. Here it’s interesting that Palin, directly and personally attacked by the left before the victims arrived at the hospital, is then attacked for using expressive language to defend herself. Actually, it’s not interesting at all. It’s as predictable as the sun rising and setting. Rutherford attacked Palin’s initial words in response to her “lynching;” using it as proof of her “guilt by association.”

    The only ones I see complaining are those that leveled the accusation to begin with. Since claiming to take offense, real or manufactured (as it is here) is a particularly effective strategy to silence an opponent, if you are as disinterested as you assert, I suggest you be wary the strategy from either side. To me its obvious that it is strategic in this case.

  148. now I am laughing. You actually are pretty funny.

    Nope–no question about the November results. No question she helped some candidates. Did she hurt others? Some data suggests it. But I’m talking about her overall approval ratings.

    So you’ll cite some Jews who didn’t take offense, and I’ll cite other Jews that did take offense. And this will be much like what my late grandfather referred to as the equivalent of wiping your behind on an innertube: you don’t get anywhere and you just run into the same crap. He was a somewhat earthy old man.

    p.s. Sorry for calling you an asshole.

  151. p.s. Sorry for calling you an asshole

    Feckless asshole, if I recall. 🙂

    I have never heard asshole in the 23+ years of marriage come out of my wife’s mouth as that definitely not here style, but I think I have heard “feckless” once or twice in regard to some of my lounging habits. One wonders how long this pretty saint I’m married to is going to let me get away with wasting days, before she wises up and runs me off.

    From your vantage point, probably accurate. No problem and no need for an apology.

    However, I think even with the Jews, you would be outnumbered in opinion. Even Abe Foxman of the ADL who is constant Christian basher himself, only gave a luke warm criticism. It’s common and heated language, usually reserved for Hamas or the war mongering types, but I still contend your opinion in the minority and you’re grasping for straws.

    We can leave it at that, but you discount the power of Palin. Like I’ve told Rutherford. Right message, wrong person for the position. But I’m still glad she’s on my side.

    Tiger, did you guys get rid of the snow?

  152. Damn, I need to sit up and turn the TV off. My posts are full of typos today.

    I’m the one who should be apologizing for the semi-illiteracy.

  153. Tex, we’re still in a melting/freezing pattern. 10:00 to about 5:00 is okay. Then it’s a skatng rink. Ground is still white for the most part.

    Cabin fever has forced me to the office the last couple of days even though I probaly shouldn’t have risked it and have let our staff stay home. This all reminds me why I didn’t go back to Boston.

  155. 😆 BIC! I don’t know how Rutherford will look when he sees that, but I can hear his own panting all the way to Oklahoma. If Sarah will breathe like that for me though, I’ll crawl to Wasilla, AK.

    One thing I did notice, though. While I think Palin definitely a brick house (the first thing I notice about her is those great set of gams), she’s not as pretty as I remember from a distance. She’s attractive, but not a knock out.

    ——-

    Tigre, it’s as cold here as a witches *****, with a capital ‘T’, but we only received but a dusting of snow. The kind of cold, you keep the faucets dripping, mixed in with about a twenty mile hour wind straight out of the north.

    I miss my dog that was killed this last summer terribly and mourn him every day, even kiss his pictures and his collar like some weirdo (just like my two labs from two years ago), but there’s one thing I don’t miss about Mr. Sam – those January late night walks across the open fields at midnight. That was miserable, but I always felt obliged.

    First time in 15 years I haven’t had to walk dog(s) twice a day. I bitched and moaned for 15 years about having to go morning and night, and now I’d crawl to Wasilla, AK for any of the three of them too if I could get them back- especially the young one that got killed last summer.

    Hard to believe at 50, I can find myself broken like a young school girl thinking about them; especially the last one.

    There’s something terribly twisted about not giving a damn about 25% of the American population, even slightly hoping they’d spin off into space some days, but boo hoo over three dogs. Perhaps I do need to get myself examined.

    Don’t think I don’t give a little self-reflective thought with my God when the room is dark and the house quiet. I’ve got a few of my own sins.

  156. “When a man makes up his mind without evidence, no evidence disproving his opinion will change his mind.” – Robert A. Heinlein

    No truer words ever spoken of liberalism.

  157. The meaning of both hot and cold in Revelation is used in the positive relationship (a little known fact, by the way), but never is it made mention that “moderation” of morality a good thing.

    Whose interpretation are you citing?
    Who said anything about moderation of morality?
    The hot and cold in revelation relates to your spiritual walk and the fruit thereof. The deeds. The advancing of His kingdom. Yes, it IS talking to believers, but it essentially says, “Get your act together! Quit trusting in your own wealth and worldly deeds and activities that are worthless. Instead invest in Me and My kingdom. You might ought to re-read Revelation 3:14-20 during that self-reflection.

    And that is what I believe you attempt Poolman under the guise of Christiandom to fit your politics. You avoid the tough subjects, by your refusal to address the tough ticket items.

    Sounds like soundbites to me, but here goes:

    Under the guise of Christiandom? Jesus Christ IS my Lord, Savior, God, role model and moral example. He’s the head of the church; the groom that is returning for His bride – the body of believers that I am a part… where’s the guise?

    fit your politics? Just exactly what are MY politics? From your far right perspective, everything looks left. It is much easier to discern from a central position.

    Tough ticket items? List some of these “tough ticket items” and we’ll address them head on. I don’t recall side-stepping any.

  158. Maybe what we should be doing is talking about mental health treatment and gun control. Our layperson’s diagnosis is that Loughner was mentally deranged, and it seems obvious. Pllus he is exactly the right age for the onset of schizophrenia, and it’s a good bet since by the accounts I’ve heard his behavior changed dramatically from the teen he once was. But he was never “in the system” so there was no legal reason to deny him gun ownership. In addition, no felony convictions, so there again, no reason to deny him gun ownership. And since in AZ you are allowed to carry a gun concealed (or openly) without a permit, law enforcement–if they had been present, which they weren’t–would not even have had a reason to question him. In other words, he had to actually shoot someone or at least act like he was about to for LE to intervene.
    Alfie asked (perhaps on the last post) if this was a failure of government; well yes. It’s a failure to make reasonable gun control laws. And “The Government” is us.

  159. I agreed at least in part until the last sentence Fake…then you lost me.

    Alfie asked (perhaps on the last post) if this was a failure of government; well yes. It’s a failure to make reasonable gun control laws. And “The Government” is us.

    I think it is a broken system (and that is government) – one that failed to act on a mental illness, a system where institutionalization for whatever reason became taboo about 50 years ago because of it was deemed heartless and ineffective.

    While the AZ gun laws may not have prevented the purchase of a weapon, as any criminal knows, guns are cheap and available elsewhere. No additional gun laws would have guaranteed Loughner would have been prevented from obtaining a weapon – possibly even a far more dangerous weapon had he looked hard enough and had the money. If his father legally owned a weapon, Loughner could have taken that.

    More so, as I demonstrated yesterday – time and again, the stricter the gun laws, the more dangerous the area – the city of Chicago and Washington D.C. being only two that have the banned the sale of hand guns, yet have some of the highest murder rates in the United States with hand guns.

    Crimes like this are the price we pay to live in a free society. And I would submit to minimize occurrences like this happening again requires three things: (1) Proper diagnosis of mental illness removing the stigmatization of the disease itself, (2) More funds available to housing and treatment for the patients, and most importantly (3) a citizenry willing to get involved – especially those closest to the illness.

    In a perverse way, Jared Loughner may very well be a victim. Though I have not openly criticized the parents, the schools, the employers, the campus police, or the classmates, many obviously recognized there was a serious problem. At the very least there was a degree of societal negligence. And of course, I am assuming they made no attempt to intervene – it may be there was nothing that could be done until Loughner acted. If so, that law needs to be changed.

    It would appear the more I learn, the more I put myself in the position of the father. If I had chased my child across a field and could not stop him demonstrating something of concern, I would have at a minimum called police to stop him.

  160. I’ve come to realize the only reason I’ve ever come here was Rutherford’s honesty. He hasn’t always been perfect in this regard, but I haven’t always been the model citizen either.

    There are a million places I can go where the liberal blog owner never admits to screwing up.

    What Rutherford did to Sara Palin was wrong.

    Rutherford, you screwed up big time.
    Dude, I was crushed over that attack. Instead of sharing some mutual humanity you started a shit storm while the bodies still lay on the hot concrete.

    I wanted to come on here and talk about how much I love my baby boy. You wanted to talk about Sara Palin.

    You might not care, but are you capable of seeing how much you let me down? Screw politics for a second. I like to at least entertain the idea that you’re a buddy of mine, in a strange virtual fashion.

    Dude, you have disturbed me.

    Making matters worse, your analysis was both cowardly in format (not blaming Palin, then blaming her) but was also dead wrong. Dead fucking wrong.

    I’m telling you man, its plain and simply hard to come on here and read what you have to say.

    This place remained busy among a million blabbing voices for a reason that transcended politics.

  162. I never realized “gypped” was a reference to gypsies. I also don’t know the origins of “shyster”. Is it anti-semetic?

    “Luck of the Irish” started off as anti-Celtic slur full of sarcastic irony.

    Offended over the word “jipped”….for real? Can’t PC policing at least take a back seat to an understandable hazy ignorance of linguistics?

    Come to find out all those people I gave the bird for cutting me off thought I was showing off that I still have the means to use my long bow.

  163. Poolman,

    Do you really find that kind of limp wristed, laugh track, jack off routine funny? That nerd is about as superficial as Joyless Behar and a horse’s ass.

    Consider it directed at your lunacy as much as Rutherford’s hatred, as you’re both Palin haters….and leftist shills. 🙂

    —-

    Liberals instantly leapt on the sickening massacre at a Tucson political event over the weekend to accuse tea partiers, Sarah Palin and all conservatives who talk out loud of being complicit in murder by inspiring the shooter, Jared Loughner.

    Of course, to make their case, they first must demonstrate:

    (a) Right-wingers have called for violence against anyone, especially conservative, pro-Second Amendment Democratic congresswomen;
    (b) Loughner was listening to them; and
    (c) Loughner was influenced by them.

    They’ve proved none of this. In fact, it’s nearly the opposite.

    Needless to say, no conservative has called for violence against anyone. Nor has any conservative engaged in any “rhetoric” that was likely to lead to violence. Every putative example of “violent rhetoric” these squeamish liberals produce keeps being matched by an identical example from the Democrats.

    Sarah Palin, for example, had a chart of congressional districts being targeted by Republicans. So did the Democratic Leadership Committee. Indeed, Democratic consultant Bob Beckel went on Fox News and said he invented the bull’s-eye maps.

    Similarly, every time liberals produce an example of military lingo from a Republican — “we’re going to target this district” — Republicans produce five more from the Democrats.

