Four Key Comments on Current US Politics

A single Althouse posting collected two particularly important comments. One comment is

Anyone else find it creepy that new standard what we may and may not say is: How will it affect the behavior of an obviously crazy person who may or may not hear it?

A second comment notes

Well, it's been that way for a long time. Centralized media helped a lot. Now, the truth gets out. And, yes, it started with El Rushbo.

The Left has always hated the truth.

Gateway Pundit noted a consistency some months ago, saying

When leftists can’t win an intelligent argument they historically resort to violence. Whether they’re communists, socialists, Nazis or members of the SEIU, the game is the same.

Something similar was noted nearly five years ago

You can understand the outlines of all of American politics (and, it now appears, Canadian politics as well) if you remember just one thing:

Conservatives think liberals are misguided
Liberals think conservatives are evil

(I have sometimes heard "ignorant" used instead of "misguided".)

Good News in Egypt

There are a lot of folks in Egypt who don't subscribe to the jihadists' agenda. How do we know? We know because large numbers of muslims (including the two sons of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak) showed up at Coptic Christian churches on their Christmas Eve (January 6) Midnight Masses, offering themselves as human shields against the threats by Islamist extremists. The big winner, the Egypt for All organization with its symbol of a cross within a crescent. (Sorry, I couldn't find an image to post.)

Finally, an example of grass-roots muslims standing up against the jihadists. We need to see a lot more similar cases.

Bad News in Tucson

Terrible news on Saturday: An insane druggie* carried out his berserk plan, shooting Congresswoman Gabrielle "Gabby" Giffords and 19 others. Eight of the wounded are still in the hospital, including the Congresswoman who remains in intensive care. Six people were killed — an aide to the Congresswoman, Arizona's chief federal judge, a 9-year-old girl, and three more of the Congresswoman's constituents who had come to her "Congress On Your Corner" event to talk with her.

What may be the more important part of the story is now, slowly, beginning to come out. Several people who were injured and expecting to be killed still fought to restrain the perpetrator. Several other people ran toward the gunshots to help. Among those are a guy who had just stopped to buy some cigarettes and a University of Arizona junior — hired as an intern in Giffords' office just a week earlier — who is probably the reason she is still alive.

That more important part is more like the Tucson I always knew. I grew up there, on the northwest side. I know well the area where the shooting occurred. I'm sure that, even this many years later, someone like Jared Loughner is an extreme aberration.

* Reportedly a "left-wing pot-head" with a backyard satanic altar. Definitely a left-wing substance abuser according to those who knew him.

Global Warming?

The East Coast got hit with “two feet of global warming” last week. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg is still fielding questions about his cityˆs somewhat unsuccessful response to the snowfall. Other parts of the country have been having unusually severe winters this year, too — enough to produce a cartoon.

Snow in the desert. Snow on cactus. It’s not just an idea any more. Even the Phoenix area got snow last week.

That's an unusual picture from the Sonoran Desert. After all, the Sonoran Desert isn“t England.

End of an Error

On Wednesday, the Republicans took control of the US House of Representatives. New Speaker John Boehner (R - OH) received the ceremonial gavel from outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D - CA). That made Wednesday the

New Mexico Governor Makes History

Even the Associated Press recognizes that Susana Martinez has made history as the first woman to be elected governor of New Mexico. But they miss the bigger part of the story, which is that Susana Martinez is the first Hispanic woman to be elected governor anywhere in the United States. The Los Angeles Times noticed that, and highlighted it in their story's lead paragraph, so it's unclear why the AP didn't see it. (Maybe the American Thinker is right, and it just didn't fit the AP's Reid-like template. See also the next-to-last paragraph in Which identical twin is black?.)

Let me put this in a little different way, and succinctly:

The nation's first Hispanic woman governor is a Republican — just like Martin Luther King.