Well, I'd say this about wraps it up.

This needs no elaboration, but I'll just bring back the Glen Reynolds quote from the previous post.

There's a climate of hate out there, all right, but it doesn't derive from the innocuous use of political clichés. And former Gov. Palin and the tea party movement are more the targets than the source.

Who can argue with that?

If you need more evidence, amuse yourself by browsing through the merchandise here.

This is a particularly innocuous political cliche.

All Images & Content property of RWS Prod. Copyright © 2002-2008

 

 
H/T to Tux

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Triggering The Shooters

This billboard is located only a few blocks from where Christina Taylor Green, Representative Gabrielle Giffords and many others were gunned down.



Sarah Palin: "America's Enduring Strength" from Sarah Palin on Vimeo.


Limbaugh, and Palin, and Beck -- Oh, My!

Rivers of Blood, indeed.  That's where the politics of Blood Libel takes us.

There's a climate of hate out there, all right, but it doesn't derive from the innocuous use of political clichés. And former Gov. Palin and the tea party movement are more the targets than the source.

Thus sayeth Glenn Reynolds, University of Tennessee Law Professor and Pajamas Media  Pundit.

Well, sayeth I, what better way to victimize Sarah Palin and her ilk than to cast a bright light on them!  Not to mention their innocuous use of political clichés.


In the video above, Palin makes an uneven appeal for national solidarity, while deftly shifting the responsibility for the Arizona massacre from rabid right wing rhetoric to the lone "deranged gunman" a "single evil man." She chastizes us that we must not attempt to "apportion blame" for this terrible event.

Here are a few excerpts.   What strikes me is the same thing that struck me during the Bush administration: so much talk about personal - here, "individual" - responsibility and accountability, but somehow always for other people. Never for the actions or words of Regressives in positions of high responsibility.  I've highlighted some of the more remarkable passages.

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.


President Reagan said, “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.” Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state, not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies, not with those who proudly voted in the last election.

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 in those “calm days” when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols?

And we will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of differing opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults.

We need strength to not let the random acts of a criminal turn us against ourselves, or weaken our solid foundation, or provide a pretext to stifle debate.

Shorter Sarah: Not my fault, so shut up.  And don't try to stifle MY SIDE of the debate.

One of those who claims right wing rhetoric and imagery bears a direct responsibility is I.  Another is Thom Hartman; and a H/T to him for his show today, where I learned the term STOCHASTIC TERRORISM, which is exactly what we are getting from the right wing these days.  It is no different in principle from the inflammatory words and videos issued by Osmam bin Ladin or Anwar al-Aulaqi.

Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to stir up random lone wolves to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.

This is what occurs when Bin Laden releases a video that stirs random extremists halfway around the globe to commit a bombing or shooting.

This is also the term for what Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, and others do.  And this is what led directly and predictably to a number of cases of ideologically-motivated murder similar to the Tucson shootings.

In the interest of fairness and balance, I invite anyone to point out to me examples of Stochastic Terrorism originating on the American left.
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Department of Huh?!?

This is kind of a What the Hell?!? post, but I couldn't wait until Friday.

The sole black Republican Party district chairman in Arizona resigned from his post in the wake of Saturday's shooting, citing threats from the Tea Party faction and concerns for his family's safety

This is beyond schendenfreude.  The Rethugs - or at least the extremest faction - is willing to eat their own - or at least frighten them into running for the hills.  I speculated about the future of the Rethug party the week Obama was elected president.  I had very low expectations for the behavior of the Right, but they have underachieved in a way that is nothing sort of stunning.

Sort of blows the whole Conservatives Are Not Responsible Theory.

Now, if you were to say, Conservatives are IRRESPONSIBLE, that would be a different story.

H/T to the LW.
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Haiku Wednesday - Resolutions -- Er . . . Doldrums

 Doldrums (Update)

My brain must be in

Winter doldrums -- that's why I

Wrote on last week's theme! 

Resolutions

I

Resolution passed.
Gov. will sign. No picketers
At child's funeral

II

No resolutions

For me.  I'm not perfect but

I just don't keep them

III

I need new glasses

Lens resolution is not

Working for my eyes

IV

Motion by half-step:

Dissonance resolution

Into consonance

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The Best Government Money Can Buy

Government of the Multinational Corporations, by the Hedge Funds, for Big Finance.

This is the direct result of the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision.  Read all about it.




H/T to Susan.

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Just Because I Need Some Cheering Up

TINK!

I saw this clickable picture link in somebody's add sidebar recently.  Don't remember where, and it really doesn't matter much.   The link goes to this site.  It's the sort of thing that conservatards find very annoying, which is a no extra charge bonus!