    President “whose asses to kick” Obama predicted “hand-to-hand combat” with his political opponents and has made such remarks as “if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun” — making Obama the first American president to advocate gun fights since Andrew Jackson.

    These are figures of speech known as “metaphors.” (Do liberals know where we got the word “campaign”?)

    It’s not that both sides did something wrong; neither side did anything wrong. The drama queens need to settle down.

    The winner of the most cretinous statement of 2011 — and the list is now closed, so please hold your submissions — is MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who on Monday night recalled Palin’s statement, “We’re not retreating, we’re reloading,” and said, I quote, “THAT’S not a metaphor.”

    Really, Chris? If that’s not a metaphor, who did she shoot?

    By blaming a mass killing on figures of speech, liberals sound as crazy as Loughner with his complaints about people’s grammar. Maybe in lieu of dropping all metaphors, liberals should demand we ban metonyms so that tragedies like this will never happen again.

    As for Loughner being influenced by tea partiers, Fox News and talk radio — oops, another dead-end. According to all available evidence, Loughner is a liberal.

    Every friend of Loughner who has characterized his politics has described him as liberal. Not one called him a conservative.

    One friend says Loughner never listened to talk radio or watched the TV news. Throw in “never read books” and you have the dictionary definition of a liberal. Being completely uninformed is precisely how most liberals stay liberal.

    According to voluminous Twitter postings on Saturday by one of Loughner’s friends since high school, Caitie Parker, he was “left wing,” “a political radical” “quite liberal” and “a pot head.”

    If any public figure influenced this guy, my money’s on Bill Maher.

    But liberals have been so determined to exploit this tragedy to geld conservatives, they have told calculated lies about Loughner’s politics.

    In the most bald-faced lie I have ever read in The New York Times — which is saying something — that paper implied Loughner is a pro-life zealot. This is the precise opposite of the truth.

    Only because numerous other news outlets, including ABC News and The Associated Press, reported the exact same shocking incident in much greater detail — and with direct quotes — do we know that the Times’ rendition was complete bunk.

    ABC News reported: “One Pima Community College student, who had a poetry class with Loughner later in his college career, said he would often act ‘wildly inappropriate.’

    “‘One day (Loughner) started making comments about terrorism and laughing about killing the baby,’ classmate Don Coorough told ABC News, referring to a discussion about abortions. ‘The rest of us were looking at him in shock … I thought this young man was troubled.’

    “Another classmate, Lydian Ali, recalled the incident as well.

    “‘A girl had written a poem about an abortion. It was very emotional and she was teary eyed and he said something about strapping a bomb to the fetus and making a baby bomber,’ Ali said.”

    Here’s the Times’ version: “After another student read a poem about getting an abortion, Mr. Loughner compared the young woman to a ‘terrorist for killing the baby.'”

    So that’s how the Times transformed Loughner from a sicko laughing about a dead fetus to a deadly earnest pro-life fanatic. (Never believe a news story written by Eric Lipton, Charlie Savage or Scott Shane of The New York Times — or for simplicity, anything in the Times.)

    I wouldn’t have mentioned Loughner’s far-left world view immediately after a tragedy like this, but now that liberals have opened the door by blaming Loughner’s politics, they better brace themselves.

    And when I say “brace themselves,” I don’t mean they need to actually strap themselves into a brace. That’s a metaphor, Chris.

    – Ann Coulter

  164. Poolman, I can’t help but find it ironic that you keep finger wagging us about incendiary rhetoric while you continue to spew the most dastardly charges imaginable against the government, some of the same charges the killer made.

    Now don’t get me wrong. You have every right to keep talking about mind control, Simpson’s cartoons and the American attack on its own people. Hell, I defend your right to it and don’t believe your words can MANipulate (I hate when you use that stupid word like that) anyone to kill.

    But for shits sake, chill out on the lectures about what and how the rest of us say shit.

  165. MeriBeth would really hate being around me. I used the word gypped all the time and never felt like a racist. In fact, I still don’t and will continue to use it with guilt or shame. 🙂

    In fact, the next sorry Mofo that accuses me of some form of undeserved charge of racism or sexism, I’m going to demonstrate my definition of extremism with a Louisville slugger under the chin in the hopes of permanently eliminating their judgmentalism.

    Meribeth the exception of course. 😉

    Seems equitable…

  167. “When a man makes up his mind without evidence, no evidence disproving his opinion will change his mind.” – Robert A. Heinlein

    No truer words ever spoken of liberalism birthers.

    I corrected it for you. 😉

  168. Rabbit, Palin is more of a Rorschach test than any personality I’ve seen in some time. What you guys see as a somewhat talented but ultimately inconsequential personality, I see as an incredibly vicious person who brings out the worst in people … LOL her supporters and detractors. Hell … I KNOW my visceral response to her is as over-the-top negative as Rich Lowry’s is positive.

    While I don’t apologize for one word I’ve said over the past five days, Obama’s speech did remind me last night that the debate in which I have ravenously participated is not the debate that Christina Green pictured when she thought about democracy. And I must also admit that while I believe this tragedy put Palin’s previous behavior in sharp contrast to what it SHOULD have been, to focus on Palin when a tiny coffin was buried today shows misplaced priorities.

    A running conversation on this blog has revolved around the rage in this country right now. Some of you have advocated revolution and insurrection on your more melodramatic days. Regardless of causality (still undetermined), when I look at what happened last Saturday against the back drop of the current climate of rage, it fills me with ….. rage. Obama was right. Many of us (me included) chose this time to turn against fellow Americans, when we should all be united against common enemies.

  169. I see as an incredibly vicious person who brings out the worst in people …

    Then you should greatly admire the unnamed sportswoman, being you’re a nightly viewer of the most vicious form of MSNBC television, including but not limited to Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and I’m sure the occasional Ed Schultz routine. Unless you’re going to tell me the three stooges bring out everyone’s better nature. Maybe you can clear up that glaring inconsistency while you parrot Paul Krugman’s lines.

    After than, you can explain why an inconsequential former governor of Alaska, not even an official representative anymore, so dominates your life. Why aren’t you out defending Obama’s record? Is it because you can’t? Is it because your hopes in tatters, your dreams dashed and as you stare at the heavens, and Obama ain’t there? Graychin certainly hasn’t stopped in his pursuit of defending the indefensible, even though he’s now down to using Nancy Pelosi as source. 😛

    Ready, Fire, Aim – that’s Mr. Lawson motto. Since you’ve spent the entire week making an ass of yourself, and you’ll note this time not even your comrades have come with strong defense, I would recommend you retreat and take the opportunity to remove the boot from your ass. The confident Rutherford I met two years ago has turned into a neurotic stalker of a caricature you can’t even clearly define.

    Well I’m laughing. I’m laugh at all of you elitists, all you NYT fans, defeated by the half-baked governor from Wasilla, AK, – the one you “intellects” ridiculed about her education or lack thereof, her sophistication or lack thereof, her folksy demeanor and idiot wit. Guess you Harvard, Columbia, Yale and Wellesley grads don’t pack as much sand as you advertised, hey?

    Ironic, isn’t it? Momma Grizzly, the TLC star, just plasters the smartest guys in the room and just about the entire MSM with them – and does it with a wink and a smile. She plays most of you like fools, you Rutherford most of all.

    KInd of like the Conservatives going the way of the Whigs about now, Don’t worry – we still like you. But you may have damaged the once finely honed reputation of reasonable liberal in about one afternoon, the lack of grace at not offering an apology after five days of paranoid delusions and rage, the coup de grâce.

  170. “I see as an incredibly vicious person who brings out the worst in people … LOL her supporters and detractors.”

    Took the words right out of my mouth. Only I was thinking of you and what you’ ve said here.

    And it took Obama’s predcitable speech (triangulation) to have an awakening. Funny. News of the little girl’s death was all one should’ve needed to set priorities straight; not a speech from Obama.

  171. good morning, all. R–I think I said in one of the first posts I made here that Palin is someone who people project all sorts of things on. Good (wonderful wife, mother, outdoorswoman, fantastic athlete) or bad (terrible marriage, neglectful mother, faux outdoorswoman, phony athlete), and plug into that projection the things they see. Good (aw, look how Todd is always with her; isn’t the family beautiful; she really understands hunting and fishing; she runs marathons) and bad (it’s a marriage of convenience; she doesn’t put glasses or socks on her youngest; she doesn’t even understand guns; she just poses for pictures as a runner and drops out). And people do exactly the same for Obama.

    I’d mentioned in response to Tex’s question that I am really interested in group behavior and reactions, so I watch blogs and postings and sometimes listen to talk radio and callers. And it’s amazing how both of these people provoke such strong reactions. Putting aside politics, it IS star power and whether it’s about the individuals or the way they are marketed, I’m not smart enough to know. I do think that the truth is somewhere in the middle for both and that neither warrants as strongly positive or negative reactions–I’m speaking visceral reactions (“She’s a sociopath;” “He’s so arrogant.”) rather than reactions to policies.

    As for the Speech Police, I try not to get to nutty about it. Certainly had grandparents and in laws who were not exactly sensitive about racial terms! And certainly you can get stupid about it, as some people do when they try to be gender neutral.

    Shyster’s origin is iffy as a term–but it’s often used to connote a dishonest Jew. And a lot of perfectly lovely people use it and “gypped” and other terms.

    By the way, Tex–in addition to your ability to be very funny, your love of dogs just kills that curmudgeon thing you like to have going. You old softy.

  172. Oh–and among the qualities that people project on both Palin and Obama are intelligence (he’s so brilliant; she’s really bright) or stupidity (he’s a moron; she can’t even grasp a simple concept), articulateness (he’s a phenomenal speaker; she can move people like nobody else) or blithering (couldn’t ask for directions without a teleprompter; word salad); kindness (you can see his love for humanity; she’s a true Christian) and hatefulness (he doesn’t care about anyone other than himself; she’s completely vicious). I’ve never seen more extreme examples of this–although people did project lots of stuff onto the Clintons–much less at the same time. It’s really fascinating stuff.

  173. Two other things MeriBeth worth mentioning about your above statements, both just personal observations.

    I’ll bet if truth be known, Obama and Palin not nearly as bright nor as stupid as their supporters/detractors make them out. Yeah, yeah Obama was a “Harvard” law student, Magna Cum Laude, or so they say. So what? So were many of the Kennedys. Money and power sport a lot of privilege, a lot of unearned accolades.

    Palin, a good looking tomboy and ‘TV announcer’ – she’s definitely no rocket scientist. And from listening closely to both, I have found neither particular well read, well versed in difficult subjects, a dearth of historical perspective, and neither terribly quick on their feet without a script. Obama is a far cry quick like Clinton; Palin is certainly no Lynne Cheney of the mind.

    CORPSEman and refudiated. Enough said. 😉

    Both can be charming, both know how to push opponent’s buttons, and both look good for the camera. This is plastic personified.

