Snipers V. Mobsters

Roadkill recently made an interesting comment about Left and Right Wing violence. The WTO climate change summit is melting down in Copenhagen and it didn't end up like the "Battle in Seattle" that erupted at the WTO conference a decade ago. RK's point is well taken.

The Left made a lot of noise about the TEA Party and the guns its members were legally bringing to rallies. There have been cops killed, a variety of lone-nut-job killings this year and a variety of examples of violent episodes against minorities. But then again, in Copenhagen there have been the protesters going head-to-head with the police in riot gear...like we saw at the 2008 GOP convention in St. Paul.

Road Kill thinks there is a lack of reporting on the violence coming from the Left and an over-emphasis of potential violence on the Right. I got no clue as to what is being reported on "mainstream media" and cable news...I don't watch either...I don't have cable or satellite TV. I daily try to read a couple of newspapers -- St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Wall Street Journal. I'll check out Business Week, Rolling Stone, the New Yorker, Unte Reader, Yoga Journal and a few other periodicals at my local library. I download a variety of pod casts from Left, Right and Center sights and listen to them on the MP3 player in my car. I don't feel qualified to weigh the balance scales of reporting of Right and Left violence. However, I can find examples of the reporting on both ends of the ideological media spectrum.
That said, I've been thinking about this and have come to the conclusion that the type of violence erupting from the Left and Right may reflect the ideological ideals of the two sides. I see much of the Right violence being pigeoned holed into the single-gun type. Since the Right emphasizes the "individual," won't you expect that type of "individualist" violence? On the Left we see the collective violence of protesters en mass against the police in riot gear. This types of violence often films well and happens around gathering like WTO conferences and political conventions. When things go astray at the mob protests of the Left, the "bad apple" excuse generally gets dragged out. Evidently, the 99 percent of those protesters were there to put flowers in gun barrels.

Of course, the extreme Left likes to do individual things like Earth First tree spiking and PETA lab destructions. Save the trees and lab rats and to hell with the humans!

Just a few thoughts on Roadkill's comments. Below are some pictures and thoughts related to Roadkill's comments and my thoughts...

"If you think the conservative "Tea Party" movement is daunting, take a look at a new report issued by the Department of Homeland Security that says right-wing extremism is on the rise throughout the country.

In the report officials warn that right-wing extremists could use the bad state of the U.S. economy and the election of the country's first black president to recruit new members to their cause..."

Source: Huffington Post

Meanwhile, this week in Copenhagen, police are dealing with the violence of left-wing extremists:


"By contrast, the piece of crap report issued on April 7 is a sweeping indictment of conservatives. And the intent is clear. As the two spokespeople I talked with on the phone today made clear: They both pinpointed the recent "economic downturn" and the "general state of the economy" for stoking "right-wing extremism." One of the spokespeople said he was told that the report has been in the works for a year. My b.s. detector went off the chart, and yours will, too, if you read through the entire report -- which asserts with no evidence that an unquantified "resurgence in right-wing extremist recruitment and radicalizations activity" is due to home foreclosures, job losses, and...the historical presidential election."

Michelle Milikin
Conservative blogger


"Why? Well, it's a document that discusses the potential threats that we can expect from "rightwing extremists" (no hyphen, for some reason) in the coming months; there's the usual stuff about guns, illegal immigration, and disgruntled war veterans, plus the new wrinkle of our having elected an African-American President. The report concludes, unsurprisingly, that we have to worry more about "lone wolves and small terrorist cells" than anything else."

Moe Lane
RedState.com

"...the media likes to focus on violence in protest, but I think what’s useful about this to know is that it’s a reflection of the silencing of civil society’s voice that’s happening, that the Danish government is so intense on cracking down and silencing critics of the talks that they’re even resorting to pushing violence on very explicitly nonviolent protesters..."

Joshua Kahn Russell
Rainforest Action Network organizer
on Copenhagen protest

Mommy, Where Does Government Debt & Deficits Come From?

Remember the good ol' days when our government was bless with surplus spending? Like when George W. Bush took office in 2001. Below is some interest bits of a Time magazine article from 2/19/2001 when Bush's tax cuts were being pushed through Congress. This would be when the House Majority Leader was Dick Armey. Armey if the current head puppeteer of the TEA Party movement and one of those currently squealing the loudest about growing government deficits and debt.
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"The last gasp of liberalism."

Ari Fleischer
White House spokesman

"It looked like Big Government picking winners and losers."

