Sarah Palin and Republicans Deny Connection to Az Shooting

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emocratic Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in the head earlier today in Arizona, and six other innocent bystanders were killed by the same gunman, including a Federal judge. In all, the final tally was 20 people, six deaths and 14 others wounded in various degrees.  Jared Lee Loughner, is the killer's name.  So many incidents of violence by yet more unhinged conservatives.

This is an event of huge proportions.

All the more so since it was originally Sarah Palin who "targeted" Gifford by name as well as by district in her map in which she targeted 20 Democrats in crosshairs.

This, no doubt will injure Palin in her quest for more and more power.  She already has the undying support and adulation of the lunatic fringe. But more importantly, there has been no word at all, from the right wing Republican leadership.

Notice that Whoopi Goldberg makes a very important observation in this video.  "For all the talking heads, if any violence comes out of this, it will be on your hands."  She did not mention Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, all of whom use militaristic war terms in their ever increasing violence laden rhetoric.  At a rally last spring, Glenn Beck called upon his disciples for all liberals to be removed, destroyed, eliminated.   O'Reilly has denied several times that he has any responsibility, especially in the shooting deaths not only of a much loved doctor who gave his time pro-bono to help women who needed abortions, but also the man who entered a church in Tennessee, a congregation of Unitarian Universalists in the sanctuary of the church during the service.

What is now very clear, is that the right wing rhetoric of hatred and violence must stop.  Human decency demands it.  Yet the talking heads at Fox News have almost talked themselves out of any and all responsibility for these many tragic events.    

This catastrophe marks the end of access.  Public access to celebrities and politicians.  No more Congress On Your Corner appearances at the local Safeway or Mall.  Security at Red Carpet events will have to be increased ten-fold.

Most people by now have seen the third video--- of the Americans for Prosperity Rally where the protesters, ultra-conservatives all, display disgraceful behavior toward a handicapped man.  But some have not seen it.  This is the sort of thing which must be stopped.  The Koch brothers are the big moneyed, unseen hands, funding this entire rally and The AFP astro-turf organization.

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Fascinating to see the right wingers go into overdrive to spin this thing away from themselves. Kinda like a man who sneaks a silent but toxic fart in a crowded elevator and then purses his lips and wrinkles his brow at an innocent little old lady next to him, so as to make everyone think it was her that did the terrible deed. That's the GOP congressional leadership burning rubber, spinning their wheels, to disavow any responsibility for this unspeakable tragedy. But this time they can't get away with it.

Not so far in the past, Bill O'Reilly brazenly denied any responsibility for the murder of Doctor George Tiller, the deeply compassionate abortion doctor, despite the fact that for months Billo had been using violent imagery while demanding retribution from his TV audience to punish the good doctor. 

"Baby Killer" is how O'Reilly referred to Doctor Tiller.  Tiller risked his reputation and his life due to the cranks on the right.  He was willing to do what very few doctors do: handle late stage abortions.  But somebody has to do it.  He was a very brave and compassionate man.   

Glenn Beck called on his Tea Party disciples to get rid of the dangerous liberals. "All liberals must be eliminated," Beck said.

Sarah Palin has denied any responsibility and even went so far as to deny that her infamous map with trigger cross hairs targeting 20 Dems who voted for the health care reform bill, were actually the cross hairs of a gun. What she said at the time, was, "Don't retreat. Reload." No, those weren't gun cross hairs.

Then what were they? Elvish runes?

The Truth is out there staring us all in the face, and there's no way the right can spin it away from themselves and still maintain a shred of intellectual honesty or just plain human decency. But then the right has never really cared much about such things as intellectual honesty and human decency. Just as they always do--- they leave turds floating in the public pool and then try to claim the left made them do it. Whenever they get caught they cry "it's really the fault of the liberals!"

ROTFLMAO

They must think the whole world is way stupid and that they, the usual GOP talking heads, sound really convincing. But this time they don't. Not convincing at all. I have little doubt that the GOP wordsmith, Frank Luntz, the guy who has come up with so many negative spins, such as Obama-care, and Job killing, and tax-relief is holed up in a hotel room somewhere in downtown DC, working his pencil to a nub trying to spin the Republican Party's way out of this mess. But so far, the right presents a picture of drowning men grasping at straws. The GOP just doesn't have the moxie to own their own shit.

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The Republican Takeover and Repealing Health Care Reform

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n the day that Republican Leadership in DC renounces their own lavish health insurance benefit program is the very day I will be happy to listen to legitimate arguments about why it's necessary to repeal the lame, watered-down, verging on piss-poor, lobbyist dictated program afforded to the people of America, which, by the way, contain less than half the benefits of people throughout the rest of the world.  Not to mention the fact that, more than 70% percent of Americans, left and right, are strongly against any tampering with the health care reform bill as it is.  Hey, the bill Congress finally did pass at least leaves the insurance companies still standing.  That is a lot more than I would have done were I to rule the world for even half an hour.