    =====

    The other point is that both provide the perfect stereotype for those of us who dislike particular traits – Obama elitist and aloof – Joe Cool and narcissistic; Sarah Palin – ditzy broad and pretentious; the head cheerleaders and holy roller without much depth and insincere in belief.

    And the one thing I find in common about both?

    Completely overrated and neither Presidential material. Unfortunately for me, one already is.

  175. ‘Wreckless’ feckless Rutherford! Don’t sweat it “R”, I told Graychin once that my guilty “conscious” wouldn’t let me do it and never lived it down. He literally drooled to correct me.

    Or is it reckless, feckless MeriBeth? Maybe we aren’t so different, except our opinion of Fat Grannies being a recipe trading blog. 😉

  177. actually, I am thinking of producing a new soap opera called “The Young and the Feckless.”

    Make sure you cast Rutherford in a role. He’s proven himself adept at remembering his lines after only hearing them once (when they are given on PMSNBC every day), and he will doggedly stick to the script, come Hell or inconvenient and stubborn facts.

  178. Well, I know that “YOUNG” doesn’t apply, so I’ll assume I’ll have the lead role in the latter?

    I assume a “YOUNG” you, and you will co-star with me, all the steamy scenes included? Boy, are you in for a treat. Twenty years of pent up frustration come pouring out on set. I could be like a babbling school boy again. When do we start? 😈

    Rabbit could be the young, womanizing ‘hunk’, BIC and Tigre the Ivy League attorneys, Alfie the stately gentlemen with pipe in mouth, those Hostage site guys that show up on occasion the neighbors, Fake the matronly spurned ex-wife, and Rutherford the nefarious villain.

    Graychin can be the portly butler and Yeller Dawg can act as the garden gnome.

    All in Family type material. We’ll just wing the lines.

    It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind …

  183. BIC,

    Now that I think about that Ivy league attorney suggestion, that was an incredible and insensitive insult to both you and Tigre for which I profusely apologize. You’re both far better than that, and on your worst day, neither of you could stoop that low or be that stupid.

    And how could I forget Poolman! Poolman doesn’t rate a starring role because he’s a lib, but he definitely rates better than garden gnome, fire hydrant, portly butler. He’s more MeriBeth than villain too. So Portman can be a supportive role of some friendly nature – Ted Knight type of character. 🙂

  184. Kind of a fun game 🙂 And we certainly need some comic relief around here. So I was picturing Poolman as the minister of the local (pick denomination) church. And btw, does matronly mean fat? ‘Cause if so, you’re going to have to audition someone else…

  185. Now then, back to Sarah Palin. Meribeth definitely made some interesting points about projecting, totally right I think. And I was one who couldn’t bear to listen to Sarah, just opening her mouth set my teeth on edge. I backed off that after the election; it’s sort of hard to stay mad at the losers.
    But last week, I saw the infamous episode of her TV show where she shoots a caribou. (This was before the shootings in Tucson.) And I have to tell you…she was having a blast. She was with her dad and another man who I think was a friend of the dad’s. She was happy and spontaneous and proud and just living life to the fullest. And she made a joke! They are out on the tundra and at the end she is sitting down, looking out over the tundra, talking about how much she loves the place, “And”, she says, “You can see Russia from here! (Pause) Almost.” Followed by a little giggle. I loved it.
    One of the ads for the show shows her saying, “I don’t want to be cooped up in some stuffy political office…I’d rather be out here, bein’ free.” Maybe that tells us what we need to know about her political aspirations.
    But the vision of her on that show was a shocking contrast to her in the “blood libel” video. She looks stiff and forced, overly made-up, and acts robotic. I’m pretty much guessing she hated it. It was Tex, I believe, who said she isn’t as attractive as he remembered…well, yes she is, just not in that context. Politics does not really agree with her, is what I thought.
    I still hate her politics, but I felt a lot better about her as a person, seeing her in her element.

  186. Fake, fat?

    Well, that wasn’t what I had in mind when I used the word, and I’ll take your word you’re a size 2.

    I was thinking more mature, not fat…. 😛

  187. Okay, “mature” I’ll take 🙂 I haven’t been spurned either, but I could play it on TV. You know it’s bad form to reference age and weight. Rutherford knows what I look like, but because he’s a gentleman, he doesn’t bring it up even when you speculate. Because it’s immaterial. To some extent we all do this: speculate about what the voice on the phone looks like in real life. But you do this in spades. As far as you’re concerned, all liberal women are fat, ugly, rejected, man-hating hags. You have a picture in your head and everyone fits it until proven otherwise. And it’s like it HAS to be that way for you, otherwise, your orderly world just blows up.

  188. Well it’s off topic but that’s my prerogative. I thought this little anecdote would appeal to some of you.

    Tonight my seven year old daughter asked me why the sitcom The Big Bang Theory was called The Big Bang Theory. I replied “it is a show about scientists and many scientists believe that the Earth and all the planets and all of space started with a big bang. So it’s called The Big Bang Theory.”

    My daughter replied, “that’s crazy. How could everything come from a big bang? That’s ridiculous.”

    And so gentlemen, without any prompting from her lost heathen father, the girl is on her way to being a Creationist. 🙂

    P.S. I won’t share her reaction to my alternative explanation that God created everything. Why end this story on a sour note? 😉

  189. I’d have voted for the fire hydrant that babbles incoherently

    Speaking of babbling incoherently, have any of you bothered to spend about 30 minutes or so listening to James Carville, the Ragin’ Cajun? I swear I could barely understand a thing the man said tonight on “Real Time with Bill Maher”.

    Having him and his wife Mary Matalin over for dinner must be a kick. She talks slow with an oh so subtle scent of upper crust snobbery while Carville rants with marbles in his mouth.

    Now Tex, if Carville and Matalin can be married, surely you and FN2 can get along! 😉

  190. Meribeth, I hate to break up the love-fest between you and Tex but are you saying Obama is over-rated and not qualified to be President … and is on a par with Sarah Palin? If so, Tex owes you an apology for his accusation that you are a “Fat Grannies” devotee.

    I’m worried. 😐

  191. Wifey and I watch a movie and fifteen minutes into it, I’m asleep. 😡 I’ll bet that has happened a hundred times in our married life.

    Well “R”, you do know that Christ said this, “I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”? Your daughter has figured out something her daddy probably never will…

    But the Big Bang and Creation pretty much go hand in hand, don’t they? Since there are no physical constructs in our physical universe that can possibly explain the energy required for such an event, then by definition the universe “supernatural.” That’s another problem that atheists work very hard to ignore.

  192. FN2, I knew you had a kind streak but I didn’t think it went so far as to be charmed by “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”, TLC’s nine hour political ad. I’ve only seen clips of it, I have not been able to watch a full episode. I just can’t separate TLC’s Annie Oakley from the “Obama pals around with terrorists” politician, a role that she relishes just as much as that of the hunter, fisher, outdoors-woman role she plays.

    It’s possible if she’d never run for VP and I hadn’t seen that side of her, I’d find the TLC show fun to watch too. Then again, making no value judgment, I’m an indoorsman (LOL). I just don’t relate to the whole hunting, fishing culture, even though I did go fishing a couple of times as a kid.

  193. Wifey and I watch a movie and fifteen minutes into it, I’m asleep. 😡 I’ll bet that has happened a hundred times in our married life.

    LOL For me it’s just the latest sign of age. A fly on the wall would die laughing watching me and my Tivo some nights. I’ll be watching a show, doze off, wake up and realize I missed stuff, “rewind” the Tivo, doze off … and the cycle begins anew. And I stubbornly refuse to admit defeat and go to bed. I swear I’ve replayed some scenes six times before I actually got through them.

    Where’s my wife during all this? She has the good sense to go to bed. 😐

  194. “R”,

    You know it’s bad form to reference age and weight. Rutherford knows what I look like, but because he’s a gentleman, he doesn’t bring it up even when you speculate. Because it’s immaterial.

    Now I can’t get to sleep… 😆

    How much time has passed since the house fell on your sister? This is in light humor Fake. You’re such a party pooper.

    Either something traumatic has happened in your life forcing you toward tendencies of paranoid delusion and overt sensitivity, or you must the most sour person on earth.

    Would it help your demeanor toward me if I apologized for calling you a you know what? For the language? For the sexual innuendo? You called me a troll before I’d ever said a word to you, and then had the unmitigated gall to beg two different blog owners to ban me. Come on lady. Do you really expect me to treat you like a soft pillow after doing something like that?

    You accuse me of stereotyping, and yet as your response from above well demonstrates, you always assume some malicious intent, something evil, something sociopathic about me. And that’s after you’ve lectured the room about my bad manners, usually directing the comment to only the blog owner for everyone else to read.

    Here’s what I do know, even if you’re Helen of Troy. You remind me of the snarling chihuahua and about as much fun as a tax audit.

    —–

    Do I dare make a suggestion to make your stay a little more hospitable before signing off?

    Learn to be more like MeriBeth and practice the give and take routine, or become a member of a blog where nothing controversial or political is discussed, or there is no chance of meeting a big mouth contrarian like me.

    If I’m that bad, why submit yourself to my “presence” when you know I’m more likely to be here than anyone else?

  195. good morning, Rutherford! No, that’s going beyond what I meant–I was speaking more to Tex’s point about the stereotyping. I think (although he will correct me if I”m wrong) that he and I both feel that people see completely different things in Palin and in Obama–it’s kind of the old thing about the blind men and the elephant.

    I was a Hillary Clinton supporter in the last presidential election, but certainly voted for Obama over McCain/Palin. I don’t regret the vote at all and think that McCain/Palin would have been a disaster. I understand that the immediate rejoinder from some will be “and this isn’t?” but I don’t agree that it is. I was a big Bill Clinton fan.

    As for Margaret & Helen’s, I find some of the host(s)’ writing funny. I agree with some but not all of what they say. They get some over the top posters there but others who, while I may disagree with some of what they say, are enjoyable. There actually was, for a period, a lot of recipe swapping but that has largely moved to a different site started by one of the regulars. If anything is the major topic of discussion these days, it’s a health situation involving one of the regular’s wife.

  196. Tex, would it help if you apologized? Absolutely.
    R, your comments about Carville crack me up. I can just picture you with your Connecticut (or New York?) accent, listening to Carville and saying “Huh?” I’m reminded of when I lived in Iowa for two years, the first and only time I’ve ever lived outside the South. My first night there, I was watching the news on TV and found myself having to concentrate intensely to understand what they were saying 🙂
    As for Palin, I’m a little surprised myself. As for the show being a nine-hour political ad, I’m going to have to say that’s an unfair criticism if you’ve never watched an episode. I thought the same thing, which is why I decided to watch. In the caribou-shooting episode I watched, there is not one word that is even vaguely political. Not one. The show itself may be considered self-promotion, so political in that sense, but if you can put that to the side for a moment…she was just fun. She had an infectious joy, which perhaps makes it easier to understand why she has such an impact on people. In other words, it isn’t based solely on her fear-mongering political speeches which appeal to the lowest common denominator of the public.
    I still think she’s pretty stupid–after all in the “blood libel” video, she couldn’t pronounce either “pundit” or “purport”, but as a wise friend once told me, smart is not the only good quality a person can have.

