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[Rep. Giffords] thread (NOT A GUN THREAD)
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And yeah, come 2012 there absolutely will be Arizonans showing up to political rallies with guns.
no really, we do. in the long run. not the cause, but in the long run.
You guys may be affecting my jaded/cynical level but one of the random thoughts through my head yesterday was 'oh great, now the right wing crazies will claim they've saved unemployment.'
and then i smacked myself upside the head and went back to feeling just plain crappy about the whole thing
You have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.
The worst thing is, this very fact is likely going to be why it won't be addressed honestly or frankly. "Conservative" commentators will take any denouncement as a personal affront as if they're being targeted as accomplices in this horrifying act because sane people are suggesting that you shouldn't tell people to murder your opponents. 20 people get shot and somehow they're the victim in all this. Words don't have power...except when they're espoused by the liberal media on a smear campaign against the right.
The sound thing is very much true. My history teacher scared off a fair number of rednecks who were coming to at least beat him up because they thought he was in the south to demonstrate for civil rights. He didn't even mean to pump it, he was just rushing to get his pants on while holding the pump in one hand. He tripped, the butt hit the floor, and the lynch mob heard the sound through the open window.
Personally, I like my spear. Nobody fucks with a guy with a spear (and two swords, a club, and a bow with arrows, not to mention the unipod).
Edit: Note to self: always read the last page. I think I'll leave the post though, just because it's a cool story.
Everyone dies eventually. Dying is part of the natural cycle.
Not everyone gets murdered. Murder is most definitely not part of the natural cycle.
If the secret service is there then anyone remotely near the person they're protecting has been through a metal detector.
Except for along the parade routes.
although i could be wrong, i didn't go to my local parade last year when the politicians all come out (week before halloween). So maybe not. I know Rep Carey always used to ride an elephant through the parade.
I wonder if he still does.
You have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.
It doesn't matter, because the moral difference isn't that you need to actively rule out the possibility of violence. The moral difference is that you shouldn't be actively encouraging violence in the first place.
So you would be see nothing wrong with Glenn Beck beginning every show with "Good morning America, I hope Barack Obama dies."?
because Glenn Beck, in difference to say, me, has a platform and devoted listeners.
I've never really wished anybody to die, either the abusive ex boyfriends to sarah palin. ok, so I did wish for Timothy McVeigh's death, but i think that's a special case.
but still, I'm not a powerful voice or a powerful influence. Glenn Beck is. He reaches more people than I ever will.
It's a nuance, it's a muddy grey nuance, but it's there.
You have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.
I would certainly prefer that to him saying "Good morning America, someone should kill Barack Obama."
When you have that kind of audience and that kind of following I don't see much of a distinction.
I think you mean John Carney, former Lt. Gov. and current representative?
I think two or three total while serving in the House, plus Robert Kennedy from the Senate off the top of my head, but yeah, pretty damn rare.
1) Presidents usually don't die in office, nor do they retire because they're close to dying. The same in not true for the supreme court. When President's die in office, it's almost always due to assassination.
2) What shows have the moral equivalent of wishing Scalia to die at every opening? I'm not sure the equivalence you're trying to draw here.
I'm not trying to draw any equivalence to anything.
When people are attacked by dogs, they tend to be uneasy around dogs for a while. When people are in big car wrecks, sometimes they can't get behind the wheel again right away. Maybe not a 180, but it'll be something to note how she feels about tighter gun control laws and background checks after this whole ordeal.
So you're saying that you don't care that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990?
edit: every time I refresh D&D I see the thread title and misread it as saying RIP Giffords. Two things go through my brain. One that the senator has died. And two that Frank and Kathy Lee were in a car accident.
There is no moral difference between hoping that the uptight boss gets laid every now and then and learns to lighten up, and hoping that the boss gets raped.
This isn't true.
Harrison
Taylor
Lincoln
Garfield
Harding
FDR
JFK
4/7
Either way, it's irrelevant. Death is not the only way a justice leaves the Supreme Court.
Yes, they can also retire.
Which usually happens when they get close to dying.
And 30% mortality rate is pretty high.
Especially when I assume that all of deaths were of natural causes, not assassinations.
And when you consider that people rarely die out of the blue. Their health usually takes a downturn before that.
So where exactly is the threat of violence?
