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' ?