  197. I know there are millions of adoring Palin fans out there. Demagoguery seems to be the American way the last couple of years. Yes we can. The weird thing is, I don’t ever meet any.

    I get virtually all my Palin “news” from the Rutherford Lawson blog.

    Don’t get me wrong, I respect (and am sometimes turned off by) Palin’s ambition and tenaciousness. But, she is NOT the lightening rod Rutherford and others claim her to be amongst the conservatives who, at least, comment here.

    Rutherford wrongfully slanders her by associating her with mass murder, then blames HER for the fact people are disgusted with HIM. And thats just one of many instances of vile, obsessive behavior.

    The hate doesn’t add up.

    Another tactic is for Rutherford to go after her in ways that boggle the mind, then pick a part, piece by piece, how she responds to subjects like her mentally handicapped baby, mass murder or her pre-teen daughter fucking A-rod.

    I one time pointed out the problems and behavior of Al Gore’s son. Rutherford had no clue. Yet, he still didn’t seem to get it.

    Rutherford, we are disgusted with you because 15 minutes into a massive shooting in which a little girl close to your own daughter’s age gets killed and whats on your mind? Sara Palin?

    Palin’s not exotic to me. I know dozens of hot chicks who like to hunt and fish.

    And she’s not that hot to me. This coming from a guy who loves the sexy woman in her mid 40’s.

    She’s not that smart to me. I believe most people who comment here could have handled many of her interviews, despite there “gotcha,” ambush nature.

    When it all comes down to it, she doesn’t evoke emotion from me at all.

    Rutherford does.

    And that’s because I liked Rutherford. It bugs me that Rutherford, a guy I used to respect, is into tweeting about Palin 15 minutes into a national tragedy.

    I suppose he needs to create a Ying to go with his Yang. Maybe in order to deify Obama, he needs to create Satan.

    Obama did a good job in that speech the other day. Some conservatives thought the crowd was inappropriate. I’m not into judging how local communities handle tragedy. According to Obama himself, Rutherford owes his readers an apology.

  199. So I pull into the local Wall-mart parking lot yesterday and see a million cop cars around a SUV. The guy went in, bought a charcoal grill, lit it up in his truck and killed himself by smoke inhalation. I just read that had already murdered his entire family. 2 kids and a wife.

    He was losing his Mc-mansion to foreclosure and was going bankrupt.

    Can you imagine? Sorry kids, your old man bought too big of a house, so I’m going to kill you.

    Man, I’m glad I never pegged my self worth to my stuff.

    Well, I do love my bad ass all terrain tires on my K5 Blazer. But, I’ve already assumed those will be ripped off one day, especially if we have to move back to Wayne County. And don’t fuck with my tackle box or my brewery equipment. Maybe my baseball glove. But outside of that….

  200. You know what makes me laugh about Dimocrats that make comment about McCain/Palin being a disaster MeriBeth?

    Maybe, maybe not. I don’t find McCain or Palin terribly bright so it’s possible they could have been epic failures. But that is sheer speculation. People also called Ronald Reagan a dunce, and he turned out to be the best President of the 20th century.

    What we do know for a fact is that Obama was, is and most likely will be an national disaster. That’s not my opinion. That is the vast majority of American’s opinions. Without a major turnaround, Obama will be the worst President in my lifetime. And that lifetime spans Dwight Eisenhower to present.

    And it very likely Hillary Clinton might have been much worse. She’s Obama in a pant suit, same ideas, same big government, without the charisma; without the charm.

    And the biggest difference most very likely would have been while Obama’s first two years deemed an epic failure, I know few who people who hate the man.

    Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is one of the most disliked people on earth, including many of those who have worked most closely with her. The only real record is leaving a wake of death and destruction in her path, from Arkansas to Washington.

    That she’s even mentioned as somebody Presidential demonstrates the absolute dearth of real talent in the Dimocratic party.

    Doubt me? Obama, then who?

  201. Well, I do love my bad ass all terrain tires on my K5 Blazer. But, I’ve already assumed those will be ripped off one day, especially if we have to move back to Wayne County. And don’t fuck with my tackle box or my brewery equipment. Maybe my baseball glove. But outside of that….

    😆 😆 😆

    Oh Rabbit! You and I should have been friends sometime way back before I grew too old. I just had that very conversation with my wife not an hour ago. Why the hell buy something nice? Somebody else either steals it or gets to ruin it….own a big home, they tax you to death and you have to clean it, or fix more things when something breaks.

    We Americans are so spoiled, we never give thought to how much easier we have it than any generation that has ever walked the earth.

    I got pretty excited yesterday when I bought a new concrete hammer and chisel from Home Depot to rebuild my mailbox. It doesn’t take much for me to get fired up these days.

  202. Rabbit, I get that you’re upset. I don’t know anyone who isn’t. But I think if you re-read this post and the last one from Rutherford, you won’t find any language blaming Palin for the shootings. Call it a parallel discussion, and since everyone else in the country seems to be having that same discussion…What I hear though is that conservatives think that liberals want to use this as a way to stifle free speech, but only stifle free speech for the “other side”. Which would be despicable, if it were true. Anybody want to talk about gun laws? Which is what this post is about, basically? Or should we just continue rehashing the same rants which surface every time? (Obama, Obama again, and more Obama.)

  203. It was me who said I didn’t think the shooter had two rational brain cells to rub together to come up with a political opinion. I think so far (but can’t say for sure) that in his case, the “enemy” could have been the Govenment (capital G),germs, the TV set, aliens from outer space, or the family dog reading his thoughts.
    So the attempts to characterize his political views are laughable to me. (He’s a right-wing nut! No he’s a liberal!)
    But as Bill Clinton said, our words fall on the ears of the serious and the delerious alike. So to what extent we contribute to the poisonous atmosphere, we should back off. It’s a legitmate conversation to be having.

  204. Anybody want to talk about gun laws? Which is what this post is about, basically?

    Answered your question in some depth in #159 and never received a response in return. As far as I’m concerned, gun control is a dead political issue, but if Libs wish to resurrect the discussion, I encourage it because it will damage Dimocrat chances of reelection even further.

  205. Fakename, let me get this straight.

    Literally minutes after the shooting, while my wife and I are watching the breaking news, Rutherford is blowing up my Blackberry phone with tweets about the PALIN role in the shooting.

    I remember at one point in the afternoon I had just learned about the little girl getting killed. Ding Ding! My phone goes off. It’s Rutherford. He’s still talking about…….Sara PALIN.

    He goes on to write a blog calling for PALIN’s advisors to be fired over what had happened in Arizona. He ends said blog entry about PALIN with the following dramatic line::

    “They failed you, Mrs. PALIN. We didn’t understand until today just how badly they failed you”.

    His use of “today,” of course, is referring to the afternoon when 19 people people were shot.

    In response to his tweets and blogging, Rutherford tells us (and I quote)

    “Guilt by association is a bitch”

    Throughout the weekend of the shooting, I counted over 20 entries (I quite counting) by Rutherford all about Sara PALIN.

    So, fakename, are you trying to tell me Rutherford was merely having a generic conversation on the tense level of political discourse between all people of all political persuasions? Is what I cited above a “parallel” discussion?

    Lastly, discourse in this country did NOT cause the shooter to go on his rampage. So, I don’t even buy into what you are pretending/wishing Rutherford was talking about.

    However, if you really think discourse played a role in the shooting and you are really itching to modify what people say and how they say it, why don’t you request Rutherford to replace Palin with a commenter here that Rutherford refers to as his “favorite” conspiracy theorist.

    You know, the guy who talks about mind control, secret messages in cartoons, the Illuminati and an American government that attacked it’s own people on 9/11. If your into that kind of thing, blaming free speech….start there. That way I can start defending Poolman and stop talking about Sara Palin, as she bores me.

  206. The reason I won’t let it go is because Rutherford took part in one of the nastiest traditions of humankind.

    Scapegoating.

    He used that killing to vilify and shut someone up he doesn’t like.

    For about 12 hours, he had the entire MSM behind him, attempting the same thing.

    What if the shooter was a Tea Part activist? Where would that have left the millions of us who aren’t happy with the direction of this country?

    You realize politicians were crafting legislation to put limitations on speech only a day after the killings? All over a crime scene that ultimately had NOTHING to do with free speech.

    Sure, Rutherford concentrated on Palin. But over 24 hours, the media and politicians began to create a lie in front of our very eyes: The killings were a direct result of conservative voices.

    The Reichstag was starting to burn real time!

    That doesn’t scare the shit out of you?

    When Obamacare gets repealed, and some leftist weirdo goes on a killing spree in the name of politics that you, for the most part, agree with, you will have the Dead Rabbit in your corner.

    You, on the other hand, make excuses for Rutherford’s irrational, debased attack on the free speech of one person.

    Do you see the difference between the Dead Rabbit and fakename?

    So, no…I’m not letting this shit go. It’s too important.

  207. “I think if you re-read this post and the last one from Rutherford, you won’t find any language blaming Palin for the shootings.”

    That’s ludicrous. Rutherford’s comments were not made in a vacuum. To pretend that there was nothing in the association of this tragedy and Palin, Cross-hairs, “right wing rhetoric” — (hell, one of R’s tweets applauded MSNBC identifying by name whom the considered responsible), MSNBC personalities diatribes, his “hate” for Palin on his radios program, etc., etc., etc. is pure blather.

    ALL of Rutherford’s dispicable posts and thoughts were directed at Palin specifically and conservative adversaries generally.

    As for stifiling speech, some demoscrats were calling for laws doing exactly that. And when you try to control and content of your opponents through vague references as to the value of their speech, stifiling speech IS the stated objective. To pretend that’s not what this whole exercise was really about is preposterous.

    Rutherford doesn’t need you to make excuses for his shallow attempt to exploit the situation either. No one here is that dumb nor will accept it. The fact that the manufactured furor has faded and it is obvious to anyone older than 5 what ass-hats those that Rutherford mindlessly parroted really are, its hardly surprising he’ll try to distance himself from it.

    I am like Rabbitt in that my opinion of Rutherford on a personal level went down immeasaurably as a result of his words here. Rutherford’s actual and transparent participation in the chorus of scum that hit the internet moments after the attack wishing — virtually praying — they could get political mileage out of it is hardly obscured by “I’m not saying” but. . . Grade-schoolers know better than that. Every thought and inference that followed his disclaimer was directed at assesing blame for personal validation.

    Cut the shit, Fake. We all know what he meant. We heard his rant. It’s fucked up and he never backed away from it after hundreds of comments virtually pleading with him for clarifcation or retraction. Nope. He kept doubling down.

