[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Actually, my tendency is to think this sort of thing is, if anything, harmless.  Seriously, when things have irritated and annoyed me, I find video games give me a catharsis.  Like I have been deep into God of War: Ghost of Sparta on the PSP and it is amazing how peaceful I feel after half an hour of slicing and dicing as the most angry Spartan warrior, ever.  So bluntly if there are any people out there who want to kill Sarah Palin, etc. I think if anything this will actually blunt that rage.

That is, if it was any fun, and it’s kind of lame.  Which maybe is so un-cathartic as to be dangerous.  Hard to say.

But it certainly serves as example #4723 of leftward hypocrisy on civility.  And the point isn’t to just go “nah, nah, nah, you’re a hypocrite.”  As I have said before, I find little interest in the charge that someone is a hypocrite, and more interest in the what that hypocrisy reveals.  The point isn’t to say that the left once again is behaving inconsistently, but to hold up that inconsistency as evidence that many of those calls for civility were dishonest in the first place.

So here, you go, via MRCtv, the video game where you kill “Tea Party Zombies.”  Click on the image to see the video.  The still I have is of you killing Brit Hume.

As for serious threats, I take the remarks of Teamster President Hoffa much more seriously.  Violence is a regular feature of any Teamster strike, and while Hoffa may not be ordering it, comments like this are an unmistakable sign of approval.  He knew or should have known that members of his union will take his comments as permission to get violent with Tea Partiers.

Except, um, here’s the thing, Teamsters.  The Tea Party really loves the Constitution, particularly the Second Amendment.  I don’t think they will start anything, but I do believe they will finish it.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Posted by Karl]

Jay Carney gives his boogie shoes a workout:

(h/t Matt Lewis)  Yet all Carney does is make Team Obama’s double-standard on civility painfully apparent.  Incidentally, when assessing Carney’s claim that the White House had no idea that Hoffa was going to call Republicans sons-of-bitches who need to be “taken out,” keep in mind that this White House vets the prayers said at Obama’s rallies.  Carney is either dancing in horse manure or needs to explain why religious speech is getting singled out for vetting.

It’s nice to see ABC’s Jake Tapper doing his job; he does it more often than many of his colleagues.  It remains to be seen whether he and his colleagues will now treat any future Democratic demands for a “new tone” as the cynical, partisan sham it has always been.

–Karl

[Posted by Karl]

The kickoff of the 2012 general election is roughly a year away, making it worth a look at where people think it will truly be fought.

Academic and prognosticator Larry J. Sabato thinks “seven super-swing states with 85 electors will determine which party gets to the magic number of 270 electoral votes: Colorado (9), Florida (29), Iowa (6), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), Ohio (18) and Virginia (13).”

However, at Pres. Obama’s Chicago campaign HQ, the following maps hang on the wall: Iowa, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Florida, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Vermont.  Toss out Texas and Vermont as “50-state campaign” spin and you have a fairly good idea of the incumbent’s list.  Obama HQ has a fair amount of overlap with Sabato, although the inclusion of the Carolinas and Pennsylvania (and the exclusion of Virginia) may be telling.

Perhaps more intriguing is the Republican National Committee’s new radio campaign, which is airing in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina and Michigan.  This list leans more heavily on the Great Lakes region than either Sabato or Obama do.  Although Ohio has been key for Republicans at the presidential level for several cycles, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan have not turned red at that level in quite some time.  Indeed, Pennsylvania has long been to the GOP what Lucy Van Pelt has been to Charlie Brown’s placekicking career.

The GOP emphasis on the Great Lakes and Rust Belt may reflect insiders’ medium-term thinking about the party.  Republicans have been at a structural Electoral College disadvantage ever since vote-rich California slid into the Democratic abyss.  The Nixon-era strategy of capturing the South and West was fractured, while the left eyes the Mountain West and Southwest as fertile ground for its Emerging Democratic Majority.  All three lists above reflect the latter fight by including Colorado and Nevada.  But the RNC seems to be taking Obama’s current weakness as an opportunity to open new fronts for the party.

The thinking of GOP insiders about the electoral map is likely influencing commentary on the campaign.  For example, consider that the WSJ editorial board’s “questions about Mr. Perry concern how well his Lone Star swagger will sell in the suburbs of Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where the election is likely to be decided.” (Emphasis added.)  Historically, that does not jibe — and thus likely reflects a view about the future.  It also sheds light on the insider efforts to pull Gov. Mitch Daniels (IN), Rep. Raul Ryan (WI) and even Gov. Chris Christie (NJ) into the race.  The suspicion by movement conservatives has been that the insiders’ silent campaign has been about trying to move the GOP leftward.  The electoral map suggests there are also practical concerns at play, though there remains plenty of room to ask about the chicken and the egg.

–Karl