Usa Thread

[Guest lazyphil]

i can see your point LK. i'm not american, i dont live there, i dont really follow the news there. it sounds pretty miserable there these days.

[kamui]

 

What's needed is an increased sophistication of the audience' date=' not a sterilization of media. Even the bullshit media.

 

[/quote']

 

Well good luck with that dave. I think what we're seeing is the result of political polarization and a general dumbing down. Government by sound bite and media spin. Maybe the shooting in Arizona will make people think but not for long IMO. The only thing that might make a difference is a rapid improvement in the economy.( But not by printing more money).

 

Voter education? It won't happen anytime soon.

The US state in the absolutely worst shape, Arizona, is moving more and more to the radical right. Voters support those politicians most who put the whole state into deep shit. That the politicians are responsible for the collapse of the state doesn't really matter to the voters as long as the politicians represent a pure anti-government ideology.

 

Interesting read: Tea Party in the Sonora: For the future of G.O.P. governance, look to Arizona

 

 

PS: reading the article explains McCain's recent flip-flops and his move the radical right. He is under threat by the Tea Party and fears that he won't be reelected.

[Flashermac]

I remember the John Birchers back during the 1964 campaign saying that Barry Goldwater wasn't really a conservative. They're right ... in today's Arizona, poor old Barry would be considered a pinko.

 

 

[Flashermac]

[color:blue]Look who else put 'bull's-eye' on Giffords

Leftist blog points finger at Palin, while scrubbing 'dead to me' rant[/color]

 

 

Shortly after news broke of the attempted murder of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., the left-leaning blog Daily Kos was swift to scrub its post from a Tucson writer explaining how the congresswoman was now "dead to me."

 

[color:red]One of the blog's diary writers, identifying himself as BoyBlue, had written a post only two days before the shooting titled "My CongressWOMAN voted against Nancy Pelosi! And is now DEAD to me!"[/color]

 

"I am from the Tucson area and live in Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' district," BoyBlue wrote. "Today, just a little while ago, I saw on Andrea Mitchell Reports that Giffords voted against Nancy Pelosi as our minority leader. … Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is dead to me now."

 

Several news sources and commentators have sought to analyze yesterday's mass shooting in Tucson that left six dead and Giffords in critical condition, while many blogs and columns have blamed the nation's heated political "rhetoric" for inspiring people toward violence against their elected officials.

 

Sarah Palin in particular has been singled out for criticism by CBS News, the Guardian and others for publishing a "target map" on her website using images of gun sights to identify the districts of 20 House Democrats up for election in last year's mid-terms, including Giffords.

 

[color:red]Daily Kos joined in the criticism, and the blog's founder, Markos Moulitsas, tweeted early yesterday, "Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin," with a link to Palin's map.[/color]

 

[color:red]Moulitsas, however, had also posted what he called a "target list" identifying Giffords. In a 2008 Daily Kos post, Moulitsas listed Giffords as one of dozens of representatives with "a bull's-eye on their district" for being a "bad apple" Democrat.[/color]

 

The "dead to me" diary has since been deleted from Daily Kos, while Moulitsas' "target list" is still viewable.

 

Police have named and apprehended 22-year-old Tucson resident Jared L. Loughner as the perpetrator of yesterday's massacre, making it highly unlikely that "BoyBlue" is also the shooter.

 

The Daily Kos diary writer identifies himself as a "gay" man whose wife left him last year and who suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the face. BoyBlue also appeared on the blog again today, issuing an apology to "this site, the victims and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords."

 

"Most of you know by now my diary bemoaning Rep. Giffords' voting against Nancy Pelosi has been taken by the far right to preemptively protect themselves," Boy Blue writes of his now-scrubbed, previous post.

 

"I made a VERY poor choice of words when I partially titled the diary, 'now dead to me,'" he continues. "Of course I wished no harm to Gabby."

 

He continues, "I fully apologize to all the victims in this shooting, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, for my poor choice of words in that diary. I fully and respectfully apologize to this blog and to Markos himself for the bad publicity amongst the right wing this has caused. … I apologize to the DailyKos membership and readership for being maligned by the far right blogs.

 

"However, I have to offer a heartfelt 'f--- you' to the right-wing blogs," he writes, "for even mentioning my username here in any connection to that unspeakable and unthinkable horror."

 

In his "apology" post, BoyBlue twice states that he suspects the shooting is instead best blamed on supporters of Giffords' opponent in the 2010 mid-terms, Republican Jesse Kelly.

 

"I would bet my house that it will come out that some disgruntled former Jesse Kelly right-wing supporters did this," BoyBlue writes.

