Of violence, rhetoric and free speech

First, a little bit of a palate-cleanser as President Obama talks about violence with Sarah Palin. Please go to xtranormal for the video.


(From the video if you chose not to click on over) Now, we don't think that Bill Ayers actually wrote Obama's Dreams From My Father.
A far more rational explanation for the uncannily similar phrasing and use of terminology the two employ in their books is that the two have been stewing in the same Hyde Park leftist-academia jerk for years and to expect either one of them to rise above this group-think so as to express an original or unique literary voice is simply hoping too much of these two mediocre intellects.

Now, how is that for a defense of Obama as the author?


OK, with that out of the way, how about a video that we can actually embed? Obama, the author, and in this clip an apparent American history expert has some words on incivility and hostile rhetoric.




Hoe-cakes?



Up for some more incivility and over-heated rhetoric. Via Capitol Commentary:

Howard Dean - Former governor, head of DNC: I hate Republicans and everything they stand for.

Barack Obama – Former senator, President of the United States: If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.

Jesse Jackson – Reverend, former presidential candidate: [H]ate and hurt are on a roll in America. If what was happening here was happening in South Africa, it’d be called racist apartheid. If it was happening in Germany, we’d call it Nazism. And in Italy, we’d call it fascism. Here we call it conservatism.

Nina Totenberg – NPR Journolist: [B]ecause if there is retributive justice, he’ll [Jesse Helms] get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will.

Alec Baldwin – Actor: We would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and we’d kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families.

Mike Malloy – Radio talk show host: I am only hoping that when Glenn Beck does put a gun to his head and pulls the trigger, that it’s on television, because somebody will capture it on YouTube and it will be the most popular little piece of video for the month.

Timothy Horrigan – NH state representative: [A] dead Palin would be even more dangerous than a live one…she is all about her myth.

Our buddy, Harrison, has more at the link above but you get the point. So, why are we engaging in this particular little exercise? Is it to play gotcha or to show that "the other side does it too"? Well, maybe a bit but mostly we're doing this to demonstrate that WE DON'T CARE.

When the President made his knife/gun comment, it raised our eyebrows a tad but then we realized he's a politician and that both Democrats and Republicans have used weaponry/warfare terminology for years in politics. We're confident that 99% of the people in this country who heard that remark knew it was a metaphor and one that was particularly appropos for a Chicago pol. Hey, no harm, no foul, right?


For that 1% who weren't in on the joke, that 1% of whom the Tucson shooter is a part of and who represents the idiots and complete wack-jobs in this country, we really can't do a whole lot about them anyway. No amount of "civility" and "open dialog" is going to prevent these people from deciding to take the life of a public figure if he or she decides upon it.

It's called free speech and when someone like Keith Olbermann calls Michelle Malkin "a mashed-up bag of meat with lip stick", the vast majority of people in this country process that statement and view Olbermann and his show accordingly as the ratings surely indicate.

The smearing of the right, Sarah Palin and particularly the tea party is one thing. We're kind of used to it, though we're glad to see that we aren't taking this laying down and we are hitting back and hitting back relentlessly as recent posts from fellow SLOBs like W.C. Varones, B-Daddy, Temple of Mut and Left Coast Rebel have indicated.

What is entirely more egregious and unforgiveable, however, is to politicize and leverage this tragedy to enact laws that are bald-faced attempts to silence dissent and thus free speech.

As we have said before, this is not about civility for the liberal-Left, this is about getting their asses handed to them in the mid-terms and their ineffectiveness in controlling the media and public square narrative with respect to their legislative agenda.

If the liberal-Left and their willing accomplices in the media continue in this vein with smear tactics and attempts to shut down speech they don't particularly care for, it will only serve to steel the resolve of their targets so that another ass-beating they won't soon forget may be in the offing in 2012. The choice for "civility" is really up to them.