12 | January | 2011 | Robot Pirate Ninja

I hope not to have to spend too much time on this topic. I’ve already said my piece, the data stands on its own.

I am going to point out some of the inadvertent arguments a few pundits have brought up to disavow any responsibility for this tragedy, and how they make a really strong for argument taking some.

First up, the real victim in all of this: Sarah Palin

After this shocking tragedy, I listened at first puzzled, then with concern, and now with sadness, to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event.

“Irresponsible statements”…why does that phrase ring a bell? Oh yeah. Getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar does usually lead to concern, and then sadness. It is also usually accompanied by quick deflection and accusation of others. To wit…

If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

There’s two things that jump out of this statement, both very revealing and hopefully enough people will see how dangerously hypocritical this woman is.

First up…the explicit acknowledgement that “blood libel” serves only to incite hatred and violent, and that it is reprehensible. Think on this for a moment, in Palin’s dismissal of any responsibility for the violence associated with her own heated rhetoric, she cites the hatred and violence that might be directed at her by heated rhetoric.

For her point to hold any water here, it would have to have been her, not Giffords who was the actual victim of violence.

Second, and to understand how absurd Sarah Palin’s claim is here, you need to understand a few things. One, Gabrielle Giffords was Jewish. Two, Sarah Palin targeted Giffords in the campaign, both with fiery rhetoric and images. Three, Giffords, and not Sarah Palin, was shot. That last bit is important. Sarah doesn’t seem to have quite yet processed that essential piece of information.

The jewish lady being the target of the physical violence after repeated irresponsible statements is not nearly as a big a victim of “blood libel” as the Christian lady who repeatedly directed that heated rhetoric that way (and who now is afraid of attacks inspired by people pointing out her history of vitriolic rhetoric….can you taste it? The hypocrisy is so thick here I am choking on it).

KRAUTHAMMER’S LINK

How much blame should Palin take? Charles Krauthammer (noted Republican apologist and general douchebag) makes it very clear here (after you wade though a bunch of half-statements and accusations against liberals).

Furthermore, the available evidence dates Loughner’s fixation on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to at least 2007, when he attended a town hall of hers and felt slighted by her response. In 2007, no one had heard of Sarah Palin. Glenn Beck was still toiling on Headline News. There was no Tea Party or health-care reform.

I see…so Loughner is fixated on Giffords since 2007, but doesn’t get the gumption to reload and use a second amendment solution until 3 years later in 2010 after Palin takes her bulldog act to the national stage, and the Tea Party storms the Capital (unarmed…this time)…at the urging of Glenn Beck, and the political discourse in this country descends below the sewer, largely driven by the continued irresponsible statements of one Sarah Palin.

Thanks Chuck. I know you didn’t mean to, but you have layed out the most concise reasoning possible for why Palin should, at the very least, quit attacking others verbally after they’ve been attacked physically. And for once, just once, admit that maybe, just maybe, she’s a bit over the top and should take it upon herself to try and tone down the volume.

But no. None of that. She’s the victim here of the those vicious liberals who, BTW…ect.., etc.., etc..

BROOK’S SOLUTION

David Brooks, on the hand, while still dismissing any sort of responsibility for anyone or anything in this, appears to have completely forgotten recent history when he offers some solutions…

If the evidence continues as it has, the obvious questions are these: 1) How can we more aggressively treat mentally ill people who are becoming increasingly disruptive? 2) How can we prevent them from getting guns? 3) Do we need to make involuntary treatment easier for authorities to invoke?

1) Universal Health Care

2) Sane Gun Control

3) Expand state power and control? Really?!

This wouldn’t be such a bad list of suggestions (except for that last one), David, if the response to them wasn’t already known and goes thus;

1) DEATH PANELS COMING TO GET YOU!!!

2) OBAMA IS COMING FOR YOUR GUNS!!!!

3) SOCIALISM, SOCIALISM, SOCIALISM!!!

In conclusion, I’m going to re-iterate Krauthammer’s inadvertent point with Palin’s text…

There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated?

Back before you showed up. There was a time in this country, not so long ago (back before September 2008 to be precise), when one Presidential candidate accusing another of finding common cause with terrorists would have been beyond the pale. Instead it became your bread and butter, and one of your more tame themes.

If we can be that beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy and can live in a country that would allow intolerance in the equal rights that again our military men and women fight for and die for for all of us. Our opponent though, is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country?”

The sad thing…I don’t expect Palin to stop, or even slow down. Her own delusions have her sitting in the Oval Office someday, fightin’ terrorists and keepin’ Putin in his place. Fortunately that is never going to happen, unless we amend the Constitution again and change the Presdent’s military rank to Victim-in-Chief.

If we do that, I’ll deal with the Palin question again, until then, I’m pretty much done with her.

UPDATE: Fox News, Palin’s only current employer, agrees, she is the real victim here. BTW, if you read the details on this one…you see how obvious it is that Fox is the one pushing this…

A four-minute video montage of the the “tweets” — apparently sent after Saturday’s massacre in Arizona that left six people dead and 14 wounded, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords — was posted to YouTube on Tuesday.

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The video montage, set to the tune of The Beatles‘ “Imagine,” had nearly 400 views of as Thursday afternoon.

Wow, nearly 400 views….that’s huge. Definitely worthy of national coverage. Especially when, after getting into the details of who was making the threats, it gets even dumber.

