Stop Me Before I Vote Again

You can't depoliticize an assasination.

Of course you can. Even to those who knew neither of them, a murdered child is more tragic than a murdered parasite. To those who cared about the child, the other deaths are of practically no import at all.

What takes straining effort is to politicize. Life itself is generally apolitical; tragedy always so.

Bill, sure you can.

No. You can't.

Now the level of security for members of congress is going to be wratcheted up.

Do you honestly think they're going to allow civil disobedience in Congressional offices any more? Do you think Code Pink is going to be allowed into the Capital Building? Do you think any member of Congress is going to speak at a town hall without a phalanx of state police officers?

Obama has a world class security team. Very few members of Congress do. Whatever you think of Giffords politics, this has political implications.

what possible content can this spree contain
for any one
with a normal emotional life ???

i agree ten fold with this mjs passage :

"It's a question of respect not to appropriate the sorrow of the people who actually knew and loved this child. "

"a murdered child is more tragic
than a murdered parasite."

this is completely off base

as is this mushroom

"You can't depoliticize an assasination"
particularly
once we have billy's explication
in his second comment

"Now the level of security for members of congress is going to be wratcheted up"

and ????

and ????

Well, I guess some people will argue that the "increased polarization" is a good thing.

They'll say that Congress isn't anwerable to the people anyway, only to $$$, and that the kind of meeting that Giffords was holding is a sham anyway.

They'd be half right. But it seems to me that removing the last few vestiges of formal democracy under the cloak of protecting Congress from right wing extremists is a bad thing.

Now the level of security for members of congress is going to be wratcheted up

"Senator X (R-KY) said today, 'I believe in apple pie.' Senator Y (R-AZ), said s/he believed in apple pie 'even more'. Both senators were being held incognito in a secure undisclosed location. No photos are available, for security reasons. "

"I certainly hope so. I think they shouldn't even tell us who our senators and representatives are

Yep. The whole polarization thing.

Got it Senor Lenin.

MJS has a good point. What's polarizing about it? The reality of the representatives is that they have been vetted, groomed and dues-paying hacks for years before you even knew of their existence. Their supporting caucus functions by elite consensus no less than the hacks they push into the limelight. Maybe complete ciphers would focus attention more closely where it belongs.

The original comment was only intended to show the difference between the focus of certain pundits ("oh no! democracy and government are sacred, how dare the shooter?!"), compared to the hard reality of a murdered child and her parent's murdered future.

"complete ciphers would focus attention more closely where it belongs"

exactly
this is a matter of one class
the job class clearly perceiving
an already existing
corporate class sponsored
puppet show

this is not a polarity its a singularity
trace the strings back to the unitary
ontroling class hands

make these ballot box gagsters
more ridiculously two dimensional
and hyper guarded
and ladies and gentlemen
the true to life
job class power void here in the states will be made
that much more patent !!!!

Jack, I think MJS took your comment the way it was intended. His excoriation is directed at the fetishists.

Maybe complete ciphers would focus attention more closely where it belongs.

And maybe your argument is the intellectual equivalent of male pattern baldness with a poney tail.

I owe Jack an apology. I did kinda recycle his comment for my own purposes.

make these ballot box gagsters
more ridiculously two dimensional
and hyper guarded

That might mean something if it were 1971 and you had Richard Nixon hiding in the White House from a mass of anti-war protesters in the streets.

But whatever this nutcase turns out to be motivated by, it clearly means something different in Arizona than it would in, say, Vermont.

But whatever this nutcase turns out to be motivated by, it clearly means something different in Arizona than it would in, say, Vermont.

What might that be? Vermont is noted for its secessionists. Obviously they're wingnuts who hate big government.

What might that be? Vermont is noted for its secessionists. Obviously they're wingnuts who hate big government.

Because clearly a small marginal group in Vermont is the equivalent of Joe Arpaio and Jan Brewer, of SB 1070 and the Minutemen, of Sarah Palin putting Gifford in the crosshairs of one of her political ads.

This was a town hall meeting of about 35 people. That's a death rate of almost 20% and a casualty rate of close to 50%. About 15 or 20 people were shot.

One, perhaps two men brought guns into a small town hall meeting, and nobody thought very much about it. Then sprayed the parking lot of a Safeway, shot a Congresswoman in the head, killed a federal judge, four more people, and wounded 10 innocent bystanders.