Cheers!
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Sunday Music Blogging 1/09

For  Christina Taylor Green

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Quote of the day - (I hate it When Ezra Klein is Right)

Ezra Klein, discussing an idiotic, plainly illegal action before the Wyoming State Legislature, said this (emphasis added):

Given the extremism of the rhetoric at the top {of the Republican Party - JzB}, is it any wonder that there is incredible fear trickling down to the grass roots? If those are the stakes, then of course criminalizing any implementation of the bill makes sense. Frankly, if those are the stakes, then violent resistance might be required. 

Those aren't the stakes, of course. They're just the words. And words slip sometimes. Things come out too angry, or too quickly, or too sharply. I've had my share of experience with this. But words matter. And the Republican Party hasn't been slipping up: It's been engaged in a concerted campaign to scare the population into opposing health-care reform. That may be good politics, but it can have bad consequences.

Ezra posted this on Friday morning.

The very next morning, 6 innocent people died, and 11 others were seriously injured in an attempt to assassinate Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a blue dog Democrat from Arizona who was placed in the cross hairs by Sarah Palin because she voted for Obamacare - a plan that is essentially Romneycare -- a plan that sensible Republicans would support.

Of course, there are no sensible Republicans.  Click through the link in Ezra's quote, above.

Which is a big part of why we are so screwed.

H/T to Krugman:

Just yesterday, Ezra Klein remarked that opposition to health reform was getting scary. Actually, it’s been scary for quite a while, in a way that already reminded many of us of the climate that preceded the Oklahoma City bombing.

You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.

Nice thought Paul.. Don't hold your breath.

Update:

Predictably, the Palin camp and other right wingers are running from responsibility and making lame excuses.  Lame, lame, lame.

But SarahPAC staffer Rebecca Mansour, who has been tweeting in defense of her boss since the tragedy took place, is stating that the crosshairs were never intended to be gun sights. 

"We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights," she said in an interview with talk radio host Tammy Bruce Saturday. "It was simply crosshairs like you'd see on maps." Bruce suggested that they could, in fact, be seen as "surveyor's symbols." Mansour added that "it never occurred to us that anybody would consider it violent" and called any attempts to politicize the Arizona tragedy "repulsive."

The suggestion that the symbols were related to guns seemed to come, however, from Palin herself. On March 23, Palin tweeted to her supporters a note about the aforementioned Facebook message, writing, "Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: 'Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!' Pls see my Facebook page." And as Politico's Jonathan Martin points out, in November Palin boasted about defeating 18 of the 20 members on her "bullseye" list.

Of the 20 districts targeted by Palin, Giffords and Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.V.) were the only two candidates to win over her PAC's chosen Republicans.

Update:   Surveyor's symbols.   Like the ones used by the Zodiac Killer.  H/T to Doc Amazing, commenting at LGM.

Not only lame, but a (Updated with a link:) flat-assed lie!

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Shadow Shot Sunday - 1/09; Mellow Yellow Monday - 1/10

Samantha was born

With an intuition for

Knowing how to pose

Six Word Saturday 1/08

Things seem bad - and they are. 

(The longest Six Word Saturday EVER)

Things didn't actually get worse today. We just got a powerful indication of exactly how bad it is out there, and how much insanity is being promoted by the genuinely evil individuals and organizations who have co-opted American conservatism.   Evidently, Sarah Palin has taken down this graphic from her Sarahpac web site.   I was able to find it here, after seeing it on TV news today.  

The fourth name in the first column is Gabrielle Giffords, who was gunned down and seriously wounded today while attempting to address her constituents in broad daylight, in an incident that left, as of this writing, six other people dead, including Federal Judge John Roll and nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green, along with several others wounded.

You might think it hyperbolic of me to lay this event directly at the feet of Sarah Palin, and others in the far right who have used the symbols and rhetoric of armed violence to sway the opinions of the ignorant, stupid, and unstable.

You would be wrong.

That is from a campaign event promotion, which I found here via LGM.

Here are the words of Sharon Angle, who came close to defeating Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, in an interview with Right Wing radio host Lars Larson, as reported by Larson to Greg Sargent.

I'm not kidding. In an interview she gave to a right-wing talk show host, Angle approvingly quoted Thomas Jefferson saying it's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years -- and said that if Congress keeps it up, people may find themselves resorting to "Second Amendment remedies."
What's more, the talk show host she spoke to tells me he doesn't have any doubt that she was floating the possibility of armed insurrection as a valid response if Congress continues along its current course.
Asked by the host, Lars Larson of Portland, Oregon, where she stands on Second Amendment issues, Angle replied:

You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said it's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years.
I hope that's not where we're going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.

Larson says Angle was floating the possibility of armed insurrection if Congress keeps it up under Reid et al.
"If it continues to do the things it's doing, I think she's leaving open that possibility," Larson said. "And I think the founders believed that the public should be able to do that when the government becomes out of control. It just matters what you define as going too far."
The most charitable interpretation here was that Angle was floating armed insurrection -- or "Second Amendment remedies" -- as a defensible response if electoral politics fails to change where things are headed under the current regime.

Click through for an audio clip of the quote.  Or here.