Representative Ellen Tauscher
Democratic Leadership Council


"...During the campaign, Bush's tax-cut plan seemed too grandiose to many voters. But layoffs, slipping economic indicators and a blessing from Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan made the idea credible--and now Washington can smell a big tax cut the way hogs smell slop. Politicians are scrambling to the trough. Some of their schemes are well-intended--Senate majority leader Trent Lott wants to change the alternative minimum tax so it doesn't take such a big bite out of middle-class taxpayers--but all of them threaten to grow the beast. Lott's plan would bring Bush's plan to $1.8 trillion; House majority leader Dick Armey would inflate the cuts to $2.6 trillion. Corporate lobbyists "are baying at the door" of the Ways and Means Committee, says Florida Representative Mark Foley, with pleas for up to $1 trillion in goodies--lower corporate tax rates, larger write-offs for computers, more tax credits. Kick in other tax subsidies that important constituencies like farmers want extended, and the tab runs up to nearly $4 trillion.

"Time out!" pleads Max Baucus, senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. 'Let's slow down here.'..."


"...Bush's surprise at the feeding frenzy is, of course, an act. White House aides wanted a fever for the political cover it provides. When G.O.P. conservatives howl for a $2.6 trillion cut and the Democrats come in at $900 billion, Bush's plan becomes the reasonable compromise at $1.6 trillion.

But hogs can be hard to control. Bush summoned CEOs to the White House last week and warned that he would fight any move toward business-tax breaks. "We should focus on people first, not corporations," he said. He delivered an even blunter message to Congressmen at the White House Thursday night: "I'm not going to let the tax plan get pencil-whipped." Brave words, but few in Washington believe them. Corporations gave $134 million in soft money to the Republicans to get Bush elected. Their chiefs expect more than White House cuff links in return..."

Here's a link to the Time article: What Is That Oink, Oink?

Put Your Political Patty Dukes Up -- 2012 GOP Hopefuls

To millions of Americans, Sarah Palin (and don't forget Michelle Bachmann) is the one person who can save the US from the perils of communism, gay marriage and gun control. But can she ever win the White House, or will she destroy the American right?

Read God has chosen her to lead our country at the Guardian.

"Sarah! Sarah!...She's worth waiting through the night for...In a funny way, we needed someone like Barack Obama to be elected to wake us up."

Robin Case
Laidoff autoworker

"What's the difference between a pitbull and a hockey mom? Lipstick."

Sarah Palin
Acceptance speech at 2008 Republican National Convention
"Something that I think sometimes people don’t like to hear is that secular people can be sometimes even more dogmatic in beliefs than people who are not secular. ... In some ways, to believe in evolution is almost like a following; a cult following — if you don’t believe in evolution, you’re considered completely backward. That seems to me very indicative of bias as well."

Congressman Michele Bachmann
Stillwater Gazette
September 29, 2003

"Literally, if we took away the minimum wage—if conceivably it was gone—we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level."

Congressman Michele Bachmann
Jobs, Energy and Community Development Committee (2005)

"If we allow businesses to be prosperous and accrue capital, they’ll be giving their employees more than they can even begin to imagine. But when we continue to tie cement blocks on businesses (like the minimum wage) and constrain them, they can actually do less than their employees."

Congressman Michele Bachmann

"Our land is everything to us. It is the only place in the world where Cheyennes talk the Cheyenne language to each other. It is the only place where Cheyennes remember the same things together. I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it--with their life. My people and the Sioux defeated General Custer at the Little Big Horn."

Sarah Palin
Going Rogue

SOCIALIST HEALTH CARE SAVES TEABAGGERS

"He [President Bush] kissed me in Minnesota, too."

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann
January 24, 2007


"On November 5, 2009, thousands of protesters came to Capitol Hill in Washington for Congressman Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn.) protest against health care reform, capping months of fear-mongering about the dangers of so-called “socialized” medicine.

However, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank noted that at one point, one of the protesters had a heart attack. Luckily, federally-employed medical personnel were able to quickly attend to him — even though they were part of government-run health care, which is supposedly quite dangerous. They rushed over, attaching electrodes to his chest and giving him oxygen and an IV drip.

Then a D.C. ambulance and fire truck, lights flashing, pulled in behind the lawmakers “and the patient, attended to by about 10 government medical personnel, was being wheeled away on a stretcher just as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) stepped to the microphone. “Join us in defeating Pelosi care!” he exhorted. A few members stole a glance at the stretcher.” By the end of the day, “medics had administered government-run health care to at least five people in the crowd who were stricken as they denounced government-run health care.”

Read more @ Progressive Populist

Just think...a few years ago Michele Bachmann was trying to slip her tongue into Bush's ear after the State of the Union address and now she leading the TEA Party. Unfortunately see isn't mentioning Bush's name at any of the TEA Party rallies.