All of this is in the context of a state that has taken the early steps towards apartheid in the form of SB 1070, and has attracted a large percentage of the country's well-armed anti-immigrant extremists.

This isn't senior citizens with medicaid scooters and mispelled signs. This is an act of terrorism and at least partly the result of a 24/7 right wing network and an ex VP candidate who quite literally put Gifford in the crosshairs on one of her ads.

If you want to consider this a victory for the left, go ahead.

Bill,

The Vermont Commons community is neither small, nor marginal. I've known a number of its leading lights, back from the days of the NEC, and the now defunct Pickering Institute, and they have spent the better part of twenty years persuading a not inconsiderable percentage of the PRoV to seriously ponder "home rule."

The City of Burlington (and UVermont) is the epicenter of the movement, and its citizens have gone so far as to develop their own currency and to give the City remit to purchase and operate cooperative agricultural properties.

The NH chapter, now unaffiliated because of hijacking by the Randroid Freestater carpetbagging fucktard loons, and their GOP financiers, is far more marginal, by comparison.

I have the feeling we live on different planets, Bill. This is obviously a "victory" for the nightstick lobbies, Democratic version.

Arizona is the focal point for issues that are national in origin—mostly the drug war and the need for inexpensive labor that's easily abused. You voted for both them. I'd say this is your fault, you miserable smug wingnut.

No doubt, Al.

From OKC bombing to Clinton's Omnibus Crime Bill, in a skip and jump.

Jack, yes, the opportunity is too good to pass by.

Bill, you clearly know little about Arizona or the factors that go into its odd political makeup. Farm and cattle subsidies and water rights keep it farmed when it never should have been farmed or ranched. The mining rights were all sold for a song. The real estate bubble made it a speculative heaven. Now that the parties are drawing to a miserable end, the retirees and freeloaders are terrified and the downwardly mobile middle class is looking for scapegoats. It's one of the bottleneck states for the War on Labor and the War on Drugs, which makes for tremendous corruption and reactionary politics.

There's nothing uniquely horrible about its residents, nor are they the proximate cause of the murders.

"The Vermont Commons community is neither small, nor marginal"
thanx crow but no thanx

red hearts ought not glow
over that yup ville
annex
and spook attic for greater new york

socialism in one pasture

now gallant new hampshire
on the other hand ...

well
"randroids " are perfect for new hampshire

they must drive a pink blooded hermit
like yourself silly
with delighted frustration

i know new hampshire
new hampshire is a reified friend of mine

u crow are not new hampshire
at least not much of it

then again your penchant for
the well turned
pre figurative act of anti state violence
pre emptively proscribes you
from the pacifist rentier and dairy soviet
next door

you are an anti- coriolanus of the back roads ....in mud season
a man without a home state

not found in legend or in song ...yet
but surely subject for lizzy style tragedy

you may stash your three d meat bundle
up there in the state that
once nurtured my vile being
but granite state icon you're not ..nope ??
(emblematic fact :NH produces less granite then vermont in fact it produces less of everything goodly and green
but its very well made for rand schemes to prevail in particular over anchorites and
other brands of hermit crab )

NH is in large part
the arizona of new england
to vermont's new mexico

its tennessee to big Vs kentucky
--your welcome father S ---
wisconsin to minnesota

the lesser twin in all respects

the nascar and country music capitol
of the northeast

I have the feeling we live on different planets, Bill. This is obviously a "victory" for the nightstick lobbies, Democratic version.

Which is precisely what I said in my second post. But your knee jerk contrarianism wouldn't allow you to acknowledge it.

The immediate cause of this is the easy tolerance for guns at Congressional town halls.

You don't need more gun control or heavier security. You just need a little social pressure. Nobody, even in Arizona, would tolerate guns at a children's birthday party. People need to tell the gun owners to exercise their second amendment rights on the gun range, not at the health care summit. The media needs to start treating "Tea Party" fanatics who carry guns at political events exactly the way they'd treat the "New Black Panther" party carrying guns at political events.

The broader cause is the toxic political environment around SB 1070. You can't point a bulls eye on an immigrant group, attract half the heavily armed fanatics in the country who want to "guard our border" and not expect things like this to happen.

You and the corporate media can spin this all you want. But this is exactly what the "pwoggies" ave been predicting. Maybe you should revise your ideology to fit the facts and not the facts to fit your ideology.

FWIW, as to the original post, Old Curiosity Shop is maybe the only Dickens novel I haven't read.

