Impartial and unbiased ABC tries to tie Aurora shooter to Tea Party

better be careful for what you wish for o-nation.... guys like you, hanging out at Castro halloween galas.....you never know what is going to occur.

My biggest issue is simply that because the issue has been totally taken over by the right wing...nothing is being done about it. NOTHING. that sucks. It really sucks for the victims and their families and friends.

Its an example wherein even reasonable approaches are off the table. By the way folks...one area where there has been huge changes on issues is in very significant reduction in drunk driving deaths and injuries over the decades since the laws have been significantly tightened and made more harsh. Very large reductions. Its roughly been cut in half since the early 1980's.

 

What, are you concerned for my safety? Angry gays armed with guns may not be the last of my concerns, but it is damn close to the bottom of the list. Besides, I would just bring Chick-fil-a for everyone as a gesture of good will.

Now going to see a Raiders game in EastBay dressed in anything but black and silver I can tell you from personal experience can be a very frightening thing.

So what ARE you advocating be done?

I would agree, but once again, its turned into a government business. The rehab programs, the lawyers, the AA meetings, the insurance costs, its all one big cash cow and revenue stream for the government and government sucker fish businesses.

Now they are pushing for DUIs to stay on your record for a decade (has this already passed?). I'm sure they will get it to the point where, after your first DUI, you pay the rest of your life. Its just a matter of time. At some point new legislation yields a diminishing return in safety and just turns into tyranny.

 

What we really need is for victimless crimes, like drug (pot) use, to be decriminalized - that would free up a ton of wasted prison space. On top of that we don't need more laws. Almost everything that we want to stop is already a crime, so lets just actually catch and punish the people doing it.

I know guns are deadly, but, and this is completely unscientific. My gut tells me that the majority of US gun deaths are probably by a handgun, which, I think most of us agree should stay legal. So then, when we start talking about automatic and semi-automatic weapons. While they may account for the more notorious or even mass killings, I am not convinced that their use by citizens in lawful ways should be curtailed because a few misuse them and kill. Freedom is not always going to result in everyone making the best choices. But trading liberties for safety is not really a better system. That goes for guns, and soda, and butter, and pot, and alcohol, and all sorts of manner of things that may do us harm but that we, as free people, should have the right to use. Just because some may abuse that right does not mean it should be infringed upon for the rest of us.

 

Can't argue with any of that. We keep drafting tougher laws so the prosecutors can negotiate a plea deal without that whole icky trial by jury thing. The D.A. walks in and informs the defendant caught with a bag of weed in his car, found by means of an illegal search, that he is facing 4 felony counts including drug possession, intent to distribute, child endangerment(had his teenage kid in the car), distribution of drugs to a minor(his teenage kid smokes pot). The car is seized, as it was used in a drug related crime. The DA offers a year probation if the perp cops to felony possession without contesting the illegal search that resulted from a routine traffic stop. This is what we have today, but we don't call it tyranny.

 

That's the spirit!!!.....

This whole set of verbiage is a typical right wing rant against government...like government is some kind of evil villain in all concerns.

You were a big big big fan of government when it went into Iraq. You loved it back then.

for some reason right wingers just love love government when it goes to war or underwrites oil companies....and hates it for everything else. I'm sure the Koch brothers and the defense contractors just love you right wing fan boys.

...and by the way...all that stuff you whined about and assigned to govt. as I read it...a lot gets paid to private businesses. Its a way for businesses to make money. What's the problem? because they aren't defense contractors or oil related businesses you automatically hate them?

Since the early 1980's when across states and probably less so at the fed level when a consistent effort was applied to address drunk driving deaths...the absolute number has decreased by about 1/2. And that is with more cars and drivers on the road.

That is a substantial improvement. A lot of lives have been saved. Fortunately for you some drunk didn't plow into your car while you were driving or crossing a street in the Castro district, handing out chicken-fil-a. Describing that as "tyranny" sounds positively Sarah Palinish. Nice going. You are moving into a realm where even Dick Cheney acknowledges is a MISTAKE!!

 

Jesus Earl, you are hitting the booze early tonight. Let me pick through your post and see if I can find something coherent to respond to.

""Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.". Wiser men than I have confirmed your suspicion.

Terrific! You should be a huge fan of private prisons then! Instead of defense contractors pushing for war, we have prison contractors pushing for incarceration. That doesn't sound cancerous at all, does it!

In answer to your charge, I'm not opposed to all government contracts, but when we talk about how big our government has really grown, I think its only fair to include the employee rosters of companies that sell only to the government. Cutting the size of our bloated government will, by definition mean paring back the contracts being issued to many of these companies, and no, they wont like it. Just like the revolving door between Goldman Sachs and the Oval Office, all these contractors fall under the umbrella of what I consider to be crony capitalism.

Oh my. Where would I be without the government to protect me!

 

just the good scotch

good!!! you can cite quotes. your 4th grade teacher should be proud.

While the statistics on government contracting are weak, there is little doubt that over the past 30 years at the very least in the greater DC region, the regional king of govt contracting, by far the largest growth of contracting has occurred with regard to the defense industry. As much as it kept growing through 2000, it absolutely exploded post 9/11. Nothing else comes even remotely close to that.

As many contractors as there are in the greater DC region the even more astonishing explosion of contractors exploded with the 2 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is a terrific article detailing the excessive and expensive elements of contracting let alone its enormous size

DOD and the contractors simply work to make it difficult to ascertain its size. During the years of explosive growth post 2000 wherein the GOP promoted contractors, there was a simultaneous effort to simply ignore measuring its numbers and impact and a clear effort to hide its costs.

Supporting DOD contractors is a staple of the Right Wing, the tea party is all for it, the GOP pols in Congress are all for it.


Seeing how you are against it o-nation it must appear all that time spent in the Castro district is affecting your right wing thinking.

 

More important than my support for paring back government contractors is your now apparent support in your last post. The fact your last post contradicts your apparent lack of support in your previous post I will attribute to the booze. Nice to see we are on the same page.

 

I've been aware of the ridiculousness and extraordinary overspending by the govt on contractors for a long long time and am strongly against it. Support of govt contracting has been a consistent theme of the right wing for decades. Its an absurd rip off of the taxpayer dollar. This article points to examples of outrageous overspending to contractor companies.

As far back as almost 30 years ago I represented commercial tenants for office space that were govt. contractors. Their contracts included cost plus provisions. They didn't care what they payed in rent. They got reimbursed for that with a plus. How nuts. Every other tenant wanted lower rents. They liked higher rents. What did they care. Taxpayers paid for it. About 20 years ago I represented a smallish association representing a subset of govt contractors. Learned a lot about the industry from the head guy, who had been a GOP political functionary. Met and worked with some of his board members who were execs at divisions of fortune 500 businesses. contracting was a guaranteed profit division for every one of those businesses. It was a gift from the tax payers.

When I left the brokerage business and wasn't sure what to do I was recruited by a civil engineering company that is 90% + a govt contractor. I worked in their mass transit division with civil engineers essentially oriented toward mass transit projects. They used my expertise on real estate as it was a component in ascertaining the value of a proposed mass transit project. Essentially proposed subway projects get their highest and best use moving commuters between work and home. Real estate near subway or light rail projects should get high density zoning. Either put up a lot of offices or high rise residential and it feeds the subway system while taking cars off of roads.

so I worked on a bunch of projects. Lets say I was paid about $30-60/hour in salary. I would be billed out at 2.5 to 4.5 my hourly rate to the govts or projects. The projects all had govt funding for the studies. So tax payers were paying for 2.5 to 4.5 my salary and 2.5 to 4.5 the salaries of all those engineers. What a waste. All those folks could have been working directly for some "govt" and been paid at scale directly. Would have been huge huge savings. I found the process interesting but hated being a monkey of the end of a monkey chain. Left after one year.

I only got my salary. The rest went to the company. Tax payers were paying for some big shot sales guy, selling the project to the govt for his company versus a different govt contractor. Incredible waste. Its a total rip off of tax payer money.

