Of Course They Were Cross-Hairs

How stupid do they think we are?

Obviously, these are cross-hairs.



 That doesn't mean that SarahPac is responsible for this Congresswoman's being shot. I have no idea whether this particular act of right-wing domestic terrorism was inspired by Sarah Palin or her gun-sight map. He may never have have seen the map, who knows? He may very well have been inspired by Palin, or he may not have. That's not the point. I mean, it is a very important point, it's just not the one I'm making.

The point I'm making is that it's utterly pathetic for Palin's defenders to take to the airwaves en masse to claim that "oh, no, these aren't cross-hairs, they're um. . . surveyor's symbols, yeah that's it, surveyor's symbols."

If those are surveyor's symbols, what are they symbols of? They don't make any sense unless they are cross-hairs.

Why can't they at least be honest and say "we meant those cross-hairs symbolically, we meant that those districts should be targeted politically." Why do they have to go through the whole pearl-clutching "why I never!" routine acting like it never occurred to them that anyone might think those were gun sights! Obviously this lady knows what gun-sights look like.


And it's not like she doesn't traffic in violent gun imagery






And you know who DOES think the symbol is a "bullseye?" Sarah Palin.

 

By the way, Sarah, a bullseye looks like this:



The symbol you used was a cross-hairs or gunsight. But that's not really the point either.

This seems like it could be Important

I'm re-posting this from Phydeaux and Phriends 'cause it seems like a story that should be getting more coverage. Or any coverage.

19 May 2010

It's Not News Unless It Fits the Narrative

Did you hear about the terrorist attack in Florida last week? Unless you live in Jacksonville, you probably haven't. Outside of local news (and, now, online), there's been no mention of this act -- even dismissed as a "deranged individual" or a "one-off".

Despicable.

This is the direct result of profit-driven news divisions.

In case the links don't work, here's the story from Crooks and Liars:

Florida mosque bombed; FBI calls for help; national media mute

By karoli Wednesday May 19, 2010 2:00pm

On May 10th, a middle-aged man carried a can of gasoline and a pipe bomb into the Jacksonville Islamic Center of Northeast Florida during evening prayers and detonated it. Fortunately, there were no injuries to people, though the bomb did damage property.

The surveillance video above gives a fairly decent picture of this man, who is clearly white, middle-aged, and on a mission.

The local news is all over it, of course. WOKV.com reports the FBI investigating it as a hate crime and possible domestic terrorism.

"It was a dangerous device, and had anybody been around it they could have been seriously injured or killed," says Special Agent James Casey. "We want to sort of emphasize the seriousness of the thing and not let people believe that this was just a match and a little bit of gasoline that was spread around."

Casey says surveillance video from the Islamic Center shows the arsonist carrying gasoline and the pipe bomb. When the explosive went off, parts of it were found 100 feet away on 9A.

So, a mosque is bombed by a white guy and the bomb isn't exactly small, but the national media sees no value in reporting it? Really? And yet, that is evidently the case.

Oklahoma City, 15 years later

Many people marked the anniversary of the domestic terrorist attack on the Federal Building in Oklahoma City somberly

AP – Pipe Sergeant Kevin M. Donnelly, of the DEA Black and Gold Pipes and Drums, walks past the Field of Chairs …

Across Oklahoma City, people observed 168 seconds of silence to honor the dead.

Some dabbed away tears as the ceremony closed with family members reading a roll call of those who died.

And then, there were the gun nuts:

Militia movement will be packing heat at gun rally on the Potomac

Yes, the militia movement, the same group that spawned Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, chose the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing to hold a gun-waving circle jerk just a few miles from the Capitol.

Daniel Almond, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, is ready to "muster outside D.C." on Monday with several dozen other self-proclaimed patriots, all of them armed. They intend to make history as the first people to take their guns to a demonstration in a national park, and the Virginia rally is deliberately being held just a few miles from the Capitol and the White House.

Almond plans to have his pistol loaded and openly carried, his rifle unloaded and slung to the rear, a bandoleer of magazines containing ammunition draped over his polo-shirted shoulder. The Atlanta area real estate agent organized the rally because he is upset about health-care reform, climate control, bank bailouts, drug laws and what he sees as President Obama's insistence on and the Democratic Congress's capitulation to a "totalitarian socialism" that tramples individual rights.

So a paranoid conspiracy nut is hosting a loaded gun party in a National Park. What could possibly not go wrong?

On the lineup are several heroes of the militia movement, including Mike Vanderboegh, who advocated throwing bricks through the windows of Democrats who voted for the health-care bill; Tom Fernandez, who has established a nationwide call tree to mobilize an armed resistance to any government order to seize firearms; and former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, who refused to enforce the Brady law and then won a Supreme Court verdict that weakened its background-check provisions.

Just a harmless group of delusional paranoids who masturbate to Guns & Ammo magazine while encouraging others to commit crimes. Nothing to worry about.

From the website of nutgroup ResistNet:

The mission of the “Restore the Constitution” rally is that it be held at a firearms carry-legal location as close to DC as possible and that it attracts as many participants as possible in order to underscore the seriousness and urgency of a simple message: Restore the Constitution!
This event is being coordinated to some degree with the planners of the Second Amendment March (SAM) taking place inside DC itself on the same day.

See, these are people who believe that the 2nd Ammendment is under attack and needs defending. No matter that the only reason they are allowed to carry loaded weapons in a National Park is that President Obama signed the law that legalized it. Somehow, they just know that he's comin' fer their guns!
Check out some of the comments on the Restore The Constitution Website:

How are you fearful of Americans exercising their freedoms in this country. President Osama hasn’t yet gotten rid of the Right to Bear Arms, although I’m sure he would like to.

He has actually expanded the right to bear arms, but probably the exact opposite is also true.

My question to everyone reading this article is this: “For you, as an individual, when do you draw your saber? When do you say “Yes, I am willing to rise up and overthrow an oppressive, totalitarian government?”

Is it when the government takes away your private business?
Is it when the government rigs elections?
Is it when the government imposes martial law?
Is it when the government takes away your firearms?

these people are really scary.

Dead Tigers

There's an old joke about a guy standing on his front lawn shouting and waving his arms. His neighbor asks him what he's doing, and he says "scaring away the tigers."
"There are no tigers in North America," says his neighbor. "see," says the man, "it's working!"

That's what I think of every time I hear one of the Bush administration apologists claiming that "They kept us safe for 7 years after 9/11."

I'm so sick of this bs being trotted out that it was torture, warrentless wiretapping, etc. that foiled various terrorist plots, but they just can't tell us about them. When you busted a half-dozen potheads in Florida who talked about maybe blowing up a building in Chicago,. you trumpeted that from the fucking hillsides. When you caught some knuckleheads allegedly planning to disguise themselves as pizza delivery guys and blow up Fort Dix, it was front page news. But the plots that were thwarted by your illegal methods, those are top fucking secret. "Gee, we're trying to get those files de-classified, then you'll see, blah, blah, blah. . ." You want me to believe that you prevented an attack? Show me a dead tiger.




I want to know what terrorist plot you foiled by waterboarding. Because you sure didn't get any information you could use to prevent our allies in Madrid from having their trains blown up.

And what information did you get from tapping phones without a warrant? Obviously, nothing about anyone planning suicide bombings in London.

And we still don't know who mailed anthrax to two US Senators.

So what did you prevent? What plot did you foil? Show us the dead tigers!





If you can't show us one credible threat that was thwarted by your illegal means, then shut the fuck up about keeping us safe.










No Tigers were harmed in the making of this blog post.