It bears repeating...

Leslie at Temple of Mut reminds us of why this call for "civility" is just so much B.S. and merely a poorly-disguised attempt to thwart dissent and also a trial run for the 2012 Presidential elections.


As per Legal Insurrection:

In the vile attempt to tie Palin to the Tucson shooting we have witnessed the test run for how the left-wing blogosphere will target Republican candidates and propel false narratives into the mainstream media, and how the mainstream media will take those narratives and run with them. If Palin is taken down politically over the Tucson shooting, there is not a single Republican candidate who can survive the coming onslaught.

Always remember...

Never let a crisis go to waste (the "heated rhetoric" edition)

Peter King in his Monday Morning Quarterback column for Sports Illustrated.com wanders off the sports reservation with his take on the Tucson shootings and is representative of a quite a number of people who are talking out of their asses with respect to this tragedy. He doesn't blame "heated rhetoric" for the shooting except that he kind of does.

I'm not blaming guns, I'm not blaming the right or the left. Time will sort out all of the issues about why Jared Loughner apparently targeted Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords for death. Whatever the reason for Loughner's actions, I don't know how we can continue to listen to the incredible public fury we hear in politics and the political media without it having serious consequences for society.

Well, the consequences don't get much more serious than the assassination of a publicly-elected official, now do they? He tries to weasel his way around it but he is establishing a causal thread between "heated rhetoric" and the shooting. So, if that is the case, we would like to know precisely what heated rhetoric it was that caused the shooting? We would like specifics from King and others, not pious yet meaningless generalities when talking about something this serious and tragic.

To continue with this line of non-reasoning makes one look foolish and worse, for a journalist, lazy... lazy for attempting to sound important and judicious when all you are doing is inviting unsavory results.

Unsavory results like...

Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) reportedly plans to introduce legislation that would make it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official or member of Congress.

Brady told CNN that he wants federal lawmakers and officials to have the same protections against threat currently provided to the president. His call comes one day after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shot, along with 19 other people, at a public event in Tucson. A suspect is currently in custody.

"The president is a federal official," Brady told CNN in a telephone interview. "You can't do it to him; you should not be able to do it to a congressman, senator or federal judge."

Forgive us for thinking that there are already laws on the books protecting people, both public and private, from violent threats but we're curious as to specifically what would be in this legislation that would've prevented the shooting on Saturday?

But is that what this is really about? Representative Brady shed some light with respect to the motives behind his proposed legislation... shut up, he explained.

"The rhetoric is just ramped up so negatively, so high, that we have got to shut this down," Brady said.

(italics, ours)

Charmed, we're sure. You give some people enough leeway to flap their gums on the finer merits of free speech and you go from protecting public officials to losing an election and losing control of the narrative regarding a raft of unpopular legislative "accomplishments".

Pure and simple, this is nothing more than an attempt to tamp down dissent which sadly was so popular as recently as 3 years ago. Perhaps en vogue is the more appropriate term but no matter, something as volatile as dissent and rhetoric needs to be minded and regulated by the ruling class according to some.




On a related note, Sam, over at Left Coast Rebel wonders how it is that he got through the day without shooting someone.

For example, I woke up this morning and turned on the local news, but only to hear about a statewide effort to stop texting and driving. Quote the news anchor, “Police are targeting those that text and drive.” Whoa, I think to myself. “Target?” That’s some pretty strong rhetoric. Add to that the report on how those that text and drive put other drivers at risk and I must admit, I need to muster all my self control to keep from shooting anyone I see texting and driving.

Also, B-Daddy chimes in with examples of hypocrisy on the part of those wishing to point fingers with regard to placing blame for the Tucson shootings.


We have a feeling we're just getting warmed up on this subject. This whole thing does not appear to be going away anytime soon so heeding the call made by the President himself out on the campaign trial we're going to be breaking out our (rhetorical) guns against a bunch of mere knife-wielding punks.

We (Heart) Obama

Wow…. That was kinda strange. It appears after being identified as a potential Spam Blog by Google/Blogger, we were taken out of rotation until our files could be properly reviewed….. on our one-year Blogoversary, no less.

First, we want to thank everyone who stopped by to offer their support. It was all very gracious and much appreciated by us.

How did it all come to this? We’re not sure but our original and most logical thought was that Blogger had an unmanned search algorithm that sniffed out spammy-type material and indeed, just a day before being put on probation, we linked to a quiz site that contained a quiz called “What type of American accent do you have?”. This site was littered with adverts and since we had never before linked to a site with so many of the same, we went ahead and deleted the post hoping that would bolster our case before the Blogger Board of Review.

Then…. last night, we stopped by Foxie’s place and she had posted a very nice tribute to the merits of free speech, tolerance and dissent as a way of explaining our plight. The page locked up and we were greeted with the “Website cannot be located. Mission Aborted” pop-up before then being banished to the internet cornfield.

We realize Google owns the very apparatus that allows us to blog for free, so they are perfectly in their right to do whatever they want. Speaking to some of the internet buzz, though, it would be very disappointing to discover that people who don’t agree with the particular editorial bent of a site, would “flag” that site as “spam blog” if that is indeed the case.

So our apologies… we aren’t taking any chances from now on….

We (heart) Obama. We really do.

It was disappointing and frustrating… once we figured-out the “scheduled post” feature 2-3 weeks back, we noticed an appreciable jump in readership and that was encouraging so now we’ve got to regain a little lost momentum.

Its good to be back. Life is good – we’ve got the 27th annual Rolando Beach Block Sale going on today and the first football, albeit pre-season football but football nonetheless, tomorrow.

Thanks again to everybody for hanging in there with us.