Are you serious?

I was going to post some pictures of an interesting leaf after various Photoshop manipulations... Maybe tomorrow. The tragedy in Arizona has soaked up all my energy for today.

I just read a report that the shooter was trying to reload when a woman grabbed his arm. Which makes me think...I'm glad he didn't get to load a second magazine and continue the carnage...and wouldn't it have been a good thing if he'd been unable to buy 33-round magazines in the first place? Those used to be illegal.

George Packer has a post in the New Yorker in which he seems to be arguing that "it doesn't matter why he did it" but it's still the fault of "right-wing hostile rhetoric."

Hmm. I don't recall the left as coming up short on hostile rhetoric while Bush was president; I even engaged in some myself.

But where Packer really strains the bounds of reason is in this assertion:

Even the reading of the Constitution on the first day of the 112th Congress was conceived as an assault on the legitimacy of the Democratic Administration and Congress.

The Constitution is right-wing hostile rhetoric?

As was famously said in another context:

"Are you serious? Are you serious?