It is simply immoral and unethical to rip big profits off of anybodies' health.  Yeah, that's right, to reap obscene profit and bonuses from health care for the working class is just that---an obscenity!  Not only do Americans, in general, oppose this proposed repeal but so do more than 90% of the medical community.

Here is where the Republicans have got it all wrong:  3% of Americans say that the deficit should be paid for by eliminating Social Security.  4% percent say Medicare is the problem.  But 61% of Americans say we must raise the taxes on the rich.  That's an awfully big gap, there.  And just why is it that the Repukes insist on this extension of the tax cut for the richest Americans anyway? We know that they are little more than lackeys for rich corporations.  But most of the rich are fair minded people who say they would not mind paying more in taxes. Something does not add up!

We have seen too much damage to America brought about entirely by health insurance companies trading on Wall Street promising to pump out profits for investors.  Capitalism is antithetical to Christianity.  For all practical purposes, the GOP is the party, not merely of NO, but the party of the true Anti-Christ!    

Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand and all the lobbyists on K Street, can suck my cock!

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The Common Good

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he phrase, the common good, is everywhere these days.  My wife brought home a container of eggnog and on the side, in the self-promotion copy, there it is:  even the dairy farmers are using ringing phrases such as The Common Good. The commercial use of the phrase took me aback. True the dairy farm is an organic farm.  The use of the word Organic is certainly code for liberalism.  A liberal farmer is almost a contradiction of terms.  The usual farmer is one who feels that paying taxes is a form of socialism or communism, and those who believe in that stuff are thieves who are trying to pilfer money from the farmers pocket.

But now, this commercial use of the phrase opens the door for corporations to use the phrase which we have taken as our shibboleth for liberalism.  But if John Boehner can claim that he speaks on behalf of the American people, and it is a stretch to think that this might have even a grain of truth, I worry that banks can claim that they too, are working for the Common Good, even though it is all too apparent that the banksters are working for their own individual self-interest and to that end feel entirely free to be the ones who are actually lifting the farmer's wallet.  Come to think of it, Fox News has made such an issue of this Common Good thing that no right winger would ever use it for any reason.

If you think that my statement about the thievery of banks is too un-generous, consider that the farmers of North Dakota formed their own state bank.  Why?  Because the banks were too aggressively giving the farmers a raw deal over too long a time. Check it out.  Banks will steal anything not nailed down.      

I first came to be introduced to the phrase one night at dinner at a restaurant, on a recent visit  to Rome, Italy with 2 Jesuits.  Quite liberal Jesuits, at that.  Obama had just been elected.  Europeans were giving us, my wife, Marian and me, thumbs up, because they loved the idea of Obama as president. We all were euphoric.   My brother, Jim, the other Jesuit, got us settled in our rooms in the 17th Century pallazzo Papal owned Jesuit residence.  Then he and his fellow, Jesuit, David, took us out for dinner at one of those sublime little bistros just around the corner, in Rome.  In the course of conversation it became apparent that in America, as well as the rest of the world, Capitalism has failed us miserably.  These are the death throes of a corrupt crony capitalism.  And the reason, it also became all too crystal clear,  was, or is greed, or overweening self interest.  "Where's mine?" and "what will happen to me?" are the whimper and whine of the self-absorbed.  
As the light dawned on me that the paradigm was worn out and a new paradigm is needed, I groped for a word or phrase.  David, the Jesuit from Scotland, handed the phrase to me.

"The Common Good," David said, "is what you are looking for." He said it simply and quietly. But as I was ready to hear it, perhaps for the first time, he might as well have been shouting it from the roof top.  The Common Good thundered into my ear.  And has never left.      

But now, that it is being bandied about in the interests of commerce, what is to stop the evil corporations, indeed, all of Wall Street, from using the phrase.  To draw the unsuspecting in.  The old fable of the wolf in sheep's clothing.  They lie about everything else, so why would they not lie about the use of this phrase.

We will have to, at some point define the term--- narrowly.  To please the critics.  Though clearly many Republicans dislike the phrase.  There is a video on YouTube where the Republicans on Fox News immediately yell "Socialism!" at the mention of The Common Good!  But, on the other hand, let them yell their loudest.  I am a socialist.  A Democratic Socialist.  People without morals, without ethics, who are utterly devoid of real humanity are not worth listening to.  Indeed they only listen to each other.  Truth is that which is so.  That which is not truth is not so.  So---Who would not say these beings are self-destroying ciphers and liars?  They not only are against the common good, but they are against everything that is decent and wholesome.  Like the Bush regime, they will lie, steal and murder anyone who should be so unlucky as to get in their way.  Is this not the way of the Anti-Christ?

At the very least, are they not The Hollow Men T.S. Elliot warned us about?

I am sorry to have to say this,  but the truth is I put these videos on the page in precisely the reverse order.  So if you watch the last one first and the fist one last they will make more sense.♦

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