Andrew Marcus over at BigGovernment has some excellent ideas for investigations in toning down rhetoric that Democrats are calling for:
….we think that Progressive Democrats are 100% correct when they call for action against factors leading to our toxic political climate…
…We are therefore openly calling for public hearings to look into the actions of political agitators in this nation.
Democrats have made it clear that they want to investigate and restrict Fox News, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Andrew Breitbart, and others to be sure. In fact, there are so many conservatives to investigate, we need to come up with a strategy to tackle the work.
We propose that any investigation begin with events that led to criminal behavior, like say the WTO riots in Seattle. Or the RNC riots in St. Paul. Or the angry mob protests that have taken place at the home of Bank of America executives. Or the Kenneth Gladney beating. That should provide a good start.
When would the Progressive Democrats like to schedule these hearings?
We even have a handy list of 5 easy steps the Government can take right away, steps which will have an immediate effect on the toxicity of our body politic:
….It is hard to resist payback, like pointing out the violent rhetoric directed against President George W. Bush from the left. Despite all of the strong rhetoric directed against Ronald Reagan (remember, some civil rights leaders said he’d legitimize Nazism in America after his 1980 election), I can’t remember any conservatives blaming Reagan’s shooting by John Hinckley on leftist rhetoric, or still less on Hollywood for a nutjob who took his model from “Taxi Driver.”
But this blame-setting shows an appalling historical ignorance and lack of perspective. The very first election in history where power passed from one political party to another without violence was our election of 1800, when Jefferson turned out Adams. It was the first time, as Lincoln observed, that ballots replaced bullets. The vitriol in that election would make Fox News and MSNBC blush.
Jefferson, the Federalists said, would bring the guillotine and French Jacobin terror to America. Adams, the Republicans responded, was intent on refastening the tyranny of the British monarchy. Reason TV offered a perfect representation of what an attack ad from that campaign would look like if they’d had 30-second spots back then, not to mention the fact that in those days people often ended their political quarrels through duels (see: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr). Is political vitriol really worse today? Get a grip….
In last Thursday’s column, Paul Krugman admitted to having fun watching “right-wingers go wild.” One of the things that apparently delighted him was this map which Sarah Palin posted on her Facebook page:
Each of the cross-hairs represents a Democrat from a conservative district who voted in favor of health reform. Immediately after highlighting the map, Krugman wrote:
All of this goes far beyond politics as usual…you’ll search in vain for anything comparably menacing, anything that even hinted at an appeal to violence, from members of Congress, let alone senior party officials….to find anything like what we’re seeing now you have to go back to the last time a Democrat was president.
Really, Paul? I’ll search in vain?
The map appears on this page of the Democratic Leadership Committee website (dated 2004 during the Bush years). I guess we could argue over whether the DLC counts as “senior party officials” but they’re certainly as much a part of the party as Palin who, after all, currently holds no elected office.
[….]
But wait, there’s more!
When Palin’s map became an issue, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), rushed on MSNBC to denounce it, telling Chris Matthews:
I really think that that is crossing a line…In this particular environment I think it’s really dangerous to try and make your point in that particular way because there are people who are taking that kind of thing seriously.
Really, Chris? So what do you think about this map?
Each one of those red targets represents a “Targeted Republican” like this one:
Gateway Pundit has the View’s take on this, it goes as expected, after this video I want to post a few more videos:
Here is Nina Totenberg of NPR speaking about Republican Jesse Helms — take note she still works at NPR, but Juan Williams was fired for saying “less than this:”
Joy Behar herself has said many inflamatory things about Republicans:
Joy Behar repeatedly called Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle a “bitch” on “The View” Tuesday, and said that she is “going to hell.”
Behar’s comments came during a discussion of an ad that Angle released earlier this month. The ad, which focused on immigration and contrasted smiling white children with scowling Latinos, was called “the most overtly racist” ad of the entire campaign by Rachel Maddow on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” The “View” co-hosts were no less outraged by it, with Elisabeth Hasselbeck criticizing Angle for using children to stoke fear.
But it was Behar who really let loose on Angle.
“I’d like to see her do this ad in the South Bronx,” she said. “Come here, bitch! Come to New York and do it!”
“I’m not praying for her,” Behar shot back. “She’s going to hell! She’s going to hell, this bitch!”
Nancy Pelosi called Tea Partiers Nazi’s, even though no symbols were found like the one she describes:
Captain’s Quarters documented a time when Democratic Senator Byrd called Republicans Nazi’s:
Byrd Compares Republicans To Nazis On Senate Floor
Senator Robert Byrd, defending the minority’s right to filibuster on the Senate floor today, wound up his speech by comparing Republican efforts to eliminate the hijacking of the Senate on the Constitutional duty of confirming federal judges to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Not only did Byrd imply that the GOP equates to the worst mass murderers of the 20th century, he’s so proud of doing so he’s posted the speech to his own website:
Many times in our history we have taken up arms to protect a minority against the tyrannical majority in other lands. We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men.
But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends. Historian Alan Bullock writes that Hitler’s dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law. Hitler needed a two-thirds vote to pass that law, and he cajoled his opposition in the Reichstag to support it. Bullock writes that, “Hitler was prepared to promise anything to get his bill through, with the appearances of legality preserved intact.” And he succeeded.
Hitler’s originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions, in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power of the State: the correct order of events was first to secure access to that power and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.
And that is what the nuclear option seeks to do to Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate.
I just received an un-freaking-believable e-mail from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The entire Democrat machine has been tarring Tea Party activists and townhall protesters as Brown Shirts and fascists…and now they’re whining about Rush Limbaugh challenging their own fascist behavior. When in trouble, bash Rush.
Don Easterbrook, from Western Washington University, presented “The Looming Threat of Global Cooling – Geological Evidence for Prolonged Cooling Ahead and its Impacts” at the ICCC4