 

 

 

Just like "1984" - rewrite history!

 

 

 

[Flashermac]

Jared Loughner, Alleged Shooter in Gabrielle Giffords Attack, Described by Classmate as "Left-Wing Pothead"

 

 

[color:red]A classmate of the man accused of shooting Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords this morning describes him as "left wing" and a "pot head" in a series of posts on Twitter this afternoon.[/color]

 

Caitie Parker did not immediately respond to our request for an interview, but her "tweets" in the hours after the shooting paint a picture of Jared Loughner as a substance-abusing loner who had met Giffords before the shooting. She says Loughner described the congresswoman as "stupid and unintelligent."

 

We've confirmed that Parker and Loughner went to school together at Mountain View High School in Tucson and that both attended Pima Community College, so her claims of knowing Loughner seem to be legit.

 

Parker "tweets" that she and Loughner were in the band together and were friends until 2007 when he became "reclusive" after getting alcohol poisoning and dropping out of college.

 

She describes him as "quite liberal" and as a "political radical."

 

 

 

Phoenix New Times

 

[dave32]

I think it's necessary to have a hierarchy of values to navigate through life with. I'm not talking about the militant 'family values' being enforced by the evangelicals.

 

So when I say an increased sophistication of the audience, I mean they're at a state where they can critique from a wider perspective.

 

There are a lot of areas where I prefer America to Europe. Political discourse isn't one of them.

 

At school I did see a Politically Correct environment putting a stranglehold on dialog, and at that time guys like Limbaugh made me smile -- though I hardly ever agreed with him, enjoyed seeing the shit stirred. I think these guys were almost a backlash to the whole PC thing.

 

But, I stopped listening during the last presidential election after hearing 3 consecutive days of absurd attacks on Obama's wife. Enough. For whatever reason, our political dialog is getting a lot worse, not better.

 

And guys like Limbaugh, whom I enjoyed at one point, have become caricatures repeating the same 'liberal this, liberal that, liberal liberal liberal...' ad nauseum. There needs to be some iota of common ground and mutual respect.

 

As for video games, I wish the shooter would have been at home playing one instead of on the street with live ammo.

[Flashermac]

The "blame it on someone" frenzy reminds me of what I heard when JFK was shot. I was in my first year at UCSB, then a decidedly liberal university with a largely apethetic student body. One of my profs was almost frantic, practically praying that one of those "rightwing nuts" had shot the Prez. Others were echoing the same thoughts. When the assassin turned out to be Lee Oswald, a pro-Castro leftwing loony, you could almost see their faces drop. Many libs even today buy into whacky other assassins theories, determined to make history happen they way they wanted.

 

 

[LizardKing]

LOL! Rallying on about gold standard, states rights, anti-immigration & anti-healthcare is a lefty? Nice try, but simply a bunch of lies. Pure TeaParty rightie shit that is...

[LizardKing]

The "blame it on someone" frenzy reminds me of what I heard when JFK was shot. I was in my first year at UCSB, then a decidedly liberal university with a largely apethetic student body. One of my profs was almost frantic, practically praying that one of those "rightwing nuts" had shot the Prez. Others were echoing the same thoughts. When the assassin turned out to be Lee Oswald, a pro-Castro leftwing loony, you could almost see their faces drop. Many libs even today buy into whacky other assassins theories, determined to make history happen they way they wanted.

 

Ya, the magic bullet that defies physics is quite the reasonable explanation...

 

[color:purple]The Warren Commission's "single bullet," according to all documentation:

 

* had no thread striations (fine lines etched onto a copper encased bullet tip and/or bullet side casing by clothing threads when the bullet first penetrates clothing threads),

 

* was marked with no blood,

 

* was marked with no human tissue,

 

* had no pieces of clothing attached,

 

* had lost only 1.5% of its original average weight,

 

* had a composition that was consistent with the composition of the metal fragments recovered from Connally (see section on neutron activation analysis).[/color]

 

Sounds good...if we ignore all we know about ballistics!

 

[dave32]

Everyone in CA praises UCSB, but when I go there, it's just a bunch of boring white-collar folks traipsing around pretending to be hippies as they cruise in the new Mercedes. Nice beaches though.

 

Yeah, let me add ---> to me, media outlets like Limbaugh and Daily Kos are same same. No give and take, no compromise, we are the good guys -- the other side is evil.

 

The irony is, 'liberal' and 'conservative' doesn't even mean much now -- there's so much overlap and grey area.

 

Actually reading your post indicates that maybe it's always been like this? I dunno. As misplaced as some of the idealism in the 60s may have been -- at least then you knew what you were fighting for. (I think).