The GOP has supported this stuff for years/decades. I'm glad you have moved off the GOP line on this o-nation. There is a chance for you yet. That propeller beanie you are wearing must be doing the trick!!!

 

STOP. Now you are just damned LYING, Earl!

Support of government contracting is required if you want to get elected to Congress. This is where both parties agree, because both feed like greedy pigs at the government trough.

Earl, for you to claim that support of government contracting is ONLY right-wing is waaaaay beyond lying. You are now in stinking festering week-old swarm of flies Lake of Diarrhea territory.

It's pretty clear, Earl, that on these topics you have no stance on what is right or wrong. That is why the truth means nothing to you. You root for your chosen party the way some people root for sports teams, nothing more. It makes you nothing but a political tool.

 

Not so, Corwin. Over a long long haul promotion of government contracting has been a big GOP issue. They used it for years to differentiate themselves from Dems. For years if not decades. Today, it has a different "feel" to it as I see it. If the govt cuts a program wherein there is a lot of contracting work, primarily these days, defense type programs, all the members of congress might rise up against that action as it cuts jobs in their jurisdictions, but as an "issue" its been something the GOP has used for years.

My experience is mixed on it based on the experiences I referenced above. When I was interacting with the association that represented contractors I saw some of their data on costs. Was it accurate or not...I don't know. But it showed me they were handling certain functions at lower costs than govts, state, feds, local. That was back in the late 1980's and earlier 1990's. I represented that association for over a decade which meant 3 different 5 year leases with them. My interactions with them were sporadic. Heavy interaction while we were working on the leases and less interactions between lease terms, though I was friendly with the director/chief of the association. I recall when Clinton came in and we were doing our 2nd lease transaction together, I asked the director if he was unhappy with the new administration.

He was emphatic that surprisingly, to him, and to me, that the Clinton administration was supportive of their efforts.

the heavy promotion of the issue has clearly been a GOP theme of recent decades and has been used to differentiate the GOP from the Dems.

My experience after 2000 was an eye opener. That billing of the tax payer at multiples of a person's salary is a simple rip off of tax payers. Now I was working for a huge civil engineering firm within a small division. I don't think either party either vocally supported or attacked their roles at that time. Just don't recall it.

I looked at it and the volume of work we were handling, and thought it was a rip off. The civil engineers could have been dept of transportation employees and could have been working full time with all the work they had. The govt could have been paying them straight salaries at their professional rates rather than the 2.5-4.5 rates they were paying the business. Pure waste, imho.

Since 2000 the DC region (primarily suburbs) had this explosion of new office space and tenants. By far the overwhelming volume of occupants were govt contractors....heavily security and defense oriented. I seriously doubt the earlier perspectives on private business performing the functions more efficiently than govt employees was at all a part of the ethos of work and contracting. it just wasn't there.

Pure rip off imho. On a political basis over a long term though, its an issue the GOP has supported, they've argued the case that it saves money. I think dems have been sort of mute on it over the long term.

Its too bad the issue doesn't get highlighted. Its a huge overexpenditure of govt tax payer monies. Go through all the highly promoted GOP proposals for saving on govt funding. How much do you see where they would cut contractors? Its not out there. Its not like the dems are promoting that issue either...but the dems never sold the country on using contractors in the first place.

 

You know, when the nutcase shot a bunch of people and one of the targets was Gabby Giffords, we were subjected to endless diatribes in the media about the hate-filled rhetoric of the right wing, how the blame should be rightfully placed at the feet of {pick a target} Rush Limbaugh, the Tea Party, Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, et al.

No tie to the right was too weak too merit serious consideration. The acrimony and demonization filled the airtime for weeks, despite the absolute lack of any tie between the nutcase and the people being blamed.

Now a right wing organization is attacked by an LGBT activist who flat out stated his reason for attacking was politically motivated, and we not only don't see similar media outrage. Heck, NBC and CBS barely reported the story... and left out the shooter's own stated motive.

Guess violent hatred from the left just didn't fit their scripted narrative.

Compare the current stories on FRC shooting {if you can find them} to some of these gems from the left.

