Ogre-oid: Arizona Mass Murder

Details are still coming out about the shooting of Rep. Gabriel Gifford (D-AZ) but it appears she survived a point-blank gunshot to the head that passed through her brain.  20 people were shot, of these six died including a Federal judge and a 9 year old girl that planned on running for class office.  Fox News is reporting* there is a strong link between the shooter and a right wing extremist hate group known as American Renaissance.  There is no direct link between him and the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, or Fox News' stable of frothing hate mongers, but it is early yet.  I would like you to read these quotes from Sheriff Dupnik's news conference last night (Dave & I were watching the direct feed after the horrible Saints game and were both astonished to hear this):

[just before he started answering questions]  When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be ou...trageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

It's not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included. And that's the sad thing of what's going on in America. Pretty soon, we're not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people who are willing to subject themselves to serve in public office.

[at the end of the press conference just before he handed the podium to the doctor]  Let me just say one thing, because people tend to poo-poo this business about all the vitriole that we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech.... But it's not without consequences.

 And Keith Olbermann names names and points his fingers:




*For a real "through the looking glass" experience, read the comments that follow this article.

The Future

Mission Accomplished?

So the "combat mission" has ended in Iraq, right?

High Fructose Corn Syrup Loved By Cancer Cells

A recent study has found that pancreatic cancer cells metabolize fructose (the cheap, corn based sweetener found in just about every refined American food) more easily than sucrose disproving the "all sugars are the same" claims of Big Corn. Yet another reason to drink Mexican Coca-Cola, other than the fact that the corn sweetener tastes like crap.

More Doom for the World's Oceans

Over 500 penguins have washed up dead on the shores of Brazil recently as well as some turtles and a porpoise.  The cause of death appears to be starvation.  These penguins usually feed over a wide area and should be finding huge amounts of food.  I have this horrible feeling this is another sign of the death of life in the oceans of the world.  In 1808 the passenger pigeon numbered in the billions and there were many millions of bison.  By the end of that century there were no passenger pigeons and only a few thousand bison hiding in Yellowstone.  Yes we can obliterate all life in the oceans because we're foolish enough to believe we can't.

39 Pictures From the Gulf

Howard Zinn 1922-2010

At [an] event in Madison, Wisconsin, Howard issued a challenge to the audience. He said, "Our job as citizens is to honestly assess what Obama is doing. Not measured just against Bush, because against Bush, everybody looks good. But look honestly at what Obama's doing and act as engaged and vigorous citizens."

via

Harper's Magazine: The Guantánamo “Suicides”

The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle

By Scott Horton

...Late on the evening of June 9 that year, three prisoners at Guantánamo died suddenly and violently. Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, from Yemen, was thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, from Saudi Arabia, was thirty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two, and had been imprisoned at Guantánamo since he was captured at the age of seventeen. None of the men had been charged with a crime, though all three had been engaged in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment. They were being held in a cell block, known as Alpha Block, reserved for particularly troublesome or high-value prisoners.

As news of the deaths emerged the following day, the camp quickly went into lockdown. The authorities ordered nearly all the reporters at Guantánamo to leave and those en route to turn back. The commander at Guantánamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, then declared the deaths “suicides.” In an unusual move, he also used the announcement to attack the dead men. “I believe this was not an act of desperation,” he said, “but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” Reporters accepted the official account, and even lawyers for the prisoners appeared to believe that they had killed themselves. Only the prisoners’ families in Saudi Arabia and Yemen rejected the notion...

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