Letters to the Editor
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On topic!
Well this post was off-topic yesterday, but it is on-topic to day:
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/02/13/generalpace/permalink/4a605f00353ae9f2569d045468eba69c.html
The threat of violence is not theoretical. Chris Bowers points out, linked yesterday's post, that the use of violence and threats of violence by the right wing is all too common. In particular, in the context of death threats, and rape threats directed at Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Shakespeare's sister, formerly members of Edwards' campaign staff, Bowers points out that:
In the U.S., violence directed toward abortion providers has killed 7 people, including 3 doctors, 2 clinic employees, a security guard, and a clinic escort.(...)
According to statistics gathered by the National Abortion Federation (NAF), an organization of abortion providers, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, there have been 17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidences of assault or battery, and 3 kidnappings committed against abortion providers.(...)
The first letters claiming to contain anthrax were mailed to U.S. clinics in October 1998, a few days after the Slepian shooting, and since then, there have been a total of 655 such bioterror threats made against abortion providers.(...)
According to NAF, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, property crimes committed against abortion providers have included 41 bombings, 173 arsons, 91 attempted bombings or arsons, 619 bomb threats, 1630 incidences of trespassing, 1264 incidences of vandalism, and 100 attacks with butyric acid.
[snip]
Over the past fifteen years, conservatives have had every possible democratic, legislative, and judicial tool at their disposal to outlaw abortion, at least somewhere. However, all of their attempts on these fronts have failed miserably. The only thing hat has worked for them has been violence committed against abortion providers. When I write "violence," I am being as nice as humanly possible. Take another look at the list of acts I quoted above, described, and tell me that it doesn't smack of a coordinated, terrorist campaign against abortion providers. Sadly, it has largely been successful. The reason there are only one, two or three abortion providers in two dozen states is because of the terrorist campaign conducted against abortion providers. As all democratic means have failed them, the only tool conservatives have successfully used to slow down abortion has been a campaign of terrorist violence against abortion providers.
These people not "just joking." They mean what they say, and they've encouraged their mouth-breathing followers to commit acts of violence, to achieve by terror what they cannot achieve by due process.
(The stuff before the [snip] is pulled by Bowers from wikipedia.)
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The object of loyalty
There's a reason that our officeholder swear their fealty to the Constitution of the United States. In the heat of battle, its easy to forget that it's the founding document that defines our country.
In that context, it's those who are attempting to ursurp the Constitution who are committing treason. The fact that they now represent a minority in this country just compounds the severity of the crime.
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new site
Glenn,
You have not skipped a beat with your move. Your posts are still dead on. I visit every day and happily watch the ad. I even plan on buying from the Salon advertisers.
Cheers and I hope they are paying you well.
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Letter Sent!
Here's what I submitted to the WaTi:
Mr. Gaffney forgets that Lincoln also "said": "I am not in favor of people who invent quotes by revered people to disingenuously stifle dissent, which is the hallmark of democracy"
My quote is just as valid as Gaffney's discredited "Lincoln" quote taken from a mistake in Insight magazine. Stephen Colbert's "wikiality" lives.
Glenn, I was absolutely laughing as I read this post. It strikes me as the fruits of deceit, for the Right Wing echo chamber to be so caught up in its own lies, that it can't tell truth from plausible lies from outright and glaring fabrication.
The use of this quote cannot have been on purpose, so it is all the more ironic that the original false attribution which started this ball rolling comes from a publication owned by the Washington Times as well.
It really doesn't get any more "pants on fire" than this. Self-referential madness. Do these people confuse the image in mirrors for identical twins who happen to be mocking their every move too? They're like an Escher drawing brought to reality: Insanity.
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Nuking Mecca Over a Snifter of Brandy
As long as they never plagiarized anything... or more accurately, ever got caught plagiarizing anything, and so long as the word "fuck" or "cockstain" doesn't appear any where in their writings, Young Republican cockstains will basically be able to get any editorial or campaign job despite a lengthy paper trail of genocidal authoritarian pornography.
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How do we fix this?
How do we expose the Gaffneys, etc., for the frauds that they are, when the MSM clearly doesn't care? Do we have to spend the next twenty-plus years building the same kind of media apparatus they did? And what do we do about the fact that the Dinesh Dsouzas of the world will continue to pull down money in the high six-figures, while brilliant writers and thinkers on the left are living on ramen noodles? We have the truth on our side, I suppose; but it's no longer enough, apparently. That's how far we've fallen.
Congrats, Glenn, on being one of the very few progressive bloggers to actually make the leap to a living wage. There should be a lot more of you guys out there.
I guess I'll know that we've made progress when I see Glenn on teevee as often as I see Pat Buchanan.
I won't hold my breath, needless to say.
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GG - Do you mean...
..."widely" discredited? [Here]... "anything which, say, the wildly discredited Joe McCarthy ever urged".
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Hang 'em? Let's Burn 'em.
Whatever differences there are between the Frank Gaffneys of the world and the high priests that conducted the Salem witch trials, they are strictly superficial.
Had Frank Gaffney and Michael Reagan lived back then, and had been the men with power, and had an adoring flock that constituted a near unanimous majority, you can bet they would have been hollering out scripture as the mob was lighting the kindling and logs around the stake.