Condemning Threats, Condemning Assumptions
Not long ago, I saw this on Drudge:
Naturally curious to see what kind of physical violence people like me might be capable of, I clicked the link:
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is warning that some of his Democratic colleagues are being threatened with violence when they go back to their districts — and he wants Republicans to stand up and condemn the threats.
The Maryland Democrat said more than 10 House Democrats have reported incidents of threats or other forms of harassment about their support of the highly divisive health insurance overhaul vote. Hoyer emphasized that he didn’t have a specific number of threats and that was just an estimate.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Capitol Police and sergeant at arms briefed Democrats behind closed doors today about the incidents of violence — the most high profile of which have been toward Democratic Reps. Thomas Perriello of Virginia, Steve Driehaus of Ohio and Louise Slaughter of New York.
Hoyer hinted that Republicans should do more to condemn these threats of violence.
The fact that plenty of Republicans get threats every day and nobody says a thing notwithstanding, taking Hoyer’s words at face value, as a conservative Republican, I condemn real threats of violence almost as much as I condemn desperate claims that are manufactured in a cheap attempts to further broken agendas. That said, I’d like Rep. Hoyer and people of all political stripes to condemn the assumption that any physical threats of retribution over the health care bill are coming from Republicans.
Sure, maybe some of us owe Steny an apology for over-reacting to the completely unfounded fear that thousands of IRS agents may soon be monitoring our blood pressure, collecting urine samples and making sure we haven’t kicked our 25-year-old kids out of our basements and off our insurance doles — but, as sure as Bart Stupak’s already secretly working on his concession speech, I know this bothers more than just Republicans.
Steny’s been busy serving the constitution the way a dog serves a fire hydrant, so maybe he hasn’t had time to notice, but a solid majority of the country is against this bill that recently passed through the Senate and House, and is in the process of passing through America like shards of glass through the bowels of a hemophiliac. Hoyer may not have taken the time to consider that Americans are incensed by the passage of this bill, and as such there’s a slight chance that non-Republicans are less than happy too.
For example, there’s a group of people in this country who are furious at Stupak for fronting the group of Reps who are responsible for the elimination of public funding for abortion (albeit temporarily via an executive order that could be rescinded by the time I finish writing this sentence), and, rest assured, most of those people are not Republicans.
The public’s affection for Congress is hovering just below “genital herpes” on the approval chart. You can’t get a number that low without bipartisan disdain. Maybe there are many Democrats around the country who are angry with Democrats in DC. After all, Scott Brown wasn’t elected because of any historical Republican domination of Massachusetts politics.
Most Republicans, and others who are tired of watching their country being stolen, are looking forward to this year’s elections the way Nancy Pelosi anticipates “double coupon day” at the Nip/Tuck clinic.
Republicans don’t need physical violence — we’ve got November 2nd, and subsequently the possible repeal of Obamacare. Of course, as Steny might say, that’s an unspecified number of threats and just an estimate, but it’s the best I can do.
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I thought it was his brother…heh
Wayfaring…
Si peliannen i vâd na dail lîn. Si boe ú-dhannathach.
Now you’ve done it, Teddy! Where’s the dadgum Windex?
That’s the link I mentioned, Dances…Thanks for posting it.
Okay, now that one I have to look up….
Is it movie canon or book canon?
*not to be confused with cannon, for those who may think we’re inciting others to violence here.
Nope. The driveby media got is wrong – like that’s news.
Here’s Jim Hoft’s update on the bogus coffin threat.
And here’s his earlier post about the prayer vigil.
Read the whole thing.
There is no distortion of the truth, nor any outright lie that the enemies of our freedom will not tell.
We need to call them out on it. And that includes Fox News whenever they leap on some titillating tidbit that purports to be news.
Aggh! that was supposed to be ‘got it wrong’.
Movie canon–
Arwen says ‘it is already laid before your feet; you cannot falter now’.
David Salo did the Elvish translations for the movies IIRC.
Haven’t read all the posts, but here goes…listening to Levin this afternoon he rebukes all accusations of violence coming from the right namely the Tea Party people. Non have been found to be true, from the yelling the “n” word to spitting on a Rep. to the casket on the lawn, Politco did retract the casket bs according Mr. Levin.