    As I said very early on, the tenor of my reaction came from learning how low Rutherford could go BECAUSE I used to respect his humility and compassion. I resisted a call for an apology in lieu of an epiphany that never came.

    One thing we seemed to connect on is our children (who are of similar age). Of all things, the backdrop of this discussion included the death of a nine-year old girl. And look at the focus of Rutherford’s posts and tweets.

    Your effort to parse words ain’t helping any, Fake.

  208. Remember this ad from conservatives on the right? Where children get their heads blown off?

    Oh wait…that wasn’t a conservative ad, was it?

    My bad….

  209. “One thing we seemed to connect on is our children (who are of similar age). Of all things, the backdrop of this discussion included the death of a nine-year old girl. And look at the focus of Rutherford’s posts and tweets.” -El Tigre

    On a personal level I think that is what bothered me the most too. Who the fuck is thinking about our internet battles over politics when you hear about a little girl being killed the way she did.

    The little girl who was shot to death really hurts me because she wanted to be there. She wanted to take part in America.

    We all hear of terrible things happening to people all the time, particularly kids. But, sometimes, a certain story really hurts. For me, its that 9 year old.

    The last one that kept me up late at night was the baby that was eaten by her dumb ass parents’ 12 foot albino python. FOX news was sure to play the 9/11 call over and over. Thanks FOX.

  210. I may be disappointed in Rutherford, who contrary to Fake’s spin, sunk to the lowest levels I’ve witnessed in accusation before the pistol even cooled. The defense and excuse making would be comical if the circumstance any different and not so pitiful. It tells me Fake you’re so prejudiced, biased and amoral, that there is little truth in you. You apparently are incapable of sound judgment.

    The only thing the Left has accomplished is to further erode any shred of credibility they may have ever had. And after Nov. 2nd shellacking, I didn’t think they could be that stupid to try and capitalize on the death of innocents. They did. They have no shame, no morals, and I even question their humanity.

    I hope this has now proved beyond a shadow of a doubt who the real hatemongers in this country are. They’re the ones always making accusation of racists, Islamophobes, gay bashing, intolerance to silence their critics.

    There are birthers and militia on the right that are crazy and awful. I’m embarrassed they vote like me. We all know that. Those people are idiots, but they are not typical.

    What is typical and the norm is the systemic and planned lynching of people like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann to gain political capital over tragedy – to mask the failure of their politics. It was led by sleaze at the NY Times and MSNBC, and carried for by the thousands of toadies, minions and bloggers like Rutherford and Graychin because they can not, will not accept that their utopia of Obama has been an epic failure and disgrace.

    Ironically, Obama is one of the few liberals that did rise to the occasion He blamed no one but the perpetrator. It was the first time in two years to me Obama appeared Presidential, and because of the egregious behavior from the rest of the Left, they sullied his one shining moment.

    The whole episode was shameless, it was sick, and it was reprehensible. If Left had a sense of shame and honesty, they would apologize, Rutherford included.

    I don’t ever want to hear about McCarthyism from the Left again. because I will point to this tragedy as testimony that it is still alive and well.

  211. I’m not defiending or excusing Rutherford. He does not need my help. What I’m doing is expressing a similar opinion.
    You are “hurt” beyond all proportion in my opinion. Because you set Rutherford up as the “ideal” and “reasonable” liberal. Small wonder he can’t live up to your imaginations.

  212. You are “hurt” beyond all proportion in my opinion.

    No more hurt than I’d be watching any other friend seccumb to madness. And while I’d be the first to say that Rutherford’s stance over the last week disappointed me, I cannot say that I am surprised.

    Over the last few months, the posts were still reasonable, but the tweets have been revealing. Over this last week, we have “been witness to” the Rutherford of the Tweets taking control of the Rutherford of the posts, and engaging in hate and vitriol because at least one of the targets has been the focus of his unhealthy obsession for sometime now. The difference between Rutherford, and what he wanted the narrative of the Tuscon shootings to be was that Rutherford could still express himself by normal means, and was therefore content to confine himself to character assassination, rather than purchasing one and doing the deed himself, like he and his associates and heroes accused Jared Loughner of doing before the evidence became overwhelming that the facts and the narrative were complete strangers to each other. And then, he altered his approach, and tried to make it about the inappropriateness of freedom, rather than psychosis, and the canard of “responsible speech” (because those “enemies” must still be put in their place).

    Am I hurt? Yes, but only because I believe that these things mean that a reasonable conversation and exchange of ideas may not be possible with Rutherford any longer.

  213. I don’t believe I’ve said “hurt”, as that conveys a personal relationship, and my relationship is loosely platonic with Rutherford. I said I was disappointed.

    Because you set Rutherford up as the “ideal” and “reasonable” liberal. Small wonder he can’t live up to your imaginations.

    I set Rutherford up as a mostly rational liberal – not the ideal liberal. There was nothing reasonable about these accusations, so Rutherford didn’t live up – he nosedived straight into the abyss.

    You were actually far more reasonable than Rutherford concerning the shooting.

  214. BiW: Succmb to madness? Talk about hyperbole.
    I don’t do Twitter, I think it’s totally stupid. I have enough trouble keeping up with real life and blogs and Facebook and NPR and network news and books. But I will venture this opinion…that in the immediate aftermath of the shootings, no one was quite calm and reasonable. It’s like everyone went into their own igloo and hunkered down under a sealskin.

  215. Twitter is stupid. However, they appear on right of this page too.

    “No one was quite calm and reasonable.”

    What does this mean? I was “calmly” watching it unfold while Rutherford lobbed grenades and made accusations, then claim to take offense that the objects of those accusations would demonstrate tha tamarity to defend themselves.

    The pompous expressions of empowerment from the event by the liberal media was unprecedented — at least for me. Really twisted. Other than responding the accusers, I saw no such displays from the right. Then again, I don’t spend 14 hours a day watching biased programming like Rutherford does. Maybe you did. I never watch Fox. I did on this one and thought their reporting and commentary at the outset was reasonable and properly focused on the event and the victims. Perhps that’s changed. I wouldn;t know. But Holy Cow — watching MSNBC was stepping into a parallel universe.

    Hurt is not the word. Appalled is about right.

    So, tell me. What was accomplished with all of the finger wagging and accusations? Seriously. What did those like Rutherford accomplish and what did they think they could over the sounds of ambulances taking victims to the hospitals and morgues?

  216. BiW: Succmb to madness?

    No. “Succumb” to madness. I have no idea what “Succmb” is.

    Talk about hyperbole.

    Hardly. I cannot think of a post or comment thread that didn’t turn to a display of Rutherford’s Palin obbsession sooner or later in the last year. And the tweets have shown it. He has turned her into the boogeyman that she could never hope to be in real life, and talks about his desire that she would go away, and then he drags her out again. He’s like a dog with a bone. And when the fingers were pointed, he was given license to indulge his wildest fantasies about her. No position to inconsistent or ridiculous. Madness about covers it, especially when he as good as admitted that he couldn’t help himself.

  217. How did I miss this: “Because you set Rutherford up as the “ideal” and “reasonable” liberal. Small wonder he can’t live up to your imaginations.”

    My ass. My ideal liberal is a conservative. But you’re correct: Rutherford didn’t live up to what I imagined, which included a level of decency that wouldn’t have allowed him to defiantly go in this direction. I find it poetic that rather than retreat, he reloaded.

    Another good word: “Blood Libel.” The more I think about what type of rhetoric would be required to respond to the accusation that you contributed to these deaths and injury the more apropos I find the term. How else would any human being with a conscience respond to such an attack? I assure you I would’ve been far more colorful and direct. In this instance, the word perfectly captured what she was confronted with.

  218. What’s with people not even taking ownership of comments made only a few hours ago?

    Fakename, you said the following:

    “I’m not defiending [sic] or excusing Rutherford. He does not need my help. What I’m doing is expressing a similar opinion.”

    Ok.

    Now go read comment 203.

    I’m at a loss. Is Rutherford simply the victim of us nuance lacking jerks? Was he being misunderstood? Was he having a parallel conversation on political discourse? (Your words, not mine)

    Or, in light of the Rutherfordian narrative that I clearly pointed out, was he framing Palin as the motivation behind the shooting?

    Fakename, they’re your words. Defend what you said. I laid out my case.

    Maybe you are wishing me to say something “naughty” that you can feign offense over and run away and hide?

    I’ve yet to see you truly defend any position you have ever taken.

    With respect,

    Dead Rabbit

  220. Guns may kill people. But, so do pillows, knives and barbecue grills- The weapons of choice by the local murderer here. Stabbed his wife, smothered two kids and killed himself by lighting a bbq grill in his car.

  221. Regarding 145, thanks Tex … you inadvertently taught me something about Twitter and WordPress, namely that if you put a tweet address in a comment it appears formatted.

    Very cool! 😎

  224. Rutherford,

    Nice try … Obama posted 50+ approval in a couple of polls this week. You live in a bubble my friend..

    You’re reading poll numbers as your indicator of the popularity of Obama, and accusing me of “living in a bubble”? How do you put it? ROFLMAO? You dressed in a red G-string holding a gun to your crotch when you typed that?

    Here’s living in a bubble…forgetting ten weeks ago your popular El Bongo just lost the House, and for the first time in our lifetimes there are less than 200 Dimocrats in that House.

    But you go right on living in ‘reality’ Rutherford Loughner…and I’ll stay in my “bubble” for a couple of more years.

  225. But I will venture this opinion…that in the immediate aftermath of the shootings, no one was quite calm and reasonable. It’s like everyone went into their own igloo and hunkered down under a sealskin.

    FN2 hits on something true here. I happen not to think Twitter is stupid but then I’ve used it for multiple purposes, including professional so I have a different perspective.

    BUT, the danger with Twitter is that, unlike a blog post which a half way intelligent person at least tries to CRAFT, a Tweet is 140 characters of free association. It’s gut emotion.

    Here is the truth … believe it or not as you please. When I first heard about the shooting, Sarah Palin was NOT the first thing that I thought of. Back last March I found the crosshairs map offensive but I did not know Giffords district was on it. It was only after I read some tweets pointing out that Giffords district was on the map AND that the Palin machine had suddenly removed the map from their site, that my blood boiled,. That AND clause is VERY important. If you feel justified in your actions, you don’t remove evidence of it from your web site. The removal was an immediate attempt at information control. THAT more than anything got my blood boiling.

    Now, while many of you have jumped down my throat about ignoring the true victims, you have painted (on cue) Palin as a victim. Can we now all agree that the only victims in this incident were the wounded and dead?

    Furthermore, unless you have read news accounts that I missed, Jared Loughner hasn’t said squat to anyone about why he did what he did. Dollars to donuts his explanation would not make sense. But he shot a politician and this is therefore a political shooting. There is NO evidence that he shot her cos he doesn’t like streaked blonds. No evidence that he shot her because he wanted to kill an astronaut’s wife. I have heard some experts say that we can’t even tie him to antisemitism. So many of you are quick to judgment that politics and what he absorbed in the atmosphere had nothing to do with the crime. And you don’t know what you’re talking about. So until we do KNOW, let’s stop assuming politics had nothing to do with it.

