We have snow. Here’s the view of the backyard as seen from the laundry room.
It’s still coming down, and our street hasn’t been plowed yet. I’ll fire up the snow thrower in a while.
Last minute dinner invite
Had a great surprise tonight. Joe Sinnott’s son Mark called Denro to say he was in town with his wife Belinda and their daughter Erin, who’s attending college in Boston. Erin is a writer, who already has two published novels to her name, with a third in the works right now.
We all met up downtown and went out to dinner. I love talking comics and music, but I have to take a backseat to Mark and Dennis when they get going on sports. My sport is running, and being not far from the Boston Marathon finish line this evening, I’m wavering on my decision to give up 26.2-mile road races.
An attempt at a joke
However much brain damage Representative Giffords has, her attacker has more.
Another crazy, confused kid
Only a few details about accused killer Jared Lee Loughner have come to light. It seems that he was declined enlistment to the Army due to suspected drug use, although that isn’t confirmed yet. Also, Loughner’s targeting of Giffords apparently goes back to some contact he had with her in 2007 — before the Tea Party, and before Obama.
So it’s not possible to draw a direct line between the toxic political tone of the times, and what Loughner allegedly did. However, I’ve seen video of Giffords back in March saying that she was concerned about Sarah Palin putting crosshairs on Democratic districts. Based on that, Palin’s PAC was aware of how the map was perceived, and yet left it in place.
Olbermann’s call to rally for sanity
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Tucson tragedy
On April 19, 1995, as soon as I heard about the Oklahoma City bombing, I turned on the radio and flipped between stations WBZ and WRKO in Boston. On ‘RKO I heard Howie Carr, a notorious reactionary hothead talk show host, spout with absolute certainty that Muslims were behind the explosion. The bomber was, of course, all-American boy Timothy McVey.
Today, we have news of a terrible crime in Tucson, Arizona…
(CNN) — Six people were killed and 12 others wounded — including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords — in a shooting outside a Tucson, Arizona, grocery store where the congresswoman was holding a constituent meeting, police said.
The suspect in the shooting was in custody, according to U.S. Capitol Police, who did not identify the alleged gunman.
The shooting happened at a supermarket where Giffords was meeting with constituents. She is still in surgery as I write this. Unlike Carr, I’m not going to jump to any conclusions about the suspect.
Follow-up: The alleged shooter is 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, of Tucson. This YouTube video was supposedly made by him.
