Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (597918)	1/13/2011 3:51:22 PM
From: J_F_Shepard	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1574599

The bullets of Tucson rained in from the right Froma Harrop • January 13, 2011 House Speaker John Boehner seemed truly appalled by the murderous rampage against Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and constituents in her Tucson, Ariz., district. But the Republican's contention that this was "an attack on all who serve" wasn't quite right. The apparent gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, may be a 22-year-old loner and is probably insane, but his attack was not against "all who serve." It was on a Democrat who had been vilified by a gun-waving right wing that Boehner's party tolerates and feeds with self-pitying visions of oppression. Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor wisely decided to postpone the scheduled vote to repeal health care reform. No issue has been more subject to his party's violence-tinged theatrics than has this one. It's not easy to reject legislation that guarantees health care security while trimming hundreds of billions off projected deficits — and all in the service of corporate interests. To pull it off, Republicans had to distract the confused and angry Tea Party folk with ravings about loss of freedom, a shredding of the Constitution and the need to take up arms. Politics may be a rough sport, and nastiness does come from all sides. But Democrats have no Sarah Palin-like figure putting opponents in the crosshairs of gun sights, as she had placed Giffords' district in her famously repulsive graphic. There is no Democratic version of Giffords' recent Republican opponent, who ran the following sicko notice: "Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly." Listen to the language employed by Jeff McQueen, a Tea Party "leader." McQueen told NPR: "We have a choice of four boxes if we want to make political change in this country. We can go to the soap box, we can go to the ballot box, or we can go to the jury box, and hopefully, we won't have to go to the bullet box." An astonished show host Tom Ashbrook responded: "Bullet box! Are you talking about armed revolution?" McQueen answered in his blankly confident way, "Have you seen ammunition sales in the last 12 months?" A weird comment from an insignificant player? During the recent campaign, the Republican senatorial candidate in Nevada, Sharron Angle, spoke of "domestic enemies" in Washington. A Tea Party favorite, she added, "I hope we're not getting to Second Amendment remedies." Given this normalization of violent rhetoric by a mainstream party, it was inevitable that a psychopath with a semiautomatic would get pushed off his shaky edge. Loughner didn't put a bullet through the head of just any public servant, but one subjected to repeated threats, one whose office was shot at after she voted for the health care bill. Loughner may be crazy, but his choice of officeholder was hardly random. So no, Speaker Boehner, that massacre wasn't about "us" who serve the people. It was about Democrats operating in a political environment his party helped poison. Froma Harrop is a columnist for Creators Syndicate Inc. Write her at 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045.