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.
----

"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.

Hangin' Out Those "Family Values"

"Playgirl is not porn. I don't think it's a bad thing to do. Art, if you want to call it."

Levi Johnson
Playgirl pinup boy
Father of Sarah Palin's grandchild

"...I admit that I have winced at some of the lurid speculations about Governor Palin's family life, and thought them unkind and tasteless even as I lapped them up. She now claims that Levi Johnston is a fabricator when he describes a wildly dysfunctional Palin household. So then: what if she's right about him? It wasn't the liberal elite media who dug up this scapegrace and nudity artist. It was the Republican nominee for the vice presidency who hauled the lad before the cameras and forced us to look at him: a fit husband for her beloved daughter and an example to errant youth in general. Once again, one is compelled to ask which would be worse: a Sarah Palin who really meant what she merely seemed to say, or a Sarah Palin who would say anything at all for a cheap burst of applause..."

"...So there it is: anti-Washington except that she thirsts for it, and close enough (and also far enough away to be "deniable") to the paranoid fringe elements who darkly suspect that our president is a Kenyan communist. If you object to Kenyans interfering in the internal affairs of these United States, you really ought to raise an eyebrow at a candidate for the governorship of Alaska who accepts anointment from "Bishop" Thomas Muthee, a weird person who claims that witch removal in his Kenyan parish led to a reduction in crime, booze, and traffic violations..."

Read more of Palin's Base Appeal in Newsweek

What's In Your Finite Pool Of Worry?

Yesterday Roadkill made the following point in a comment:

"Funny how this all works. Seems like anytime there is a significant global warming meeting, rally, cor conference, mother nature sends a reality check."

Last night, as the first blizzard of the 2009-2010 winter was raging outside my window, I read a newspaper articles that provide parallel insight into RK's comment. This morning is I type this before I go out to shovel my driveway and the dog's kennel out and I think about a History Channel video I watched last night titled "A Global Warning!" The documentary looked back over the past 650 million years and reminded me the way things were and they way they will be.

I'm sure I care about the future of our planet, but as the article discussed below points out, we have a "finite pool of worry."

"We are collectively irrational, in the sense that we should really care about the long-term well-being of the planet but when we get up in the morning it's very hard to motivate ourselves."

Dan Ariely
Professor of behavioral economics
Duke University

"...Psychologists studying the issue say that the now-familiar warnings about climate change kick at emotional dead spots in all human brains -- but especially in American brains. Researchers have only theories to explain why people in the United States have done less than those in such places as Europe and Japan. Some think Americans are culturally leery of programs that the government might develop to target climate change, trusting instead that the free market will solve major problems..."

"...One U.S. researcher thought television is to blame: All those TV ads have made Americans more focused on their own wants, she theorized, and less likely to care about the long-term good...But the obstacles to progress -- internationally and in the U.S. Senate, where a climate bill is stalled -- aren't just mental...Climate change is a policy problem that has "psychological distance": In layman's terms, there's a sense that this is a problem for somebody else or some other time..."

Read Save the planet? It's irrational at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune


"Simply urging people -- or telling them that it's a good idea to recycle or conserve energy -- is the same as nothing."

Robert Cialdini
Arizona State University Professor

Just A Pinch Between The Right & Left

"The game seems to be that all countries pick a politically safe number.India is now joining that game. And the game started with the United States."

Navroz K. Dubash
India Center for Policy Research

"...Last week, President Obama announced that the United States, the world's second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China, would set a provisional target to cut its total greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and 83 percent by 2050. The next day, the Chinese government announced a target to slow emissions by reducing carbon intensity levels by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels.

Neither the Chinese nor the American plan satisfied many critics, who want both countries to commit to far bolder steps. Navroz K. Dubash, a climate change specialist in New Delhi, said the American pledge was actually a lesser commitment than it would have been obligated to meet under the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States refused to ratify. Mr. Dubash said that India had become a more constructive participant in climate change negotiations, but that the flurry of pre-Copenhagen announcements did not represent a breakthrough response to the crisis..."

Read more of India Announces Plan to Slow Emissions at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Compromise Pushes Nuclear Option

"The line I always remember from Winston Churchill is that you can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after all other possibilities have been exhausted. The good news is that we're there."

J. Wayne Leonard
CEO of Entery

“The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Our is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.”

Omar Bradley
US Army General

“Well you know boys, a nuclear reactor is a lot like women. You just have to read the manual and press the right button.”

Homer Simpson


"...When a brigade of Greenpeace activists stormed a nuclear power plant on the shores of the North Sea a few years ago, scrawling "danger" on its reactor, Robert Tindale was their commander. Then head of the group's British office, he remembers, he stood outside the plant just east of London telling TV crews all the reasons "why nuclear power was evil..."

Read Nuclear Power Regains Support at Washington Post

"It really is a question about the greater evil -- nuclear waste or climate change. But there is no contest anymore. Climate change is the bigger threat, and nuclear is part of the answer."