But there was nothing phony about Dickens' hatred for the abuse of children. It's a constant in almost every one of his novels save perhaps Tale of Two Cities.

He dramatized in a way in line with Victorian sentimentalism.

Yeah, he wasn't a Contrarian Counterpunch Kool Kat. Thank God.

"Maybe you should revise your ideology to fit the facts and not the facts to fit your ideology."

Right back atcha.

From what I can tell, this guy was just a textbook paranoid schizophrenic who had incidents before this one. I doubt that he would have been receptive to social pressure or arguments about the proper way to exercise second amendment rights.

From what I can tell, this guy was just a textbook paranoid schizophrenic who had incidents before this one.

I agree. But this still happened in Arizona. You can try to censor my word association response. Black. White. Tall. Short. Arizona. Racist wingnuts. But I'm still going to have them.

I doubt that he would have been receptive to social pressure or arguments about the proper way to exercise second amendment rights.

But that's not the point. The point is how easily the open carry of weapons at Congressional town halls is tolerated. One paranoid schizophrenic can very easily hide in a crowd of 100 other people, all carrying guns. He can't easily hide if the first person who shoes up packing heat at the Congresswoman's rally is told to "take that gun somewhere else."

Uh... I kind of doubt that he was carrying openly, or that open carry laws had anything to do with this at all really.

It was a low security public event. Crazy man showed up with a gun and shot a politician and a bunch of other people. It's not exactly a new type of incident that only happens in Arizona, or never happened before the tea party era.

BS:

...The media needs to start treating "Tea Party" fanatics who carry guns at political events exactly the way they'd treat the "New Black Panther" party carrying guns at political events...

But they won't.

Furthermore, I doubt your liberal overlords would really want this. They need people to be afraid. Of the cops and of one another. It's not an unhappy accident that the Tea Party has been puffed up to the level at which it currently exists in the public mind-- love it or hate it. Don't kid yourself. That's what both liberals and conservative "leadership" wanted all along. Nothing sells quite like fear when you're picking somebody's pocket and pushing them ever more aggressively into the role of de facto prisoner.

So the supposed "leadership" of the liberals won't stir itself to offer anything other than the same old overpriced, poisonous, pre-chewed moralistic mush they've always offered. And now, one of their own (I assume) beloved figureheads has been sacrificed by the trained seals ostensibly on the other team. That's the problem when you coldly and calculatedly start shit you can't control and don't truly intend to control.

Lack of control is the point. Fear is the point. Don't you get it, BS? If the face of dissent in America can be painted as murderous, uncontrollable, and of course only Right Wing, liberal leadership and their little pals across the aisle get a bigger and bigger license to abuse us. For our own good.

I feel bad for Giffords, in the sense that her causes are pretty stupid ones to be shot for. Supporting that horrid "healthcare reform," or whatever other shit Obama's been ladling out these past several years? Arguing over whether Pelosi or some other condescending, wealthy ghoul should gloat in public about all the things we can't have because they need to be "off the table" so s/he can wave around that stupid-looking mallet? Sure, it's horrible, but it's nothing we don't see all the time, every day.

Plus, it's kind of a shame the gunman had to mow down all those other people just to get at this supposed locus of all evil in the universe. But the gunman is clearly screwed up mentally. A lot of people are in this country who don't get the help they need until it's far too late to avoid horrible damage to themselves and others. What else is new?

Somehow, because of an ongoing problem with leadership and their media servants which do nothing but enrich themselves with ever more toxic dog-and-pony shows, we should all now be thrilled at the prospect of body searches and more harassment from Security (public or private or both) should we stir ourselves to go to Town Hall meetings --or any other public gathering-- in the future? Because of a few lunatics, we'll now all be treated as lunatics in the making. That's what domestic dissent is, in the eyes of your supposed leadership, BS: a mark of lunacy. Once they can brand us in that fashion --all of us as crazed gunmen (gunpeople?) in the making, they can do whatever they want in order to make ever-more-sure we can't touch them, either in the literal or figurative sense.

You think they'll stop with just looking you over at the door to see if you've got a big gun? You've got to be fucking kidding me.

Nicely done, Xeno.

Thanks, Crow.

In case it's not obvious, I hear you about the little girl and her family. :(

"this is exactly what the "pwoggies" have been predicting"
exactly
and watch them do the heavy hand wringing and right shaming
that ..if it clicks with mr and mrs shlub
only boosts the DONKEYCRAT clown car crowd

of course i needn't notice how this possible
outcome contradicts your hyper security reflex

Ugh. The cosmos hates decency.