    Finally, some of the outrage here is simply unfounded. When a politician is shot, one of the first things we wonder about the assailant is what influences did he pick up before pulling the trigger. It’s not an unusual thing to think. Many liberals, including me, have been VERY upset for years now at the behavior of conservatives, whether it’s Palin’s “reload” or Bachmann’s “be armed and dangerous” or Wilson’s “you lie”. This continued ratcheting up of violent/militaristic/confrontational//revolutionary rhetoric has been upsetting me and others of my persuasion for some time.

    I thought the decent thing to do would be for any politician who has used that rhetoric in the past couple of years, to say “you know what? This shooting has rocked me back on my heels. I’m gonna be a bit more careful in the future because regardless of causation, this shooting occurred in a toxic environment and I’m not going to contribute to it anymore.” But instead every one went on defense. As many, lib and conservative alike have noted, Palin on Wednesday had a great opportunity to look like a leader in her video. She didn’t. She said “stop calling me names!”

    The reason why this issue has caused such a schism between us is that I find it abominable that so many of you wish to learn NOTHING from this incident. You don’t want people to stop speaking carelessly. You don’t want reasonable measures put in place to make gun ownership safer. You give lip service to how we’ve failed the mentally ill. So while you demand an apology from me and find my concerns exploitative of a tragedy and disgusting, I in turn find your total disregard for the issues sparked by this tragedy equally disgusting.

  226. I cannot think of a post or comment thread that didn’t turn to a display of Rutherford’s Palin obbsession sooner or later in the last year.

    Yup, hyperbole. Nothing like responding to an accusation of hyperbole with more hyperbole.

  227. Rabbit, 220 also gets my blood boiling. You and BiW do this don’t touch our guns bullsh*t with all sorts of sophomoric excuses.

    So here’s the deal: As parents, let’s stop setting any house rules for our kids since they will only find some way around them anyway. How’s that strategy?

    I say take 30 round magazines out of Walmart and BiW says “he can buy two guns and do the same damage.” Great so let’s make it f*cking easy for him and keep selling him the 30 round magazines.

    What the hell is wrong with you people? No one wants to take your hunting rights away from you. We just don’t want our streets to become an armed camp. One of the dudes that subdued Loughner was carrying heat. Do you know that when he was interviewed he admitted that at first he was wrestling a gun out of the wrong man’s hand? Once he realized who the shooter was, he got with the program. What if he had shot the wrong man?

    G has told me I need to be prepared to do something when the police take five minutes when there are only three minutes to spare. Sorry. I depend on my police to protect me. So do a lot of other citizens. That is the way it is supposed to be. When we all start packing heat and shooting supposed intruders, all hell is going to break loose. Did you hear a few years ago about the woman who accidentally shot her husband to death because he went to the corner store without telling her and when he returned home she thought he was a burglar?

    A nine year old won’t live to see ten, you guys keep up with your macho gun talk, and then you tell me my priorities are out of whack. BULLSH*T

  228. Here Bubbles Lawson,

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/145610/Satisfaction-Remains-Near-Month-Low.aspx

    You don’t want reasonable measures put in place to make gun ownership safer. You give lip service to how we’ve failed the mentally ill.

    Only that we’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that gun controls have the opposite effect you desire. And as far as the mentally ill, what would you have us do? Blame that on Sarah Palin too?

    So while you demand an apology from me and find my concerns exploitative of a tragedy and disgusting, I in turn find your total disregard for the issues sparked by this tragedy equally disgusting.

    Grasping for straws because you’re not decent enough to be ashamed. Like a petulant child, you seek sympathy as the orphaned child who shot his parents.

    The only real issue besides six people dead, is that before people even had a chance to reflect and absorb, you went looking to score points, casting blame where none exists, to mask the failures of your party. Everything is political to you – even death.

    And now you don’t even have the sense to leave well enough alone.

    You may be one of the most empty people I know. I actually do feel sorry for you – but not sorry for the reasons you wish.

  229. SPECIAL BONUS: Written just for you Bubbles Rutherford. Read it and glance at the mirror while doing so…

    With a majority saying that right-wing political speech had nothing to do with Loughner’s actions, the American people aren’t buying the spin. Unfortunately, those with the agenda are the ones whose voices get the airtime. And, of course, it’s morphed from just blaming Sarah Palin (who seems to have replaced George W. Bush as the scapegoat for everything that goes wrong under the sun) to blaming the Tea Party, conservative talk radio, and blogs.

    And yet, despite evidence that politics had nothing to do with the politically unaffiliated Loughner’s hatred of Giffords — which seems to go back as far as 2007 — Palin has not only been pilloried for her so-called culpability in the case. Remarkably, she has also been attacked for inserting herself into the tragedy by defending herself against these public attacks. What was she supposed to do, bend over and say, “Thank you sir, may I have another?”

    Bingo. Read it all. It’s written for people just like you.

    ‘Civil’ Discourse: A One-Way Street?
    According to the political class, the right response for conservatives is none at all.

    http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/civil-discourse-a-one-way-street/

  230. It’s got nothing to do with BLAME. It has to do with reflection on how we conduct ourselves. The wounded congresswoman herself found Palin’s map offensive. It’s the beauty of video, We have it on tape. She felt it contributed to a toxic environment. Months later she gets shot in the head and we’re supposed to dismiss any possible environmental factors? You’re kidding me.

    Oh and by the way, Tex, since you and like minded folks are so focused on PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY then start supporting the Ground Zero mosque and stop blaming Islam for the acts of 19 lunatics. 👿

  231. What was she supposed to do, bend over and say, “Thank you sir, may I have another?”

    No, she was supposed to say that she understood why her map took on a whole different color in light of the shooting and she regretted having used it. Instead, she made the AZ shooting about how she was victimized and is now doubling down by being the keynote speaker at a gun show within the next couple of weeks.

  232. Oh and by the way, Tex, since you and like minded folks are so focused on PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY then start supporting the Ground Zero mosque and stop blaming Islam for the acts of 19 lunatics.

    And the US embassy in Tehran, and the Marine barracks in Beruit, and the Achile Lauro, and Pan Am Flight 103, and the USS Cole, and our embassies in Africa, and Mumbai, and Daniel Pearl, and the Sudan, and Abu Sayaf in the Phillipines, and countless others. The “religion of peace” has more blood on its hands in the here and now than any other. No, I don’t think we need to give them a trophy.

    You want to be an ostrich? Knock yourself out, but I don’t think I’ll be taking that suicide pill with you. Bottoms Up. Don’t forget to drink the Kool Aid all gone before beddie bye, now.

  233. Now we’re relating this tragedy to the fairness of the Ground Zero Mosque? 😯 You going to blame the Green Bay Packer’s win next?

    Have you completely lost your mind since Nov. 2nd, Bubbles?

    Where was your complaint when KKKos put its own bullseye on Gabrielle Gifford’s district? Nary a peep? Did KKKos contribute to Gifford’s death like Sarah Palin, or is that the one-way street? This infamous Rutherford Lawson double standard?

    http://www.olbermannwatch.com/archives/2011/01/a_chance_for_ol.php

    You made an ass of yourself, exposed as a pure political hack and opportunist. You’ve left your reputation in tatters.

    The reason why this issue has caused such a schism between us is that I find it abominable that so many of you wish to learn NOTHING from this incident. You don’t want people to stop speaking carelessly. You don’t want reasonable measures put in place to make gun ownership safer. You give lip service to how we’ve failed the mentally ill. So while you demand an apology from me and find my concerns exploitative of a tragedy and disgusting, I in turn find your total disregard for the issues sparked by this tragedy equally disgusting.

    How long should we wait before we blame you, Paul Krugman and Keith Olbermann?

    http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/01/breaking-tucson-tea-party-leader-threatened-during-abc-interview-audience-member-screams-trent-humphries-youre-dead/

  234. What the hell is wrong with you people? No one wants to take your hunting rights away from you. We just don’t want our streets to become an armed camp.

    Yeah, how’s that working out for you in Chicago and New York City?
    Onerous gun control laws have made them havens of safety. For the criminals.

    Its not about safety, its about control. You wanna be a serf? Knock yourself out. The Northeast is a fine part of the country for those with such lofty ambitions, but it gives you zero authority to decide what is right or good for the citizens of Abeline, Bakersfield, Provo, Idaho Falls. Klamath, Gearheart, or any other city in a part of the country that hasn’t surrendered to the idea that there is no problem that government can’t fix.

  235. No, she was supposed to say that she understood why her map took on a whole different color in light of the shooting and she regretted having used it. Instead, she made the AZ shooting about how she was victimized and is now doubling down by being the keynote speaker at a gun show within the next couple of weeks.

    Its ok, Rutherford. She isn’t likely to upset the President’s current standing as the gun salesperson of the year (three years running!)

  236. Rutherford, I was just talking about a murder that took place a mile from my house.

    By the way, I got a good chuckle out of your “cops protect you” bit.

  237. Rabbit, since you asked nicely…I went back and looked at 202 (and 203). I was a little afraid to, since it wouldn’t be unheard of for me to be inconsistent, but I’m unable to see the inconsistency in this case. I’m not sure what you mean by “defending my positions”. If you mean by that, posting endless, repetitive links to someone who agrees with me but maybe said it better than I did, then no, you usually won’t find me doing that. My positions are my positions and have to stand or fall on their own. And sometimes my positions change. Imagine that.
    The story you told about the guy killing himself by lighting a BBQ grill inside his truck after murdering his family is horrifying. I’m reminded of: some years ago, two County Commissioners in Santa Rosa County here in FL were about to go on trial for corruption. One of them, in exchange for leniency, had agreed to testify against the other. However, just before the trial, he drank antifreeze and crawled under the front porch of his house and died. Like a stray dog. So the point is, it could have been a knife, a pillow, a BBQ grill, or antifreeze, but it this case IT WAS A GUN.
    Two more comments: I’m not feigning offense when I’m offended. Offended is apparently something I’m not allowed to be, while you guys are permitted to be offended half to death over Rutherford’s words. And Rutherford, I’m sorry about calling Twitter stupid. It was a poor choice of words.
    Tex, I will go back and look at 159. It’s a fair criticism to say I didn’t answer it.

  238. Fakename, you made the claim Rutherford was having a “parallel” conversation on the state of discourse. Do you believe that was Rutherford’s intent still?

    He is desperately clinching on to some outside chance that the killer is a Sara Palin fan. Ha.

    Remember, he called for the actual firing of Palin advisers.

  239. “[S]he made the AZ shooting about how she was victimized and is now doubling down by being the keynote speaker at a gun show within the next couple of weeks.”

