Despicable

As a politically-conservative heavy metal fan who plays ultra-violent videogames, how have I not killed motherfucking everyone yet?

I'm seriously.



By now, everyone's heard about the tragic, horrific, disgusting, [insert as strong an adjective as can be found to denounce what occurred] events perpetuated by the asshole pictured above in Tucson this weekend. There's not much to add to it at this point in terms of the facts.

At this point, one can merely pray for the families of the victims and for the lives and well-being of those injured, including US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the presumptive target of the attack.

The slain include, from Wikipedia:

• Christina Taylor Green, 9, of Tucson. Green was accompanied to the meeting by a neighbor. Green died at University Medical Center. Born on September 11, 2001, she had appeared in the book Faces of Hope: Babies Born on 9/11 (page 41). She was the daughter of Los Angeles Dodgers scout John Green and Roxanna Green, the granddaughter of former Major League Baseball player and manager Dallas Green and second cousin to actress Sophia Bush. She was in third grade and had recently been elected to the student council at Mesa Verde Elementary School.
• Dorothy "Dot" Morris, 76. A retired secretary from Oro Valley. Her husband George survived two gunshot wounds while attempting to shield her.
• John Roll, 63. Roll was the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for Arizona. Roll was a native of Pennsylvania and a 1969 graduate of the University of Arizona. He began his legal career as a bailiff in Pima County Superior Court and in 1980 joined the office of the U.S. Attorney. He was appointed to the Arizona Appeals Court in 1987 until he was named to the federal bench by President George H. W. Bush in 1991. He had served as presiding judge since 2006.
• Phyllis Schneck, 79. Homemaker from Tucson.
• Dorwin Stoddard, 76. Shot in the head while trying to protect his wife Mavy. She spoke with him for 10 minutes before he died of his injuries.
• Gabriel "Gabe" Zimmerman, 30. Zimmerman worked on Giffords's staff as a community outreach director. He was engaged to be married.
  

So incredibly sad, particularly with respect to the 9 year old, Christina Green, granddaughter of former major league manager, executive and pitcher Dallas Green.

However, if anyone wanted an opportunity to see the true nature of the Left in America, the last 3 days have served as a microcosm of all that is wrong with liberals in the United States.

You can almost hear the disappointment from those on the Left that Jared Lee Loughner is not a conservative, that he is not a "teabagger," that he did not take his marching orders from Sarah Palin, that he is not the caricature that they so desperately want to portray him to be - facts be damned! But that's not to stop them from doubling down on stupid in order to repeat the narrative lie over and over in an attempt to make the false true.

You know the old line by Joseph Goebbels that, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

This weekend has been one big lie from the Left, from Keith Olbermann to Paul Krugman to everyone of their little minions on Twitter.

What despicable human beings.

But unlike them and their views of their political opponents, I recognize that they're not half as despicable or evil as Jared Lee Loughner.

There simply are not words to do justice to his status, and to try would only undermine the value of the words themselves.

Obviously, I've read a LOT of commentary over the last three days, but I wanted to highlight a few articles here for you, the reader, if you're so inclined, and for posterity's sake.

First, Michelle Malkin, on her own website, outlines "The progressive 'climate of hate:' An illustrated primer, 2000-2010":

The Tucson massacre ghouls who are now trying to criminalize conservatism have forced our hand.

They need to be reminded. You need to be reminded.

Confront them. Don’t be cowed into silence.

And don’t let the media whitewash the sins of the hypocritical Left in their naked attempt to suppress the law-abiding, constitutionally-protected, peaceful, vigorous political speech of the Right.

They want to play tu quo que in the middle of a national tragedy? They asked for it. They got it.

Next, Jim Lindgren, over at The Volokh Conspiracy, details "Jared Loughner’s Anti-War Views":

Now that Caitie Parker has been confirmed as a friend of Jared Lee Loughner’s, it seems relevant to ask whether Loughner was still a left wing radical, as he was when Caitie last saw him over two years ago. Among the clues are his apparent postings under the name Erad3 at Above Top Secret (ATS). That Erad3 and Loughner are one and the same is indicated by his cross-posting of some of the same material on both YouTube and ATS. In searching through Loughner’s posts as Erad3, several stand out.