Not surprised by anything the left wing press(LSM) will say or anything the sick left wingers will do…”the end justifies the means”, remember.
Suddenly the MSM and the Dems (what a coincidence) are concerned about threats to our esteemed elected officials. Just as concerned as they wree with the Libs and Bush and other Republicans. Oh wait, never mind.
All well and good, except that it is entirely clear from the police report that not only was Cantor’s office not actually specifically targeted (it was apparently a random shot fired into the sky that came down and struck, but did not penetrate, the window in question); but it was not even actually Cantor’s office. It was merely a conference room in the building that contained Cantor’s office, and which he occasionally used.
Of course, you would know none of this if you had only listened to Cantor’s disingenuity, which made him sound more the victim of a gangsta-style drive-by, rather than a 3-degrees of separation victim of a random shoot fired by a common hood.
Too bad that stray bullets don’t automatically home in on reporters who manufacture ‘hate news’.
Your post might have some merit if you’d left off the gratuitous jibe.
And it totally misses the point; Cantor was calling out those Dems – especially those in the Dem leadership – for using the supposed acts of violence to [try to] raise money.
And your post ignores the point that Cantor brought up the shooting at his office (along with the multiple threatening e-mails he’s received) to point out that other politicians (i.e. not just Dems) have been on the receiving end of threats but don’t try to use those threats for political gain.
I ignore nothing of the sort. And the jibe was hardly gratuitous. I merely pointed out he verifiably lied about key details, like…um…it wasn’t his office. It was another office in the same building that was hit with a bullet traveling at relatively low velocity in a downward trajectory. Put on your CSI cap for a moment and tell me what that means.
And it wasn’t even an office building in his own district. And it had no visible indications that Cantor had an office there. And the address of that building was listed nowhere on his website. But we are to believe that someone tracked down this office building, pulled out his slide ruler to determine how far away he could be from the building and still strike it, (accounting of course for wind), and fired a shot that ultimately hits a ground floor window in a building where Cantors office is on the top…whew…let me catch my breath… INSTEAD of just sending an absolutely unambiguous message by targeting his actual campaign headquarters?
Are you buying that? Becuase that is exactly what Cantor is selling. He brought up an incident which any reasonable person could not possibly conclude was a threat on a politician to complain about politicians using threats against them for political gains. At least the claims by certain Dems about racial slurs being shouted are, at the very least, unverifiable. Cantor’s story is an outright fabrication.
Not sure where you’re getting your info that Cantor doesn’t have an office in that building.
This is from the Richmond police statement:
Are we to assume that the police are lying?
Okay, so re-reading, I see that you’re not claiming that he doesn’t have an office there; but that still doesn’t make Cantor’s statement a lie either.
I just think you’re reaching by painting his comments as disingenuous, when his point was not as much that his office was shot at, but that others are taking claims as or more dubious for political gain.
And there’s no getting around the fact that they are.
For those who haven’t seen Cantor’s statement – as opposed to reading reports about it – here’s a link that contains the video.
Judge for yourself.
No one claimed his ultimate point was not that Dems were politicizing threats. My point was he lied about a particular situation in order to do so. He flat out states that the bullet fired was 1) a threat against him and 2) through his office. The latter is simply not true. The former, I suppose could be true if about 100 different hard to swallow assumptions were also true. But no reasonable person would conclude that the bullet was certainly, or even likely, or hell even plausibly, an actual threat against Cantor.
Chap, the shooting at the building where Cantor does have an office – and according to the police report, that conference room is one that he has used – but never mind that. Cantor only mentioned the shooting as part of a pattern of actual threats that have been made against him over time, and he emphasised the fact that he had not until this point made anything of it in the press because it was and is a matter of security, and should not be employed as political fodder as the Dems are trying to do with the threats (real or imagined) that they’re getting.
But go ahead and keep harping on that one incident.
Right. Which wasn’t actually any sort of part of a pattern of actual threats. But I guess saying you have been shot at is a lot cooler than saying you have gotten angry emails.
And you know what’s funny?…when Hillary had her little Tuzla incident, nobody here said we should only focus on the overall point Hillary was making (foreign policy experience) and forgive the lie she employed in making it.