The little girl was born on 9/11™. And that is getting some pwog attention.

After reading this thread, I wonder if I really do believe in democracy?

Will public discourse ever rise above the level of a faculty meeting?

Michael's original point was perfect, perfectly expressed, beyond indisputable, needing no comment.

So I should just shut up, but I have to say that the exploitation of private suffering for public gain, by the political class, is a long-standing ritual. We almost expect it. It's also why, in some peoples' mouths,like Cheney or Rumsfeld, it sounds literally ghoulish.

But they won't

Straw man. We "need" to end militarism if we want an equitable society. You're confusing "should" with "is likely to."

Furthermore, I doubt your liberal overlords would really want this. They need people to be afraid

My "liberal overlords" at the New York Times are making the exact same argument you are, that "both sides" are equally to blame, what "we" shouldn't politicize this "horrible tragedy."

Arguing over whether Pelosi or some other condescending, wealthy ghoul should gloat in public about all the things we can't have because they need to be "off the table" so s/he can wave around that stupid-looking mallet?

Maybe you think town halls are fake. Why do you think you have the right to speak for all of us. Town halls aren't fake. They count. That's why we didn't have them before the Iraq War. They didn't want to give people the opportunity to showcase opposition.

You think they'll stop with just looking you over at the door to see if you've got a big gun? You've got to be fucking kidding me.

Yet another straw man.

I never said we should depend on "they." I said that it should become socially unacceptable to bring guns into a congressional town hall.

The way to prevent new repressive laws from being passed is to prevent them from having an excuse. A group of people come together. They can either make up their own rules or have rules imposed on them. Make your own rules.

If you see someone with a gun at the health care summit, ask him to leave. Get people to go along with you. Do what people do when Fred Phelps comes into town.

Or just stay home and keep your head buried under your pillow.

Michael's original point was perfect, perfectly expressed, beyond indisputable, needing no comment.

You sound like you're in a cult.

Good God, but you're dull as shit, B.S.

Maybe you should go let them run you through the dryer with a better grade of fabric softener next time.

Good God, but you're dull as shit, B.S.

Sounds like disagreeing with you gets you angry.

But that's kind of the point of not having guns at political meetings, isn't it?

Yes, B.S., My Sweet. You are truly the sockiest sock what ever terrorized Teh Internets. We all turn red with rage at the very mention of your handle du jour.

Here. I made this medal for you out of an old beer bottle cap and some tinfoil that I fished from the recycling bin. But you'll have to provide your own safety pin or static cling or whatever. I'm not made of money.

Thus Owen:

NH is [...] the nascar and country music capitol of the northeast

Here. I made this medal for you out of an old beer bottle cap and some tinfoil that I fished from the recycling bin.

Thank you. I'll take it as my reward for helping you break your writer's block. You seem quite pleased with your little rant. Good. I like helping people express themselves.

That said, I'm honestly a little confused at the vehemence of your comment. I'm trying to find where you actually disagree with me.

You're talking about broad societal trends, I'm talking about what happens when a group of people get together and have a public event, any kind of public event.

Looking at the NY Times live blog it appears that Jared Loughner might not be as mentally ill as you're painting him. There seems to have been some pred-meditation.

But even if he was just a total nutcase, how much damage could he have done if he had been able to do nothing but heckle?

The reaction to Bill Sykes' comments is further evidence of what happens when someone who has a grasp of reality pierces the ideological bubble of a delusional cult. His insights are so accurate, and so grounded in reality, that the blinkered don't know how to react.

Bill is reacting to the political world as it is. The rest of you, predictably and with reflexive groupthink, are trying to make the story fit your prejudices and preconceived notions.

If you dare actually come out of your bubble, or off of your perches, and actually listen to the worlds of the Pima sheriff --- if it's even possible for you to listen to the words of a dreaded cop --- you'll get all the answers and insights you need in this case.

I go away for the day and look at all the fun you folks have been having.

"Nobody, even in Arizona, would tolerate guns at a children's birthday party."

Clearly, the person who said this hasn't been to Arizona much.

Coming to this late, and ignoring the silly sockputtetry, I just want to give a thumbs up to both MJS and ms xeno. Amen.

"Sockputtery."

I love it! :D

very nice post, i certainly love this website, keep on it