Robert Tindale
former director of Green Peace

"The national policy of the country in the 1970s was to wean ourselves from oil, so the government said, 'Go build coal and nuclear.' Then Three Mile Island happened, and all we had was coal. Now, it is fundamentally unfair to punish people for having carried out national policy...people in Indiana would be subsidizing people in California, and that's wrong."

James E. Rogers
CEO Duke Power

"I guess you could call it 'grudging acceptance. If we are really serious about dealing with climate change, we are going to have to be willing to look at a range of options and not just rule things off the table. We may not like it, but that's the way it is."

Steve Cochran
Environmental Defense Fund

"Because of global warming, most of the big groups have become less active on their nuclear campaign, and almost all of us are taking another look at our internal policies. We've decided not to officially endorse it, in part because we feel the nuclear lobby is already strong enough. But we are also no longer focusing our energies on opposing it."

Mike Childs
Friends of the Earth

"...The construction of nuclear plants was banned in Britain for years after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in what was then the Soviet Union. But now the British are weighing the idea of new nuclear plants as part of the battle against climate change, and Tindale is among several environmentalists who are backing the plan..."

"More than 40 Prairie Island Indian Community members attended a rally today and voiced their opposition to Xcel Energy’s expansion and nuclear waste storage plans for the nearby nuclear plant.

Today is Native American Heritage Day. As a way of honoring their ancestors and protecting the community, officials urged tribal members to contact state legislators and continue voicing opposition to Xcel's plans..."

"We need to let the power plant know we're going nowhere. This is our ancestral lands."

Ron Johnson
Tribal Council President

Read more @ Red Wing Republican Eagle

GOP Still Taking The Southern Route

"By the '70s and into the '80s and '90s, the Democratic Party solidified its gains in the African American community, and we Republicans did not effectively reach out. Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."

Ken Mehlman
Former Republican National Committee chairman

"The Republican Party walked away from the black community in the late 1960s. It was stupid. It was dumb to pursue a southern strategy and it came back to bite them in 1992."

Micheal Steele
Current Republican National Committee chairman

“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man.”

Former President Jimmy Carter

Republicans called Carter’s remarks “very destructive” (Newt Gingrich) or “an outrage” (GOP chairman Michael Steele, who happens to be black himself).

"Mr. Reagan, the ultimate political hero of so many Republicans, opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In response to the historic Brown v. Board of Education school-desegregation ruling, William F. Buckley, the ultimate intellectual hero of so many Republicans, asserted that whites, being superior, were well within their rights to discriminate against blacks."

Bob Hebert
The New York Times

Hypocritical Oath

"I am not a racist. I am simply a person speaking up to make sure patients don't get hurt by the government and by insurance companies...Because I've been so effective in pointing out how the government plans are going to hurt patients in very serious ways ... the only way they can neutralize my message is to discredit me personally."

David McKalip
Florida surgeon
Sender of image below via e-mail


"...The image is a pastiche. Obama's head is grafted onto a picture of a man wearing nothing but bead necklaces and a loincloth, his legs spread wide, his long, thick fingers grasping a stick in front of him. There's a bone through his nose and a confection of feathers and flowers on his head. The picture evokes the world of National Geographic that once gave children a guiltless excuse to indulge their curiosity in the flesh. Under the witch doctor picture is the slogan "Obama Care," with the red, white and blue campaign symbol serving as the O and a sickle and hammer as the C.

The statement McKalip and his cohort were making is thus a political pastiche as well: Obama is foreign, strange, not "natural born"; half-naked, he is a figure of danger, seductive perhaps for his exoticism, his magic--the promise of cures--but ultimately loathsome, at once clownish, somehow thrilling to confront but also frightening, certainly not someone a white man would want to leave alone with his daughter... and a communist to boot..."

Joann Wypijewski
Read more of Red Scare, Black Scare at The Nation.



"I genuinely regret the decision I made in passing this e-mail message along. Directly to President Obama, I sincerely apologize for offending him. This was, in no way whatsoever, my intention. The image has nothing to do with my feelings or thoughts on any race or culture. I recognize that this image is offensive and hope that the nation refocuses on assuring all Americans have access to high-quality, affordable health care with no party interfering in the patient-physician relationship. My intention is to focus directly on the issue at hand, which is putting financial and decision-making power into the hands of patients and taking it from government and insurance companies."

David McKalip's apology

Turn Your Head And Cough

"The amount of death and disease would be less, if all disease were left to itself."

Dr. Jacob Bigelow
1835

Nobody Said It Was Going To Be Fair

"Millions of people — in small islands, least-developed countries, landlocked countries as well as vulnerable communities in Brazil, India and China, and all around the world — are suffering from the effects of a problem to which they did not contribute."