On July 7, 2010, Loughner posted his assertion that the war(s) in Iraq and Afghanistan “is a war crime from the Geneva Convention articles of 1949”:

There was help with cleaning the uranium from the Iran and Iraq war in the 1980’s?

Article 33 of the Geneva Convention is the prohibit of pillage.

All military invasions with armed forces into a foreign country are war crimes in the Geneva Convention articles of 1949.

The Iraq and Afghanistan war of 2010 is a military invasion with armed forces into a foreign country.

Therefore, Iraq and Afghanistan war of 2010 is a war crime from the Geneva Convention articles of 1949.

Ouch! For the thoughts of war.

In a thread on unemployment, Loughner quotes with seeming approval, portions of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserting “the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity” and “the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care.”

And then there are his frequent attacks on religion and Christianity, e.g.:

Crap on God!
Crap on God!
Crap on God!

Talk to the toilet seat for a hour.

Of course, many responsible people think that the current wars are a “war crime.” Perhaps the majority of the world believes that the state owes people health care and a good standard of living. And at least a couple of the bloggers on this site are atheists (including myself). But these views are much more common on the left than on the right, as is the belief that 9/11 was an inside job.

From reading through page after page of Jared Lee Loughner’s rantings, I see no evidence that he has changed from the left winger that he was in 2007. Indeed, less than six months ago, he was calling the Iraq and Afghan Wars “war crimes” under the Geneva Convention.

Over at the Wall Street Journal, Glenn Reynolds has some words to say on "The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel: Those who purport to care about the tenor of political discourse don't help civil debate when they seize on any pretext to call their political opponents accomplices to murder":

American journalists know how to be exquisitely sensitive when they want to be. As the Washington Examiner's Byron York pointed out on Sunday, after Major Nidal Hasan shot up Fort Hood while shouting "Allahu Akhbar!" the press was full of cautions about not drawing premature conclusions about a connection to Islamist terrorism. "Where," asked Mr. York, "was that caution after the shootings in Arizona?"

Set aside as inconvenient, apparently. There was no waiting for the facts on Saturday. Likewise, last May New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and CBS anchor Katie Couric speculated, without any evidence, that the Times Square bomber might be a tea partier upset with the ObamaCare bill.

So as the usual talking heads begin their "have you no decency?" routine aimed at talk radio and Republican politicians, perhaps we should turn the question around. Where is the decency in blood libel?

To paraphrase Justice Cardozo ("proof of negligence in the air, so to speak, will not do"), there is no such thing as responsibility in the air. Those who try to connect Sarah Palin and other political figures with whom they disagree to the shootings in Arizona use attacks on "rhetoric" and a "climate of hate" to obscure their own dishonesty in trying to imply responsibility where none exists. But the dishonesty remains.

To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves. But those who purport to care about the health of our political community demonstrate precious little actual concern for America's political well-being when they seize on any pretext, however flimsy, to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.

Where is the decency in that?

And finally, Jack Shafer, stands up "In Defense of Inflamed Rhetoric: The awesome stupidity of the calls to tamp down political speech in the wake of the Giffords shooting":

The great miracle of American politics is that although it can tend toward the cutthroat and thuggish, it is almost devoid of genuine violence outside of a few scuffles and busted lips now and again. With the exception of Saturday's slaughter, I'd wager that in the last 30 years there have been more acts of physical violence in the stands at Philadelphia Eagles home games than in American politics.

Any call to cool "inflammatory" speech is a call to police all speech, and I can't think of anybody in government, politics, business, or the press that I would trust with that power. As Jonathan Rauch wrote brilliantly in Harper's in 1995, "The vocabulary of hate is potentially as rich as your dictionary, and all you do by banning language used by cretins is to let them decide what the rest of us may say." Rauch added, "Trap the racists and anti-Semites, and you lay a trap for me too. Hunt for them with eradication in your mind, and you have brought dissent itself within your sights."

Our spirited political discourse, complete with name-calling, vilification—and, yes, violent imagery—is a good thing. Better that angry people unload their fury in public than let it fester and turn septic in private. The wicked direction the American debate often takes is not a sign of danger but of freedom. And I'll punch out the lights of anybody who tries to take it away from me.

So, ultimately, in the spirit of Mr. Shafer: Fuck Liberals and their bullshit demagoguery.

But, really, don't shoot them.

And just to lighten the mood a bit:



Until next time, chubies.