[Stimpy]

Originally Posted by Calgaryborn

Cops tend to stick together. I would be very suprised to see a Police chief speak out against a fellow cop.

They do, and they don't. They are part of the same brotherhood, but they are very territorial when it comes to jurisdiction. County and municipality normally don't have a great relationship and are paranoid of each other. They are not one big happy family and there are clashes between municipality and county. In fact, it was in Arizona where the immigration battle cause a local municipal force to clash with county, preventing them from doing a roundup. County responded with an early morning raid of city offices because a contract service providing cleaning services was using undocumented workers. To claim one cop is going to back another just because they are both cops is highly inaccurate.

Can you explain to me why if the political environment is that explosive that this police chief didn't have at least one police officer at a public event put on by their congresswomen?

That request would have to have been made by the group organizing the event. Not the fault of local law enforcement.

His department also had a history with the shooter and for the most part did nothing. If he had been charged when he made those threats perhaps his own lawyer or the judge could have sought a mental evaluation.

All of it very minor stuff. The most he would have received during those contacts was a citation and possibly a misdemeanor charge. Not enough to demand a psych eval, especially in a state where the Republicans have stripped out all money relating to health care. There just isn't money in the budget to order evaluations like you suggest.

Hopefully the 4 State Republicans who quit their jobs this week had more motivation than fear. Public figures have been getting death threats since the republic began. Yet very little has ever transpired. When something has occured it is just as likely that the guy is a loon as he has a political grudge.

Don't you find it strange that they picked this week to quit in fear over tea party threats when no tea party threat has ever been acted on outside of threatening to vote their canadates in? Also how do they know that the people making these threats are tea party members?

Do I find it strange that they quit this week? A politician was gunned down, after getting threats, which put a very real face on the issue for these people. They just saw what happened and realize that could have been them.

How do they know it was Tea Party members? Do you bother to read any of the links provided or do you just continue to practice projection bias? The people that were threatened knew some of those people who threatened them or had information that confirmed their affiliation.

Hatred of earmarks, the expansion of big government, soaring debt, government health care, government bail outs, ect. is not confined to the tea party. Most Americans are mad at the status quo.

How do you know what Americans are mad about? Most Americans don't even know what they are mad about. I don't see your argument holding much water. Look at the issue instead of the talking points.

Earmarks. Some earmarks are a joke, but most earmarks are how major infrastructure projects are paid for rather than waiting the 5-20 years for the money to be appropriated through regular means. People should try and understand the process rather than listening to some empty rhetoric about a process they know very little about. If they are going to complain about earmarks then how can they be so enamored with Palin and Bachmann, two abusers of the earmark system? Also, the problem is across the board and is unaffected by party affiliation.

Big government. This is another great talking point but holds very water upon examination because the term is never defined. What is big government? Care to explain it? I have an idea and you're not going to like which party was responsible for the greatest expansions in government since the end of the Great Depression. I'll wait for your definition though.

Soaring debt. More projection bias in action. Why can't conservatives take ownership of the problems they cause? The debt increased more under Reagan and both Bushs than all the other presidents combined. They expanded government and increased military spending to the heights never seen before. Own this. Embrace this. It's yours. Run with it, but please stop complaining about it.

Government health care. Americans love government health care! Don't believe me? Take a look back to the health care debate and see how many Americans, especially Tea Party members, were crowing about Obama keeping his hands off their Medicare. Not sure if you realize this, but Medicare is government health care. Ironically, the health care debate was not about health care, but about health insurance, and it ended in there being no government health care, just a mandate that Americans had to have insurance (from private providers no less) and could be subsidized if they did have means to pay. There is no issue with how you tried to frame it.

Bailouts. Another murky subject that the average Joe doesn't understand. The first bailout was on Bush's watch. That's where Wall Street was given almost a trillion dollars of money with no strings attached. That money is gone, because there was no oversight attached to how it could be used. The only positive about this was that it probably averted a failure of our financial system. The bailouts that took place after that, on Obama's watch, were all heavily regulated and had schedules to be paid back by those who took stimulus or bailout money. To date, all of that money is accounted for and the government has made money on almost every entity that took stimulus money.

I want to know if the Tea Party is so up in arms about debt and the cost of government then why are they so firmly behind the Bush tax cuts? All those tax cuts do is add to the debt and increase the cost of government. Holding firm on those, which the Tea Party supports in spades, will add almost a trillion dollars to the debt and increase the service load. This is the contradiction of the Tea Party. They don't know what they are mad about and have no idea how to fix things, but they are good at being mad and making a lot of noise.