Angelica Navarro
Chief climate negotiator for Bolivia

"Privately, we already hear the simmering resentment of diplomats whose countries bear the costs of our emissions. I can tell you from my own experience: It is real, and it is prevalent. It's not hard to see how this could crystallize into a virulent, dangerous, public anti-Americanism. That's a threat too. Remember: The very places least responsible for climate change — and least equipped to deal with its impacts — will be among the very worst affected."

Senator John Kerry


"That, in a nutshell, is the argument for climate debt. The developing world has always had plenty of reasons to be pissed off with their northern neighbors, with our tendency to overthrow their governments, invade their countries and pillage their natural resources. But never before has there been an issue so politically inflammatory as the refusal of people living in the rich world to make even small sacrifices to avert a potential climate catastrophe. In Bangladesh, the Maldives, Bolivia, the Arctic, our climate pollution is directly responsible for destroying entire ways of life — yet we keep doing it."

Naomi Klein
Read Climate Rage @Rollingstone


“Man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

Senator Inhofe (R-Oklahoma)
Senate Committee on the Environment

"There are very few objections to the theory as a whole; everyone in the scientific community agrees that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is on the rise, and almost everyone believes that it cannot help having some effect. To declare, as some editorialists have done, that the warming has not yet appeared and therefore the theory is wrong is like arguing that a woman hasn't yet given birth and therefore isn't pregnant."

Bill McKibben
The End of Nature

"The whole (global warming) thing is created to destroy America's free enterprise system and our economic stability."

Jerry Falwell
Religious Capitalist

When Two Roads Collide

“It’s time to heed the call from General McKiernan and others for more troops. That’s why I’d send at least two or three additional combat brigades to Afghanistan. We also need more training for Afghan Security forces, more non-military assistance to help Afghans develop alternatives to poppy farming, more safeguards to prevent corruption, and a new effort to crack down on cross-border terrorism. Only a comprehensive strategy that prioritizes Afghanistan and the fight against al Qaeda will succeed, and that’s the change I’ll bring to the White House.”

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)
2008 Presidential Campaign

"The Taliban often came into the village to ambush convoys, and then almost immediately the foreign air strikes hit us. Our children were killed; our crops were destroyed; our homes were damaged. There was nothing left for us there."

Afghan Villager


"The foreigners would bombard us, and the Taliban would come in and demand that we give them our sons...The Taliban have swarmed the village and have established checkpoints and outposts everywhere. Believe me, if there were even a slight possibility of return, I wouldn't be here. But there is none."

Sultan Mohammad
Afghan father


"If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress."

President Barack Obama

“If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

Lewis Carroll

Walls Of Dreams & Nightmares

"America was and is the immigrant's dream."

Don DeLillo

"As you know, I'm an immigrant. I came over here as an immigrant, and what gave me the opportunities, what made me to be here today, is the open arms of Americans. I have been received. I have been adopted by America."

Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Reagan went to Berlin and said, ‘Tear down this wall.' We went to San Diego and said, ‘Build a fence.’ It was just stupid. You have Hispanics saying, ‘I’m not going to vote for those guys because they don’t like me.’ ”

Dick Armey
Freedom Works lobbyist

Read Dick Armey Is Back on the Attack
@ New York Times Magazine


"...José and Victoria don’t like talking about their journey into America - that episode in their life is over. But the kids can’t keep from recounting the story, and the memory of the blisters on their feet walking north through the desert with their mother.

Ask José why he came here, and he will say he wanted a job with a wage that could support his family. He entered the U.S. legally with a work visa, but decided not to return after it expired.

Ask him why he stayed, and the undocumented Mexican sounds more like a patriot than an alien..."

Read more of A delicate existence: Undocumented and living on a Wisconsin dairy farm
at Wisconsin Watch

“I love this country (USA) because there are many opportunities, many jobs — not like in Mexico, and it’s more beautiful. Wherever one goes, one sees beautiful pastures.”

Jose
Undocumented worker living in Wisconsin

Tea'd Off

“Nobody has ever lived on this earth with the prosperity, the tranquillity, the safety, the security, the freedom and the peace that we Americans have enjoyed. Europe is governed by a concern for the well-being of the collective. That’s what they care about. What makes us different is we begin with the liberty of the individual. We got it right, and they got it wrong.”

Dick Armey
Former Republican House Majority Leader
Currently paid $500,000 annually as a Freedom Works lobbyist and TEA Party organizer

Political Fore Play

"Politics is about the improvement of people's lives. It's about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people."

Paul Wellstone


"Only two kinds of people can afford the luxury of acting on principle, those with absolute power and those with none and no desire to get any...everyone else who wants to be effective in politics has to learn to be ‘unprincipled’ enough to compromise in order to see their principles succeed."

Saul Alinsky
Community Organizer

Dobbs Stories - The Turd Degree

“You know, I discern more of a difference between then, which was under the Bush administration whom I was criticizing, and now, when it is the Obama administration and an entirely different tone was taken."

Lou Dobbs
Former CNN Commentator