    You called her out in response to the tragedy, didn’t you? So she’s so to abandon her principles because a psycho killed people? Yeah. You may demanded that, didn’t you? Funny she didn’t bite. It must be her.

    Honestly Ruhterford, what is it you expect to achieve with all of this misplaced blame? Screaming louder ain’t doing it. Looks to me like you were looking to fan the flames of hatred and rhetoric. One way street indeed.

    “[A]nd by the way, Tex, since you and like minded folks are so focused on PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY then start supporting the Ground Zero mosque and stop blaming Islam for the acts of 19 lunatics.”

    Talk about false equivalency. I’ll support the mosque as soon as soon as you support a NRA facility at the Safeway — isn’t that a little more like it. Sheesh. If only we would stop lumping all deranged killers together as though they are the same. . .

    “So while you demand an apology from me and find my concerns exploitative of a tragedy and disgusting, I in turn find your total disregard for the issues sparked by this tragedy equally disgusting.”

    You didn’t even pause as you typed this to think about the hypocrisy of it did you? Do you mean to say that “because of the shooting” we are somehow you are owed something as though we are beholden to your false assignement of blame? You have lietrally hundreds of comments on this; hardly a disregard for the issues. Where were you?

    Interesting you feel the need to defend yourself while you demand that everyone else abandon their defenses. I could only imagine how you would’ve reacted had the right tried to blaime the left for its hand in the tragedy due to its violent and unrepentent rhetoric leading up to this.

    “The reason why this issue has caused such a schism between us is that I find it abominable that so many of you wish to learn NOTHING from this incident.”

    That kind of assumes you took something from it, doesn’t it?

    You need a mirror — full length mirror, not just a compact.

  240. Great. Trent Humphries receiving death threats since the lef cohorts began blaming the tea party for the shooting.

    Thanks, Rutherford. Good job.

  242. Sorry for all the typos and poor grammar. I have a poor habit of never reading before hitting the send button. Of course we now know that grammar is controlled by the government — or is it Palin?

  243. “Interesting you feel the need to defend yourself while you demand that everyone else abandon their defenses.”Tigre

    Tiger….you have to remember that you’re talking to a man that falsely accused our voices for that census worker.

    He falsely accused our voices for the Nazi that attacked the holocaust museum.

    And he spent a year lying (his lies varied) about the nature of the Tea Party.

    Rutherford feels he simply can’t lose face anymore. So, he commits pundit suicide and is exposed as a joke. I feel sorry for him. Dude is a slave to MSNBC.

    I guess that kind of dependence is to be expected from someone who thinks the cops will protect his family.

  244. “Of course we now know that grammar is controlled by the government” -Tigre

    ha ha….I think I would forfeit responsibility of my own grammar to Nanny. It might be the one place where government intervention actually improves the sorry situation.

  245. I will bet I can make a much stronger case about hateful rhetoric leading Eric Fuller to threaten teaparty spokesman Trent Humphries yesterday, than Rutherford can make tying Sarah Palin to any hostility.

    So Rutherford, as Fuller got bent about Humphries making the suggestion about not talking “gun control” at the church until the dead had been buried, admitting to influence by two years of men and women like Graychin, Sensico and Yeller Dawg with their constant mantra of “teabagging racists”, when are you going to start the drum roll of condemnation of those that have consistently used the inflammatory ad hominem charges about the Tea Party?

    Fuller did threaten to kill…I would call that violent vitriol, would not you?

  246. A nine year old won’t live to see ten, you guys keep up with your macho gun talk, and then you tell me my priorities are out of whack. BULLSH*T

    Let’s talk about bullshit for a minute, shall we?

    Let’s talk about how long it took YOU to quit blaming political opponents and then come around to blaming guns, and then to someone losing her life. You flog the Palin/right-wing hate game until there is no question that it isn’t getting traction, then you fall back on something else that scares the hell out of you…guns, and now its about a girl losing her life? The only thing I despise more than a “concern troll” is someone who focuses on tragedy after every other avenue of opportunity has failed them.

  247. “Of course we now know that grammar is controlled by the government” -Tigre

    ha ha….I think I would forfeit responsibility of my own grammar to Nanny. It might be the one place where government intervention actually improves the sorry situation.

    Not me. My grammar will beat up government’s grammar and steal its lunch money.

    What? Too much “vitriol”?

  248. I would call Rutherford’s “hate” for Palin violent vitriol more pointed than anything Palin said/demonstrated concerning Giffords.

  249. You know, Rutherford’s irrational and obsessive hatred for Palin seems eerily similar to Lougner’s for Giffords. Are we really sure Rutherofrd doen’t have access to a gun?

  251. So, in other news…..

    Tomorrow should be interesting. A UN tribunal is expected to release findings that say Hezbollah was responsible for the assassination of the Lebanese Prime Minister a few years back. Hezbollah has said that if they are blamed, it won’t be pretty. In what I expect is a preemptive move around this, Hezbollah members of parliament in Lebanon have resigned, putting a monkey wrench in their government structure.

    To make things even more interesting, it is now being said that the UN is also going to accuse the Iranian Supreme Leader of ordering that assassination.

    Yeah, we know the UN is toothless, and this tribunal isn’t going to tell us anything that we didn’t already know. That isn’t what will be interesting. What will be interesting is the response.

  252. Damn Tigre, that was funny! First real belly laugh I’ve had in months – especially the Pelosi Galore bit.

    Batshit crazy! I guarantee you sleeps upside down. 😆

    Perpetually looks like she’s in 7G wind tunnel, watching the Hindenburg dock. 😆

  253. Why, Huck!

    You sound as if you aren’t anticipating a peaceful response from the “religion of peace”.

    Good thing I’m not ghoulish, or else I’d set up a pool on how many people they’ll kill. Instead, I’ll go the Left’s route: Act surprised and blame the Isrealis.

  254. A UN tribunal is expected to release findings that say Hezbollah was responsible for the assassination of the Lebanese Prime Minister a few years back.

    Israel is usually behind the terrorism that gets blamed on Muslim groups. Plenty of former military and intelligence personel from the US and many other ally nations have been trying to get this message out for years. Since our media is predominately Zionist controlled, we aren’t hearing it. That message is widely held in the countries outside the US. Muslim countries in particular question the very existence of Al Qaeda.

    Within the last two years, Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has uncovered more than 100 suspected Israeli spies operating in Lebanon (one of whom, remarkably, is a first cousin of alleged 9/11 hijacker Ziad al-Jarrah). Hezbollah also claims Israel was behind the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Premier Rafiq Hariri — which brought the country perilously close to civil war between Sunni and Shiite — and, last August, presented credible evidence in support of its assertions.

    Tex keeps quoting the Zionist owned “Pajamas Media” expecting their info to be unbiased and accurate. And BiW lists “terrorist” acts purportedly by Muslims, half of which have proved CIA or Israeli fingerprints on them. You guys never use the FOIA to learn any real history. Too bad. One day you will regret it, though I don’t expect any to admit it here.

    Then I got to listen to the 10 minutes of Dennis Miller’s rant that falls far from reality. For some reason HIS hate speech is okay. I used to think he was talented back in SNL days. Now he is just rude and overpaid (no matter what he makes) for whatever it is he provides supposedly to humanity.

    It would behoove many of you to learn about the deception and origin of Zionism and how it has infiltrated our government, mainstream media, Hollywood, and most of our churches. It certainly controls most of the perceptions I’ve encountered here. I have tried to point these things out. Even Tex showed some interest in learning via some videos I posted in the Coliseum, but that apparently wasn’t sincere. That would have showed you the “Scofield Reference Bible” was put together by a conman and its primary intent was to justify the modern nation of Israel.

    I still check all your links, hoping for some intelligent insight or new revelation. Few have provided that, though some have been interesting.

    I get that there are differing political philosophies. I get that a right wing bias and a left wing bias will always see things differently. That isn’t my point. With most, I fall in the middle. I don’t expect that we will ever all see eye to eye regarding ideology. But red is still going to be red, white is white, and dead and alive will all still be the same no matter the political persuasion.

    Zionism IS the greater enemy. Islam is not. It is the evil you apparently do not see. It has been hiding in plain sight all along. Until you are willing to examine that possibility in earnest, you will continue to attack the wrong people and purposes. In short, you are performing exactly as intended.

  255. The “Troofer” telling us Zionism is the enemy. 😈

    PJM is Zionist owned, hey? That would have been news to Charles Johnson, one of the original founders, who is an atheist and sounds more like Rutherford than Roger Simon. Yes, there are many Jewish authors, but most aren’t.

    Poolman also sleeps upside down, as he’s as equally batshit crazy as Pelosi Galore. Jew hater through and through, unless your a member of secular Jewish thugs of the NYT like Krugman.

    You don’t fall in the middle you blowhard liar. You’re as loony Yeller Dawg.

  256. You don’t fall in the middle you blowhard liar.

    Tex, your extreme right wing “conservative” Bible thumpin’ view is hardly one to properly categorize any other human’s perspective. EVERYTHING looks batshit crazy from the crotch of the country. Trust me. I’m friends with plenty of your neighbors. But that’s OK.

    I linked the Zionist connection for PJ last thread. Here it is again. Zionism and the Jewish people are two different things. Zionism and the Jewish faith are also different. There are plenty of Jews, religious and otherwise, that oppose Zionism. In your view you clump them all together and see them as one in the same.

    You WILL find truth, IF you honestly seek it. If you are just out to reinforce your own theology and boast about it, then have at it. My conscience is clear. I tried.

    I am not saying you cannot find truth where you get “fed” all the time. Just don’t be ignorant of what you are eating. Check the label very carefully before sucking it in. Things aren’t always as they seem.

    I worked restaurants many years, in HS and again in college. Some things happen occasionally in the back that you likely wouldn’t find too appetizing if you knew. You don’t always know what you are eating. It is always served to your table hot and tasty. That is what you come to expect, right?

  257. I find that addresing Rutherford as “Rutherford Loughner” to be indescribably vile. And Comment 249 is even more vile. Go ahead–make jokes. Call me the Speech Police. Because if you can’t see what’s wrong with this, then there is no hope for you.

  258. “Then I got to listen to the 10 minutes of Dennis Miller’s rant that falls far from reality. For some reason HIS hate speech is okay.”

    Hate speech?

    “And Comment 249 is even more vile.”

    Yeah. Vile. A guy that went after Palin for the shooting, and this is vile. Is it vtriolic, vile, or hate speech?

  259. No wonder you’re a fan of StormFront Poolman. You’re a frickin goosestepper. Building a couple gas ovens out by the pool lately?

    As far as my “country crotch”, we can compare resumes and credentials anytime you’re ready… :You might have me beat on the back hoe. 🙂

    Next time, be prepared to discuss chemistry and molecular biology. Or we can simply talk about relational databases and calculus if you wish. I care to bet my crotch is going to have a bigger hump than yours.

