Congresswoman Shot

it's pathetic that this was tried and is being used as a means to enforce one's political beliefs...both sides should be ashamed and same on all you for doing the same.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/01/09/arizona.shooting.rhetoric/index.html?hpt=Sbin

Last March, Giffords raised concerns about inflammatory rhetoric after her office was vandalized, and she cited that her name appeared on a website titled "take back the 20" as part of a list originally issued by Sarah Palin against vulnerable House Democrats.

A map on the site showed crosshairs over the contested Democratic districts.

Palin first posted the list in March 2010, naming 20 House members who voted for health care reform and represented districts that Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona won in the 2008 presidential election.

At the time, Giffords responded to the map by saying on MSNBC that her long-serving colleagues had "never seen anything like it."

"The thing is, the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district," Giffords said in March. "When people do that, they've got to realize there's consequences to that action."

 

For my part, whether dealing with politics, religion, or a rude driver, although I can't control the actions of others, I personally pledge to:

Dial
It
Down.

Who's with me??

 

Thankfully you are above using tragic events to argue for yours, correct?

 

Roxran please don't make yourself look more silly by pretending you don't understand figurative speech. Palin isn't the worst of what was said or done.

You seem to be having all sorts of comprehension issues in this thread. I don't know if you aren't reading the posts or watching the videos, or if you just truly can't understand what people are saying.

Olbermann apologized for things he has done that in any way could be construed as pushing violence, and he mentioned what others have done, and asked that they all tone it down.

Keith wasn't laying causation for this event on the hands of anyone, simply saying that this incident demonstrates it's time to tone it down.

Again why do you have a problem admitting that it was wrong for tea party politicians to call for violence if elections didn't go their way? Regardless of whether those calls caused this particular incident or not, why do you have a problem denouncing that kind of rhetoric, and seeing that it is a notch above figurative language, and Palin's cross-hairs posters. Not that those are good and should be applauded, but they don't rise to the literal suggestion that if ballots don't work bullets will.

I will say again that kind of talk should be condemned by reasonable people on both sides of the political spectrum. The fact that some people including yourself are unable to condemn that kind of talk is sad and troubling.

 

I'm not sure how much I blame Palin for the shooting...to me it's same sort of blame game of attacking anti-social music lyrics or Bill Clinton blaming Rush Limbaugh on the OKC bombing.

But those same people can be blamed for dumbing down the argument and making people already on the fringes of society (and mental health) to find less than ideal solutions to their problems. When the airwaves are flooded with slogans rather than real discourse, its no small wonder people become so dogmatic, misinformed, and partisan.

We don't really know the kid's ideology...I suspect it has more to do with mommy and daddy not loving him enough than it does his take on policy stances. If Ayn Rand, George Orwell, Marx and Hitler were among his favorite authors it stands to reason he didn't exactly have a well formulated political identity that anyone could identify.

 

1. Putting particular blame on rhetoric for this shooting might be reaching, because this shooter seems to have a disorder anyway. He started slipping in late high-school, which is when schizophrenia and many other mental disorders typically have their onset. Maybe the national mood created a more violent atmosphere to enable him, but I would look first at effective diagnosis and treatment of mental health issues.

2. While I don't particularly like the cavalier way in which many people use martial, insurectionist, or violent language in politics, I'm also wary of the reaction to 'dial it down.' People should be more thoughtful with this kind of stuff, but the 'tree of liberty watered by the blood of patriots' stuff also does have a place in public discourse. The integrity of our democracy is ultimately defended against tyranny by the resistance of the citizenry. So, we can't just not talk about that stuff. The problem here is that there is wide gulf between tyranny and whether a Republican or a Democrat occupies a seat in the House. So, people should be more thoughtful and more measured -- though I know they are not capable.

3. I don't expect the discourse will change, because in the arms race for viewership and soundbites, the more strident voices will win out against the reasonable, measured ones.