Paul Krugman:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/assassination-attempt-in-arizona/

Daily Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/01/09/934711/-Loughner-May-Have-Ties-to-Right-Wing-Hate-Group

Southern Poverty Law Center:
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/01/09/who-is-jared-lee-loughner/​

The general point was to claim the right "owned" the Loughner shooting, though there was no tie whatsoever. Now that a left-winger openly states his motive, does anyone think they want to come forward to claim this ugly baby?

The hypocrisy is so visible... and so pathetically transparent.

 

@RobJones: Rob: I live in the area. local news was all over the issue as it occurred. As the facts came out it was spread all over. The guy attacked the Family Research Council and he was quickly identified as a political opponent of the FRC and from the "left" Its all over the news about the guy. I saw at least one lib group come out and condemn the attack.

What do you want? do you want these lib groups to support the shooting???

Which lib groups go around promoting violence??? Can you list them? Which lib groups encourage arming yourself to the teeth? Can you name them?

A lot of family rights groups for years have been blaming the left for the break down in society. Too many hippies, too much drugs, etc etc. Were you a f*ck up when you were younger? gimmee a break.

 

Do I want them to support it? Of course not. Just appreciate it if they didn't pretend right wing "hate" rhetoric is some magical spell that causes people to go out and kill. It's silly, we oughta be able to hold opposing positions on economic and fiscal issues without the left screaming that claiming we want to kill your grandmother, give your wife cancer, wage war on women, or put blacks "back in chains". When I hear garbage like that I can't help but wonder why they want to lecture me about civil discourse. We are hateful? Compared to that?

This story won't generate anywhere near the outraged media buzz either on TV or the blogosphere because it is clearly a guy attacking people for their right-wing politics. That absolutely doesn't fit into the narrative that "the haters" are on the right while the left is a group of angels that espouse peace and freedom.

As our president this month expresses outrage because a Federal judge will not lift their ruling that's stopping him from ignoring the bill of rights with regard to detention of citizens... I'll point out that speech is much less dangerous than ignoring the safeguards of our constitution.

 

Rob: Was reading this piece I saw today: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/16/us-usa-shooting-washington-idUSBRE87E0VG20120816

From the article:

and to finish off the article:

Perkins blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center. hmmmmmmmmmmm

looks like everyone likes to blame everyone.

 

I didnt say it cant happen on this side, I said it is standard operating procedure on the left.

As for your prior question to name names...

Remember the guys in paramilitary garb with billy clubs screaming racial taunts at white voters. They were the New Black Panther Party... which might not be main stream left... BUT the Eric Holder DOJ intereceded on their behalf.

Recall the Trayvon Martin case when the same group put a ten thousand dollar bounty on the head of a man who had not been convisted of a crime? Were they prosecuted? Was ANYONE prosecuted for all the death threats the guy got?

How bout all the lefties from Hollywood tweeting the private address of the Zimmerman family, and in one case some poor guy that had nothing to do with the case? This was after a bounty was put on the guy. Can you say "incitement to violence"? They not only werent prosecuted, they didnt even lose their twitter account.

How about the Occupy crowd. They were embraced by many on the left including prominent Dems... and they threatened people, their rallies were marked by violence and rapes, destrction of property, they crapped on police cars... but the left instead demonized, yes, the Tea Party... whose rallies generally left the place cleaner than it was when they arrived and didnt engage in the aforementioned activities.

Very tired of the sanctimonious smokescreen from the left. They've no room to talk. They're AS violent if not moreso, and mainstream lefties {including Eric Holder} just seem far too comfortable playing along with guys like the New Black Panthers. When they start treating violent psychopaths on their own side like assholes instead of allies, send up a flair.

 

@earlpearl: I found your clipping interestng. especially the part that read:

Why doesn't the SPLC just label the entire Republican Party, the Tea Party, hell, anyone who votes conservative a racist like the Democrats regularly do. I'm sure it isn't ginning up hatred against those people at all.

Show some common sense. If perpetuating false and denigrating propaganda about a group of people constitutes an organization as a hate group, the SPLC is going to need to list Media Matters, The Daily Beast, MSNBC, Talking Points Memo, and the Democratic party.