  260. I think I used Rutherford Loughner last night. I’ll used Jared Lawson instead since if offended our resident Thought Police.

    It’s amazing Fake what you pick up on, and even more amazing what you miss.

  262. FN2, first no apology necessary on “Twitter is stupid”. On its face it does seem sorta stupid but in the context of social media it has significance. Remember that Twitter was the way Iranian protesters got the truth out to the world when gov’t cracked down on traditional media. It is also a major marketing platform.

    As for “Rutherford Loughner” and my possibly owning a gun … that stuff is laughable. What is far more offensive are men so rooted in the status quo that no event can dislodge them from their ignorant positions.

  263. “You sound as if you aren’t anticipating a peaceful response from the “religion of peace”.”

    Gee, I was hoping like I sounded like someone who wasn’t anticipating a peaceful response from a violent guerrilla movement.

    Islam doesn’t have anything to do with their response on this being violent or peaceful.

  264. “Israel is usually behind the terrorism that gets blamed on Muslim groups. ”

    This is just stupid. It’s a generalizing blanket statement that isn’t any more constructive than saying all Muslims are terrorists.

    But considering you don’t acknowledge that they did 9/11, I guess I am wasting my time with this one….

  265. Fakename, do you realize how ironic it is that you posted your admonishment about the “tone” of a few comments directly under a man who claims that Islamic terrorism is orchestrated by the sneaky, evil Jew?

    Your into judging the appropriateness of this comment or that. Not one word about a comment that blames the Jewish Illuminati, Mein Kampf style?

    This dude believes the world is manipulated by a Jewish conspiracy and it’s a barb your worried about?

    I don’t respect Rutherford. And I broke down exactly why after you claimed he was having a “parallel” conversation. Of course, when I called you on it, as usual, you gave no explanation or counter argument to my series of points.

    You are a fake plant. Boring office decor, that nags a bunch without really ever saying shit.

    I tried.

  266. Fake, an FYI

    Out of sheer boredom, I’ve been perusing blogs, including yours. This is absolutely none of my business but…since we’re such great friends. 🙂

    I read your “anatomy” post. Though I almost feel silly asking since you saw the endocrinologist, have ever had your thyroid levels checked?

    You’re well past the “luteal surge” stage, but thyroid and infertility, the LH hormone and fertility/infertility are related. Always cold can be a positive sign of hypothyroidism, possibly Hashimoto’s thyroiditis I remember that from medical school.

    And since my daughter is planning to be an endocrinologist at present, we’ve had a few interesting conversation about the pituitary gland – an incredibly complex organ.

  267. ” What is far more offensive are men so rooted in the status quo that no event can dislodge them from their ignorant positions.”-R

    What position is that, coward? You ended your latest silly little blog entry questioning the entire 2nd amendment. You have no clue about the current gun laws in Arizona (you proved that in the comments section). You also seem to think that the results would have been less disastrous had the killer used a rifle.

    Yeah, you wish the bastard used a rifle. Maybe he’d still be on the lamb and your lying ass could still be having a blood orgy about how Sara Palin is to blame. Would be nice, wouldn’t? The whole world not knowing you were once again full of shit.

    So, what the fuck conversation can we have with you on the right to arm ourselves?

    Where do we start?

    Oh I forgot, the shriveled little Gollum grew up depending on other men fighting his battles. He now fibs to himself about how the police can magically protect his family. That means we all should follow Smeagol, as he rocks back and forth with a picture of Palin….”precious…my precious”.

    You fucked up with this Palin shit. Just like you have done countless times in the past. Why don’t you repost your blog on the census worker or the Tea Party, for old times sake, Gollum?

    Have the balls to show your lefty friends why it is, we’ve come to see you as a joke.

  268. Re: #266. Thanks, Tex. I’ll check it out. I’ve been tested, and not all that long ago, but that doesn’t mean things haven’t changed. Plus the depth of knowledge on the subject is far greater than it was many years ago when I saw the endocrinologist.

  269. well since you think we should not have firearms have you ever looked at Great Britain they took all the firearms from the people look what happened people are making machine guns in there basement and you want to reinstate the assault
    weapon banned great idea because the first time we had it the gun crimes only went up by 40%

  270. Welcome to the blog Ethan. I’m not sure I agree with the premise “don’t pass laws that people will try to work around.” If that were our approach, we wouldn’t pass any laws.

  271. I think his point is that criminals don’t abide by the laws, so passing guns laws will only affect those that respect laws in the first place.

  272. No offense but if the person responsible for those killings did not have access to a gun then he would have found something else to use. Guns are not the only weapon that can be used to kill people. I think you miss the big picture and purpose of that quote. If someone is sadistic enough to kill that many people then they are also capable of doing the same thing with some other weapon. If you think that violent committed with guns would stop totally you would be mistaken. No matter how many restrictions you put on guns they will still be misused. Guns are tools, so is a hammer, a gun can easily kill someone, so can a hammer, a psychopath has a gun and a hammer, which does he use, are you going to outlaw hammers once you fantasize that you end gun violence? Violence is a part of being a human, no one is perfect.

  273. Kevin, thanks for visiting the blog. I fully agree that both a gun and a hammer in the wrong hands is dangerous. They can’t be compared however because guns are manufactured to maim or kill. Hammers are not. A person who purchases a hammer has a 99% likelihood of using it to pound a nail into a wall. A person who buys a gun has a 98% likelihood of using it to injure or kill another living thing (animal. as in hunting, or human). (I’ll give the other 2% to collectors and folks who only do target practice for fun.)

    I’m not saying get all guns off the street. I’m saying we must do a much better job of keeping them out of the hands of the untrained and the unhinged.

  276. You might have made a good point somewhere in there. The taste of bile and pure ignorance stopped me short after the second paragraph.

    You say, from what I read, that laws are the way to limit gun crimes.

    CRIMES. I personally own a shotgun, a rifle, an assault rifle, and multiple handguns. I’ve never shot up a school. I’ve never robbed a store, stole a car, or used my gun in any way to cause distress or injury to anyone.

    I purchased all of my weapons at a licensed dealer. I have a large collection of large-capacity magazines.

    Somewhere in my town, or your town, or just about any town with more than 10,000 people, there is someone who has a gun collection that makes mine look like nothing. That person didn’t buy any of his guns through a licensed dealer. A few were stolen here. Most, though, were smuggled in through the Mexican border and coastal areas.

    If you passed a law tomorrow that said no one could sell guns, and even more ridiculously, that everyone had to give their guns back. Not only would you bankrupt this nation in one day (you couldn’t legally force anyone to give their property up without compensation, not to mention the MASSIVE hit to the American economy), you would leave only 2 kinds of people armed:

    1. Police – There are currently not enough police officers in the US to enforce laws for half the people in the US.

    2. Criminals – There are currently more criminals in the US than there are law enforcement officers. Less than a quarter use a gun in their crimes. Of those, less than one percent use a weapon that was legally acquired.

    The often over-looked fact of the matter is that guns don’t kill that many people. Traffic accidents kill more people. So do medical mistakes.

    The bottom line is that in America, people are FREE. If you don’t like guns, then don’t buy one. I won’t force you to buy one.

    There really are only two kinds of people that don’t want guns in citizens’ hands:

    1. Politicians that want the people powerless to protect their freedom.

    2. Criminals that prefer unarmed, easy victims.

    This is supported by the fact that most gun crimes (against unarmed people) happen in locations that don’t allow guns, and the fact that the first thing the #1 types do is start shouting for guns to be taken away.

    As for “For what normal legal purpose would such a clip be necessary?” See number one above.

  277. Gun bans are not about enacting the most effective policies for reducing crime, but about civilian disarmament for its own sake; a hallmark of the simple-minded statist and the very purpose/philosophical underpinning of the Second Amendment (and other protections under the Bill of Rights).

    It’s also why challenging Rutherford’s (and the LSM that controls his gun-banning agenda)’s assumptions with questions and unrebuttable points does nothing to change the dialogue.

    The simple truth is that no data proving civilian disarmament made anybody safer.

    The unworthy and utopian goal of creating an absolutely safe/crime free society is that the only mechanism to achieve it is absolute statism.

  278. A writer for Pravda described how banning Russian guns helped enable the Soviet Union to last longer than it might have. He also cited the Wbite Army which fought the Red Revolution largely with home owned guns.

    You both make a lot of sense.

  279. And some people here might want to acquaint themselves with Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution. Just saying….

  281. Fear not, James. I will respond to the point or R to spare him the effort by allowing you to string these together in whatever order you’d like, none of which address the points:

    “that’s incredibly stupid”

    “I am not a cartoon version of a liberal you think I am”

    “I’m talking about reasonable restrictions on types of weapons an average citizen should be able to own”

    “I am not talking about disarmament”

    “no one is coming to take your guns”

    “so you’re not willing to consider any measures to reduce gun violence”

    “the second amendment was not drafted in contemplation of assault weapons or military grade weapons”

    R, you’re welcome. I live to give. 😆

    Feel free to add on. There’s not much to it really. Start by thinking of how to avoid the point without reference to specifics.

  282. I have confidence in you El tigre.

    Newt, you raise an interesting point about treason. What is it really?Of course, we have the obvious definition when a person or group works against his/her own government to benefit an enemy.

    But what of the White and Red Russians? Neither side was fighting to help; an enemy. They were battleing for the supremacy of two theories of economics and government.

    Our American Revolution was a similar circumstance, and its leaders would have been hanged as traiters had they lost. Should a group in the US decide to pursue armed insurection, it wouldn’t necessarily be traiterous unless it was helping Canadians or others take over the country,

    Its true muskets were used when the Constitution was written. The relative disparity of technology between private weapon owners and the army is greater now than then. Thus, automatic weapons still play the role of muskets.

    Winners decide who commits treason.

  283. I agree with the high capacity clip part but banning anything doesn’t stop it from getting into the hands of abusers. What happened with prohibition? marijuana is still illegal isn’t it? Cocaine? Meth? Ok just checking. Also I’d just like to add I’m not a gun freak, never shot one, don’t plan to, don’t care for them really, just saying this as a citizen who its quite tired of the subject matter.

  284. Funny that you are saying something is stupid when you are in fact stupid yourself. When are ignoramuses like you gonna realized guns do not control themselves because that is the only way possible that a gun can kill someone. People control them and they pull the trigger you fucking idiots. Why don’t you go ahead and say knives kill people, food kill people, and that guns can control themselves and walk, talk, and breathe. That the gun should stop itself from being fired and killing someone while you’re at it. How bout you go get shot by someone and survive (unfortunately), let’s see who you blame then. Let me see you on the news doing an interview saying “that damn gun shot me, it was in no way the person who pointed it at me, took the safety off, pulled the trigger with the intent to hurt or kill me fault, I want no charges filed against him. I want to see that gun and court and that gun to be served justice and do life in prison.”

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