This is not an isolated incident.  Angle made a similar pronouncement to radio host Bill Manders.  This link also has an audio clip of Engel touting the possibility of  "2nd Amendment Remedies."

Do you know what had Engel prepared to support an armed revolution?  This, which Giffords voted for.

A brief rundown of the benefits of “Obamacare”:

• Children and adults with pre-existing conditions cannot be denied insurance
• Your insurance can’t drop you unless they can prove you committed fraud (before HCR, insurers would mysteriously cancel coverage for people who were diagnosed with illnesses like cancer)
• No lifetime limits or caps on health coverage
• Young adults will be allowed to stay on their parents’ insurance until they turn 26 (post-college grads under 26 represented one of the highest rates of uninsured people)
• Reviews on unreasonable insurance premium hikes
• Closed “donut hole” in Medicare, which will lift millions of elderly Americans out of poverty

The violent and  inflammatory rhetoric of Radio and TV host Glen Beck has already been implicated in a specific act of violence perpetrated by one of his listeners.

Here's "Armed and Dangerous" from Michelle Bachman.

If you want to get some background on today's shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, you can find it here.

This is what the blind hatred of the right has brought us to.  Evil, lying right wingers plant ideas of violence in the fevered brains of unstable individuals, and murder is what we reap.

More thoughts, from

Southern Beale

Asymptosis

Tom Tomorrow, via P6

Updates:

Tux

In comments at Naked Capitalism, C.C. from Tucson says this (quoted in full):

As a resident of Tucson with mutual friends of someone killed, this hits very close to home.
I hold complicit the justices of the Supreme Court who voted in favor of corporate power and special interests in overturning settled law by allowing unlimited monies from anonymous sources to promote their special interests via hysteria and misinformation.

Many citizens in Tucson remarked that the Arizona mid term elections had hit a new low of unintelligent discourse and degenerate tabloid absurdity funded with something like half a billion dollars flooding in from unknown domestic and international origins. Congresswoman Giffords was a frequent target.

And while I’m venting…our bankrupt state legislature spent their time on nonsense like enacting new gun laws where by anyone can carry a concealed weapon without any licensing or handling training into a bar or restaraunt or public area. I am sick of gun worshipping politicians who use inflammitory rhetoric like Sarah Palin to pander for sound bites like ‘don’t retreat, reload’ and with crosshair graphics over the photos of opposing politicians…..including Ms. Giffords!!

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What The Hell?!? Friday - - MENDACITY! Edition

What a strange emotional state I'm in as I mix the schadenfreude this video elicits with my regret at having wasted the initial WTH?!? post on mere GOLD!  Alas, alack, and a great big sigh . . .

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Stock Market Assesment - Part 1

Here's a look at 140 years of the real (inflation adjusted) S&P 500, data courtesy of Robert Shiller's Irrational Exuberance web site.  The graph is the natural logarithm of the monthly data.

The pink line is the best fit for the entire data set.  The dark purple line is the extrapolated best fit for data through 1994 only.  Since 1995, the stock advance has been so extreme that there is now about a third of a log unit gap between the two lines.   To overemphasize the point, upward motion in the index since 1995 has been so extreme, it caused a dramatic shift in a best fit line based on quarterly data going back to 1871!

In 1995, the S&P 500 average launched like a rocket off the pink trend line.  All was well until 2000.  Then a jagged decline began, and though the fall into the 2003 bottom was steep and hard, it stopped well above the trend line.  Not so the 2007 collapse, which took a quick peek below trend in the spring of 2009.

Of course, that's all based on the trend line for the entire set.  Consider the extreme altitude above the dark purple line.  Despite the steep drops, the index never came close to it.

Here's the same data, with 25 year standard deviation bands above and below the full data set (pink) trend line.

About 100 years ago, the index spent a long stretch mostly above the upper standard deviation line. After that, except for some brief spikes in 1929 and 1937, it fell to below the trend line (either one) for almost 40 years.  In the 60's the index pushed up against the upper standard deviation line, but never pierced it.   That was followed by a steep decline that lasted about 15 years.

Now, the index has been bouncing off the stratosphere for a decade, and popped through the upper standard deviation line twice - the first time for a six year stint.  And that's after spending nine straight years above the best fit line through 1994.

Update:

Taking note of how the slope of the best fit line was affected by the last 15 years, here is a graph of the slope over time, viewed two ways.  The blue line starts with the slope from 1870 to 1930, and increases the size of the data set with each passing year.  The pink line sweeps a 60 year envelope across the data set.  Make of it what you will.  But it looks like we're in a down phase, from an extreme high. {End Update.}

Where do we go from here?   Well - take a guess.  I don't have a crystal ball.  But it looks to me that a phase spent above the best fit line leads to a phase spent below it, and that time spent above the upper standard deviation line leads to a long steep decline.

Stay tuned.  In upcoming posts, we'll look at earnings and the P/E ratio.

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