Attempts to reach some of the Twitter users who posted the messages were unsuccessful, but one claimed she is a “Reagan conservative” whose intent was taken out of context.

BTW, this is going to be used as another one of those examples on how “both sides are bad”, even though only one side keeps getting shot.

I’m not going to document all of this, but I wanted to bring up a couple examples of what is going to be a very strong political trend for the next 2 years. When the election is dominated by old people trying to turn back the clock to when they weren’t so scared, you can bet the results are not going to be pretty.

First up…North Carolina decides that racial segregation was actually a pretty good educational policy, because…well…check the bold for the completely unassailable logic used here…

The sprawling Wake County School District has long been a rarity. Some of its best, most diverse schools are in the poorest sections of this capital city. And its suburban schools, rather than being exclusive enclaves, include children whose parents cannot afford a house in the neighborhood.

But over the past year, a new majority-Republican school board backed by national tea party conservatives has set the district on a strikingly different course. Pledging to “say no to the social engineers!” it has abolished the policy behind one of the nation’s most celebrated integration efforts.

..

School Board Chairman Ron Margiotta referred questions on the matter to the district’s attorney, who declined to comment. Tedesco, who has emerged as the most vocal among the new majority on the nine-member board, said he and his colleagues are only seeking a simpler system in which children attend the schools closest to them. If the result is a handful of high-poverty schools, he said, perhaps that will better serve the most challenged students.

“If we had a school that was, like, 80 percent high-poverty, the public would see the challenges, the need to make it successful,” he said. “Right now, we have diluted the problem, so we can ignore it.”

Yes, I’m quite sure that is exactly what is going to happen. So, right now, the problem is diluted, but if you concentrate the “problem”, it’s easier to fix. If there’s one thing I’ve noticed in cash-strapped states, it’s how much time and treasure they commit to poverty-stricken public schools.

Down here in Texas we had some…I know it’s now officially “blood libel” to point this out…but we had a bunch of nutjob Tea Partiers trying to take over the (already extremely conservative) Republican party with obviously bigoted tactics (very ironic considering the latest “it’s never our fault” defense from the right)…

Last month, several Tea Party activists formed a right-wing coalition to oust Rep. Joe Straus (R) as Texas House Speaker. They began circulating emails with anti-Semitic messages against Straus, who is Jewish. The groups ran robo-calls and sent out e-mails demanding a “true Christian leader,” and calling Straus’ opponent, Rep. Ken Paxton (R), “a Christian Conservative who decided not to be pushed around by the Joe Straus thugs.”

Last week, the Texas Observer’s Abby Rapoport reported that she had obtained an email exchange between two members of the Texas State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) — Rebecca Williamson and John Cook. “We elected a house with Christian, conservative values. We now want a true Christian, conservative running it,” Cook said in one of the emails. “Since the SREC governs state Republican Party affairs,” Rapoport wrote, “this marked the first time an elected party leader had semi-openly called for a ‘Christian conservative’ Speaker.” Cook then explained his views to Rapoport in a subsequent telephone interview:

“When I got involved in politics, I told people I wanted to put Christian conservatives in leadership positions,” he told me, explaining that he only supports Christian conservative candidates in Republican primary races.

BTW, just so you know, they failed.

I know, I know, it’s yet another example of how the Tea Party is not filled with complete and utter nuts, mostly motivated by bigotry and racism. And I say it’s not another example of that, because as an obvious shining example of such things, it is therefore dismissed as evidence, and means nothing (when you can’t argue with something, dismiss it out of hand…it’s an old trick).

Speaking of dismissing good information out of hand, the Tea Party also greatly affected the national political scene. Now, instead of a Congress working to deal with an obvious and growing problem, we are going to focus on investigating the people who noticed and documented the now obvious and growing problem.

First, there’s committee chairman Ralph Hall of Texas. He’s a former Democrat, now a Republican, and insists he is not a climate skeptic. And certainly he’s not as extreme on the issue as Rep. Dana “Dinosaur Farts” Rohrabacher, whose challenge Hall fended off to head the committee.

Still, Hall has said that the ‘ClimateGate’ pseudo-scandal suggests there’s a “dishonest undercurrent” in the scientific community. Actually, it shows a “dishonest undercurrent” in the community’s critics. If Hall can’t see as much, then one can legitimately worry about his chairmanship.

It actually goes downhill (as far as the quality of scientific knowledge is concerned) from there, if you can believe it.

And just to demonstrate my point, may I say that…

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s a tie: Last year equaled 2005 as the warmest year on record, government climate experts reported Wednesday.

The average worldwide temperature was 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 degree Celsius) above normal last year. That’s the same as six years ago, the National Climatic Data Center announced.

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“The warmth this year reinforces the notion that we are seeing climate change,” said David Easterling, chief of scientific services at the climatic data center. Nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000, he noted. The exception was 1998, which is the third warmest year on record going back to 1880.

Easterling said the data “unequivocally” disproves claims that climate warming ended in 2005.

The temperature readings are collected at land stations and from ships and buoys at sea. The “normal” reading they use is the average worldwide temperature for the 20th century, which was 57.0 degrees Fahrenheit.

Temperatures over land surfaces were the warmest on record last year, averaging 1.80 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, while ocean temperatures were the third warmest on record at 0.88 degrees above average.

Don’t worry though, I’m sure the Tea Party Congress will be quick to point out that because one of the scientists that collected this data once said something bad about Sarah Palin, all their research, data, and conclusions are tainted by blood libel. Hence, the thermometer is a lie.