Month: January 2011
Verbatim
Many liberal Democrats opposed the tax rate compromise because it included provisions that helped the wealthy.
— CNN, demonstrating in a story about Pres. Obama’s high poll numbers the kind of sloppy writing that we have come to accept without question. I don’t know any “liberal Democrats” who don’t want to help everybody, the wealthy included. They just don’t want to help the wealthy at the expense of all others.
DeLay Gets Three Years for Money Laundering Corporate Donations in 2002 Elections
Count me as surprised that DeLay was sentenced to jail time:
Former House majority leader Tom DeLay was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in a money-laundering case stemming from the 2002 elections.
DeLay, once one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress, was convicted in November for illegally funneling $190,000 in corporate money through the Republican National Committee to help elect Republicans to the Texas Legislature during the 2002 elections.
Texas judge Pat Priest sentenced DeLay to three years on a conspiracy charge and also sentenced him to five years in prison for money laundering. Priest, however, allowed DeLay to accept 10 years probation on the money laundering charge, assuming he meets certain conditions set by the court.
DeLay could have received up to life in prison on the money laundering and conspiracy charges.
The former Houston area congressman, known as “The Hammer,” was unrepentant today in court. “I fought the fight. I ran the race. I kept the faith,” he said, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
It will be a bigger surprise if he serves more than three months.
Verbatim
For as long as I’ve been alive, crosshairs and bull’s-eyes have been an accepted part of the graphical lexicon when it comes to political debates. Such “inflammatory” words as targeting, attacking, destroying, blasting, crushing, burying, knee-capping, and others have similarly guided political thought and action. Not once have the use of these images or words tempted me or anybody else I know to kill. I’ve listened to, read—and even written!—vicious attacks on government without reaching for my gun. I’ve even gotten angry, for goodness’ sake, without coming close to assassinating a politician or a judge.
— Columnist Jack Schafer, writing in Slate magazine.
Rude Pundit: Hey Right Wing, How’s That Ginning Up the Masses Thing Working for Ya Now?
For those of us following the coverage of the mass shooting aimed at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords who are sick of the false equivalency arguments (“But what about Daily Kos?”), the bending over backward denials (“They were surveyors marks, not gun scope sights”), and pleas by the right not to rush to judgment (like they do with every ginned up news cycle concerning the NPRs and Van Joneses of the world), The Rude Pundit offers some relief. He is calling out the same folks as the sheriff of Pima County did — those who earn a living inflaming the American people.
Rude Pundit: ‘Gosh, it’s just wrong to lump you all together, to stereotype you all as criminals in waiting. Like, you know, you have done with Muslims since September 11, 2001’
He goes one further, though, by including the viewers and listeners and readers who indulge those leaders, who drive up their ratings, and who ultimately pay their salaries. And if you are among them, The Rude Pundit leaves you nowhere to hide.
Following are excerpts from what could have been called, “Dear Right-Wingers: We Reject Your Every Attempt to Evade Blame” but which is, instead, the much better titled, “Dear Right-Wingers: You Are All Muslims Now.”
How you must have heaved in relief when you saw that it would be quite easy to portray Jared Lee Loughner as a raving psychopath, an effort that’s helped a great deal by the apparent truth, which is that Jared Lee Loughner is a raving psychopath…
Now, ah, yes, now, lovely right-wingers, you could defend yourself. You could work yourselves into a huff about how unjustly you were accused of driving this obviously disturbed individual into an act of calculated, cold-blooded violence. But that’s because you’re sitting there in your shit-filled underpants, thinking, “I don’t believe in violence. I don’t approve this. I hope the government doesn’t try to crack down on us.”
So, welcome, assholes, because you are Muslim now.
Verbatim
When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry…People tend to “pooh-pooh” this business about all this vitriol we hear enflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences.
Pima County, Arizona Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, answering the question he was asked repeatedly in the wake of the terrorist attack on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Az.) that claimed six lives. The question was, “Why did it happen?”
Giffords: Palin Put Crosshairs on District, So Must ‘Realize There Are Consequences to That Action’
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Sarah Palin has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district and when people do that, they’ve gotta realize there are consequences to that action.
— Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, March 25, 2010, on MSNBC.
Palin Issues ‘Sincere Condolences’ on Facebook After Rep on Her ‘Target’ List Was Shot in Head, Scrubs Website
Sarah Palin reacted to the passage of the health-care reform last year by issuing a Unites States map showing districts of 20 Democratic House members who’d voted for the law and who she was targeting for defeat in the midterm elections last November. On the map, the targeted districts were indicated by icons that resembled gun sights — crosshairs.
In announcing her campaign to unseat these 20 Dems, she created a little controversy by using violent rhetoric. “Don’t Retreat,” Palin urged her followers. “Instead — RELOAD!”
One of those crosshairs was on the district of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the Democrat from Tucson, Ariz., who was shot through the head at an event in her district today.
Six people were killed, including a nine-year-old girl, a Giffords staffer and U.S. District Judge John Roll. Twelve people, including Giffords, were wounded.
The alleged shooter Jared Loughner, 22, has been arrested. As of late this afternoon, Giffords was recovering from emergency surgery.
Soon after Rep. Giffords was shot, Palin’s people issued a statement on Facebook. Via Glynnis MacNicol at Business Insider’s The Wire:
