Author: lemkin

DeLay Gets Three Years

Senior Judge Pat Priest sentenced him to the three-year term on the conspiracy charge. He also sentenced him to five years in prison on the money laundering charge but allowed DeLay to accept 10 years of probation instead of more prison time.

The former Houston-area congressman had faced up to life in prison. His attorneys asked for probation.

As one who assumed he’d never be convicted, much less sentenced to actual time… I guess I still say I’ll believe it when the bars slam shut behind him. If and when they do: Good riddance.

DeLay Gets Three Years

On Random Thoughts 306 and 307

politicalprof:

#306: Does anyone believe that the tragedy in Arizona would have been less dangerous and less tragic if 20 people had pulled out their guns and started firing at the shooter?

#307: Did anyone else notice that in Arizona, one of the most gun-friendly states in the United States, that the shooter was subdued by people who hit him and jumped on him? Not by armed vigilantes who wielded their guns?

On this topic I’d only add: does anyone think that Arizona’s gun laws, which basically amount to “anyone over 21 can buy, concealed-carry, and be armed at any time and in any place” make that state a safer place to reside?

Every time an incident involving a lone shooter occurs in a state with stiff gun laws, we’re treated to moans about “if only they’d let more people carry guns there, they’d have taken care of it before it ever started”; when it transpires in a gun crazed, heavily armed state like AZ: sounds of silence.

Journalists: How many folks on the ground in the immediate vicinity had guns on them? In the store? In the parking lot? Yet it was a well timed open field tackle that reportedly incapacitated the gunman.

peterwknox:stfuconservatives:roxanneritchi:

A deleted tweet from Sarah Palin. She is deleting anything that may show what she has said and done and advocated: TakeBackthe20.com, her tweets, posts on Facebook. She started doing this BEFORE she bothered to extend condolences to Griffords, the other victims of the shooting, and their families.

Do not forget this.

She should not be able to go out in public ever again without being shown or asked about this. Every day, every appearance, every press event.

Source: formerlyroxy-blog-blog

Climate of Hate; Just the Beginning

It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.

Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by 300 percent. A number of the people making those threats had a history of mental illness — but something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence.

–Paul Krugman, who reports in his blog that he hated writing this piece. It is, however, absolutely essential reading.

Climate of Hate; Just the Beginning

…the attempted assassination of a sitting member of Congress is inherently political, and politics is the process by which democracies negotiate the solutions to public problems. Conservatives know this. If the shooter had been a member of a Mexican drug cartel as some conservatives assumed, they would be calling for stricter immigration laws and blaming the White House for lax enforcement. If the shooter had been named “Mohammed,” no amount of evidence of mental illness would have persuaded conservatives that Islam wasn’t the culprit, and that the administration’s terrorism policies had failed. Instead, the shooter appears to have lurked on the extremist fringe of right-wing politics, much like Byron Williams and James von Brunn, and so conservatives are calling for a calm and reasoned assessment of the facts. The guilt is individual, rather than collective.

Adam Serwer
To which I add: yep.

A Kind of Relief

George Packer made several excellent points last night, one of which seems to be this morning’s emerging “serious person” consensus on the Giffords shooting and the political motivations (and their sources) that all-too-clearly underlie it:

It would be a kind of relief if Loughner operated not out of any coherent political context but just his own fevered brain.

Emphasis on coherent. Because it’s plain there are a number of right-wing talking points in this guy’s spew. Gold standard, government takeover, and other usual suspects have already emerged from his internet wake without the official investigation even getting started. But because the spew was most definitely a spew, and one that somewhat rarely qualified as English, well, those were just coincidental ravings of a lunatic and not something he heard repeatedly and then acted on. Just a lone nut, and both sides do it anyway.
Well, Cokie, Packer is ready for you:

…even so, the tragedy wouldn’t change this basic fact: for the past two years, many conservative leaders, activists, and media figures have made a habit of trying to delegitimize their political opponents. Not just arguing against their opponents, but doing everything possible to turn them into enemies of the country and cast them out beyond the pale. Instead of “soft on defense,” one routinely hears the words “treason” and “traitor.” The President isn’t a big-government liberal—he’s a socialist who wants to impose tyranny. He’s also, according to a minority of Republicans, including elected officials, an impostor. Even the reading of the Constitution on the first day of the 112th Congress was conceived as an assault on the legitimacy of the Democratic Administration and Congress.

Absolutely right. Just absolutely goddamned right. It is no coincidence that the entire week’s House agenda was instantly sidelined. Boehner and the rest knew the whole purpose of it was to create a hateful political sideshow. Sound and fury signifying nothing, but most certainly working to gin up some more fury. What’s the point of continuing with it if you can’t go before the microphone to talk about the coming tyranny? So that will just have to wait till next week. Because the Beltway media culture steadfastly refuses to learn from anything, least of all repeated, targeted domestic terror attacks. Time and time again, whether it be against the IRS, a member of Congress, government buildings, what have you, these are each dismissed as lone nuts operating on some incoherent babble and most definitely not taking marching orders from other lunatics that are routinely given the microphone on the most popular media outlets in the country. Don’t worry your pretty little head over the fact that their manifesto contains extensive quotes from Beck, Limbaugh, Bachman, Palin, whomever. That’s just incoherent ramblings. Both sides are equally guilty, and here’s an anonymous DailyKos comment that proves it.

Full Faith and Credit

John Chait sees some hope:

My guess is that Republicans are hearing from the business lobby that even risking a default would be totally unacceptable.

This because he notes Paul Ryan’s recent statement implicitly accepts that the debt ceiling will be raised (not can be, or might be):

“I want to make sure we get substantial spending cuts and controls in exchange for raising the debt ceiling”

Fair enough, Chait, and I’m sure they are already hearing it from the business lobby, but I think you’re forgetting the Tea Klanners in the back benches as well as the rump of the idiot Blue Dogs who all too often also think along similar, overly simplistic economic lines. We should never forget that a smaller and less organized contingent of these idiots managed to defeat the initial bailout, sending shockwaves through the markets that then and only then convinced them to do what was right (and not what played well with their foolish constituencies, most of whom want the US on a gold standard as soon as possible).

The problem with a similarly construed default bait-and-switch in which a symbolic first vote happens and then is undone some time later: the shockwaves in this case would be the end of the American economy as we know it. And there’d be no take-backs. It would simply be over. Once the genuine possibility of a default is even raised, you’ve basically defaulted. Why should anyone act otherwise in the aftermath of such a near-default? The thinking would immediately coalesce along the lines of: they didn’t actually pull the trigger this time, but we’re just one election away from something like that happening, and that’s more risk than we can bear. Get a few of these “I’m heading for the doors” mentalities together and our whole economic construct falls apart. Irrevocably.

They’re dumb enough, they’re bad enough, and dog gone it, people (will) hate them. But, rest assured, they’ll find a way to do it and will be laughing all the way to the gold deposit bank and calling it strict constructionism.

Job Killing vs. Actual Killing

Steven Pearlstein writes about the GOP’s latest tick: adding “job-killing” to the front of basically any Democrat-related noun. He finds just one teensy problem with the practice:

Repealing health-care reform, for instance, would inevitably lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths each year because of an inability to get medical care.

Although lack of effective regulation led directly to the deaths of 78 coal miners last year in West Virginia, Republicans continue to insist that any reform of mine safety laws is bad for miners’ employment.

Republicans also continue to oppose food safety legislation that could save the lives of hundreds of Americans killed each year by contaminated food, just as they oppose any regulation that would effectively keep assault weapons out of the hands of convicted criminals and narco-terrorists who kill thousands of innocent victims on both sides of the Rio Grande.

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

Job Killing vs. Actual Killing

“Fiscally responsible” is code for cutting taxes on rich people and gutting Social Security. Those are their goals, and that’s always been the case.

Duncan Black, simplifying it for you.
I’d only add that these same forces, and (of course) their media enablers, repeatedly include Social Security despite the fact that SS has its own funding source, is not in any imminent danger, and does not contribute to the deficit at all, nor will it for at least 45 years, even if we do nothing. But, by all means, it MUST BE DESTROYED by the end of the week or we all die. It’s the only possible conclusion for any serious person.

Milbank!

Well, I guess at least the GOP’s rampant and immediate hypocrisy is becoming something of a narrative over to the WaPo:

For two years, Cantor and his colleagues campaigned against high deficits. Now, in the new majority’s first major act, they plan to vote to increase the deficit by $143 billion as part of a repeal of health-care reform.

For two years, Cantor and his colleagues bemoaned the Democrats’ abuse of House rules to circumvent committees and to prevent Republicans from offering amendments. Now, Cantor confirmed on Tuesday, Republicans will employ the very same abuses as they attempt the repeal.

For two years, the Republicans complained about unrelenting Democratic partisanship. Now they’re planning no fewer than 10 investigations of the Obama administration, and the man leading most of those has already branded Obama’s “one of the most corrupt administrations” in history.

For two years, the Republican minority vowed to return power to the people. Now the House Republican majority is asking lobbyists which regulations to repeal, hiring lobbyists to key staff positions and hobnobbing with lobbyists at big-ticket Washington fundraisers.

Now, of course, Dana just can’t resist larding on a lot of straw man false-equivalency crap about being “just as arrogant and overreaching” as the recent Democrat Majority that was so clearly operated by and for Lord Satan. But I’ll take what I can get. The A|B comparison stuff runs first after all. And Lord Jesus and the MSM knows the innernets are making us stoopid and shortly as measured by span of attentions.

Milbank!