If there is any cohesion or logic in this rant I have not been able to locate it.

The author does not know what cross hairs are, or she would not have made the false accusation about the use of cross hairs. Perhaps she does not care and is quite happy to state an untruth.

This is an example of the result of exposure of a truth phobic personality, as the author appears to be, to a personality as direct and honest as Sarah Palin

All the author wants is for everyone to stop talking and listen to her. She is confused and totally biased and I think she has never listened to anyone in her life.
The usual left wing sook who is happy to dish it out but when it comes back turns into a cry-baby!

Leo: everybody in the world knows what crosshairs are, except, apparently, you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reticle

Pay particular attention to this bit:

"Most commonly associated with telescopic sights for aiming firearms..."

And then you go on to claim that the author is making false accusations.... ROFLMAO.

I think Blind Freddy would be able to spot who's telling the porkies here.

Can I request, in the interests of my own health and safety, that you refrain from political comment in the future? Your comment about the author not knowing what crosshairs are made me bruise myself when I fell of my chair laughing; I damn near choked laughing when you called Sarah Palin honest. I truly fear that your next contribution to political debate will see me hospitalised by hilarity.

JBowyer: is the some really clever form of irony I'm too tired to understand, or are you just an idiot? My insomnia has reached the point where I'm too sleep-deprived to tell the difference.

Aleister, you have obviously never looked through a gunsight, but that does not stop you from talking nonsense about it.

The symbols used on Sara Palin’s map are location symbols used by surveyors and printers to show locations. Do you know a better way to indicate locations? Tell the surveyors, they will be delighted.

You have joined the ignorami, Aleister, or probably you were always part of it.

With your concept of truth, I feel comfortable that you believe that I am lying. Come back and have another go when you leave school. Keep away from articles like this, and try to absorb something about the real world.

Work your way up to relating to the truth as ably expounded by Sara Palin. A great example is her statement that the US would not be in thrall to OPEC, if the oil reserves locked up in Alaska as the result of the efforts of lying green activists, were opened up.

Perceive the real world. It will not be easy, starting from where you are now, but it will be rewarding.

I do hope this helps, but I am, of course, open to the possibility that you are just an imbecile.

Since new evidence has come to light regarding this psycho's political beliefs - mainly that he had none and that, if anything, he was more to the left in his views than the right - do you wish to revise any of this garbage? To think that this ill thought out rant based entirely on political ideology as opposed to scholarship, research and deductive reasoning comes from the mind of a "Professor" is absolutely frightening. It is a terrible indictment on the scholarship produced by universities in the last 30 years.

No, I have never looked through a gunsight. I hope I never have to. But I looked through a refractometer, and it had crosshairs. As it says in the article I linked to and which you presumably didn't read, lots of devices have crosshairs - including not only refractometers and theodolites, but also rifle scopes. Your insistence that surveying theodolites are the only devices to make use of crosshairs is most amusing to those of us who prefer to deal with facts, rather than sweeping them under the rug when they get in the way of our sycophantic devotion to politicians.

A picture says a thousand words - re the origins of the toxic emotions and vitriol described by the Sheriff in Tucson.

http://www.portlandmercury.com/images/blogimages/2011/01/13/1294954588-1294951667-limbaughtucson.jpg

Part of a toxic pattern of primitive emotions that matter in right-wing America.

A deep pattern that created very real death threats against Barack Obama during the Presidential election campaign. That created a huge increase in gun ownership when Obama was elected. And which also created the reappearance (out of the dark recesses of the collective USA psyche) of right-wing hate and militia groups.

When the politics of fear and loathing became respectable again - and its inevitable search for scapegoats.

The applied politics of binary exclusions.

"When the politics of fear and loathing became respectable again - and its inevitable search for scapegoats". Well Ho Hum look at you and your leftwing mates for this.
Aleister go to bed and cry yourself to sleep, you silly little sook!

Palin's crosshairs are

Really surveyor's symbols?

You don't believe that

The Greens in Australia have recently said they will target seats in elections, what about them?

Cause and effect
"The New York Times reported it contained 'multiple photos' of the 22-year-old college dropout posing with a Glock 9 mm pistol next to his naked buttocks and dressed in a bright red G-string." Bet Sarah Palin wears a G-string too. Ban G-strings Now! Yes, it is all Sarah Palin's fault. That woman and the G-string culture that has swept the US.

Next, a human rights academic deduces that the crowing of the rooster causes the sun to rise, thereby bleaching her curtains. Ban roosters.

It is unfortunate when comments degenerate into personal attacks. Perhaps the publishers should add cross-hairs targeting the authors of such postings. (Would that spice up the debate?) Dealing with cross-hairs first, had Ms Palin wanted to draw attention to 20 different locations, she might have marked them with an X because, I think it is fairly commonly understood, X marks the spot. To suggest that the symbol, when combined with 'target' and 'reload' was anything other than a gun-sight is, I suspect, a convenient avoidance of the obvious.
But enough of that. The question is whether the connection ought to be debated in the media. Of course it should. Palin was foolish or thoughtless, but her folly and the willful abuse of firearms are quite separate matters that might better be considered: "In a contemplative fashion and a tranquil state of mind" (G&S The Gondoliers).

I don't know, Leo, do surveyors talk about 'reloading' ?

It does not matter what Loughner's motives were. The call for people to be assasinated, or public expression of a desire to kill them is irresponsible. In Australia they would be incitement to violence, and would b e subject to a prolonged jail sentence. Sarah Palin and several of the Fox New commentators have engaged in both in relation to Wikileaks at least.

If the US has similar legislation and it is not overruled by their Coinstitution, Palin and the commentators are repeated criminals.

In any case, thair 'rhetoric' is grossly irresponsible.

ozbib, "In any case, thair 'rhetoric' is grossly irresponsible.

So is making political capital out of a tragedy when the bodies were not even cold.

Mooseolini Palin's gun sights are the same gun sights that the USA military used, "before they were banned", the ones with the dumb ass biblical versus on them. Sarah Palin's Religion and patriotism are the last refuge of a scoundrel. Make them believe absurdities and you can make them commit atrocities. Praise God and pass the ammunition, here come the Tea baggers and their reloading.
Moosolini Palins whole religious right fascist thing has been done to death so many times in history she's just a plagiarist.
Sarahs cut snake crazy right wing religious extremist are simply using the same dog whistle "Gun sight motto" of the equally crazy racists "Storm front" right wing white supremacist group, think KKK. Huffington post has been posting articles on this all week. The only thing Palin and the other complicit religious confederates of the Palinista Tea bag cult listen to and can comprehend, are the voices in their heads, reality hurts their tiny undeveloped religious brains!
Palin's like a comet, it burn's brightly for a little while then just fades out, just like her nickname name sake, the repulsive totalitarian catholic fascist Mussolini did.