Jim Brady (of the "Brady Bill") was a pro-gun Reagan staffer (he might have been chief of staff) and was shot in the head i think by John Henkley. He survived and as it turned out his views on the primacy and absoluteness of the second amendment changed.
i guess when i've heard people talking about supreme court justices dying i've never read into it wistfulness for assassination.
Seems it made him become a bit more high caliber in his character?
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
When somebody says, "I wish x would die", they're not saying "I wish x would happily live out the rest of their days and die peacefully in their sleep."
They want x to die right now, and that inherently means they're wishing for an untimely demise by whatever means available, whether it be choking on a cracker, gunman, or falling and breaking their neck. And that's just as disgusting as outright saying someone should be shot.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Actually given the quality of the gun control regulation he came up with, how poorly thought out it was, and how ineffective you are more likely to assume he had brain damage.
:?
First of all, I've already shown how it's not true that a Supreme Court justice will ever only vacate a seat by dying. It doesn't even happen a majority of the time.
Second of all, you are directly calling for the death of a person because you disagree with them politically.
Yeah, that's just so much more moral than outright saying "Scalia should be shot."
I hope that the Seahawks win the next game.
By your logic, that means that I'm secretly hoping that someone murders the opposing team's quarterback in his sleep.
I hope to gain a million dollars.
By your logic, that means that I'm hoping that someone murders my parents tomorrow so that I can cash out on their life insurance policy.
Seriously, you're stretching. Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life. That means that if a Supreme Court Justice decides not to retire, then your only recourse is to wait until he dies. There is no other option. This isn't like an elected official, where you can wait until they get voted out, or until term limits kick in.
And why should anyone count on the fact that the SCOTUS will arbitrarily decide to retire? It's not like they have a history of making decisions that you agree with.
He's not calling for his death or saying Scalia should be shot though. He's saying he hopes he dies which is entirely different if still callous and a bit offputting. But Supreme Court judges are elected for life and until Scalia decides to retire, or dies, he's going to be on the court and making decisions. Realistically there's nothing anyone on this board can do about it except express a wish he stops adjudicating as soon as possible. Someone could write, for instance, "I hope he retires soon." But its more doubtful he will retire than die and many people are not given to being overly kind when they heavily disagree with someone.
Its not like he's threatening him or anything. So it is more moral in absolute terms, even if people find it distasteful.
Remember that conservative christian dude whose name currently escapes me who told his followers to pray for liberal supreme court justices to die a few years ago?
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
no, it was definitely Carey....
Or maybe it was Carper. It's been years since I went to the parade, probably about 11 or so.
also...
Delaware hasn't had a 2nd seat in congress since 1823. Somehow, that depresses me.
But anyways, one of the national figures from Delaware used to come to my local halloween parade and ride on an elephant. And mike Castle would dress up as Frankenstein and walk in the parade too.
I doubt he'll do that anymore.
You have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.
It happens a shit ton more often than just about any other job, though. Especially every other job in white collar America.
There have been 30 job fatalities for 103 SCOTUS Justices. That translates into about 30,000 fatalities per 100,000 justices. If you assumed that every justice served for, say, 30 years, than that would be 1000 fatalities per every 100,000 per year.
Do you know the most dangerous job in the world right now? Fisherman. At 129 deaths per 100,000 workers. Coal miner is #8, at 22 deaths per 100,000 workers. And keep in mind that none of these are white collar jobs.
And keep in mind that your figure only counts the juices who literally died while serving. It doesn't count justices who are told they have three months to live, and decide to retire.
Yes, because that's the only way that they will realistically leave office.
I mean, I can hope that Scalia will have a change of heart and decide to retire for no reason whatsoever. But if I possessed that sort of power, then why not simply wish that Scalia vote the way I want him to vote on every case that is given to him?
Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about organ donor lists?
Just about every person on an organ donor list hopes to get a replacement organ. And in the case of many organs, it's not something that the other person can give up until another person dies. And not a natural death either -- something sudden and violent while the donor is other person is healthy.
So every person on the organ donor list for say, a new heart, is secretly hoping that someone in the world will die from a horrible car accident. It is worse than the Scalia thing, because a heart that dies of old age is pretty much useless.
Is that morally better than hoping that someone gets murdered specifically for the sake of organ harvesting, or hoping that someone wakes up in a bathtub full of ice?
I would hope so. Because other, you're implying that the entire organ donor list is morally equivalent to murder.