 

The Giffords Shooting, The Instant Politicization of Everything, & Why Americans Increasingly Hate Dems & Reps

From Glenn Instapundit Reynolds, writing in The Wall Street Journal:

There's a climate of hate out there, all right, but it doesn't derive from the innocuous use of political clichés. And former Gov. Palin and the tea party movement are more the targets than the source.

American journalists know how to be exquisitely sensitive when they want to be. As the Washington Examiner's Byron York pointed out on Sunday, after Major Nidal Hasan shot up Fort Hood while shouting "Allahu Akhbar!" the press was full of cautions about not drawing premature conclusions about a connection to Islamist terrorism. "Where," asked Mr. York, "was that caution after the shootings in Arizona?"

Set aside as inconvenient, apparently. There was no waiting for the facts on Saturday. Likewise, last May New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and CBS anchor Katie Couric speculated, without any evidence, that the Times Square bomber might be a tea partier upset with the ObamaCare bill.

So as the usual talking heads begin their "have you no decency?" routine aimed at talk radio and Republican politicians, perhaps we should turn the question around. Where is the decency in blood libel?...

To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?​

More here.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...696964.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop#printMode

How do you take one of the most shocking and revolting murder spreers in memory and make it even more disturbing? By immediately pouncing on its supposed root causes for the most transparently partisan of gains.

Instantaneous b****-tweeting online (within moments of the shooting, it seems, messages such as "Sarah Palin has blood on her hands" were all over the place) is one thing. Stories filled with actual Democratic Party players such as Paul Begala going on about what an "opportunity" the shooting presents Obama politically aren't going to help the Dems or anyone else in the long run. From Politico's story, "Barack Obama's Oklahoma City moment":

Veteran Democratic consultant Dan Gerstein said the crisis “really plays to Obama’s strengths as consensus-builder” and gives him the opportunity to build a deeper emotional connection with the people he governs.

“He’ll be active, but also very careful not to appear like he’s blaming or politicizing,” Gerstein predicted.
​

There's no question that the GOP and its proponents are more than ready to play a similar game. Any moral lapse by a Democrat, for instance, is an ethical rot that stems directly from the malefactor's stance on the minimum wage or Don't Ask Don't Tell, say, while hypocrites such as Sen. Larry Craig and Tom DeLay are ethical one-offs. The most-unbelievable response in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was longterm GOP activist Jerry Falwell's announcement on Pat Robertson's TV network that gays and women wearing pants etc. were responsible for radical Islamists killing 3,000 people (even more sadly, years after Falwell apologized for his self-evidently r****ded statement, conservative writer Dinesh D'Souza blew out the thesis into a full-length book). I'm not trying to be "fair and balanced" here by bringing up GOP stupidity; I'm trying to point out that we're in a decade of this sort craptastic instantaneous spin that latches on to everything in its path. I say this as someone who was fingered as broadly responsible for the culture that produced "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh.

Readers of this site know I'm no Sarah Palin fan, but to accuse her of complicity in the murderous spree of a clearly insane person is one of the main reasons that partisan political parties are losing market share. I had myself tweeted that blaming Palin for Jared Loughner's mass killing would be like blaming J.D. Salinger for Mark David Chapman shooting John Lennon (and as Jesse Walker pointed out, in Chapman's case, at least we could be sure Chapman had read Salinger). Given Loughner's fixation on grammar and the supposed lack of literacy evinced by most Americans, maybe William Safire and S.I. Hayakawa should be held responsible.

Like Matt Welch and Jack Shafer, I don't think that today's political rhetoric is particularly overheated or vitriolic and, even if it were, I don't think that would be a problem. I suspect that most people are like me in that they respond to folks who actually believe something and are willing to fight for it when it comes to a particular political issue. I don't like bipartisanship, which usually means that all of us get screwed, but it's easy enough to respect someone you virulently disagree with if you think they are arguing in good faith.

The problem isn't with the current moment's rhetoric, it's with the ******* politicization of every ******* thing not even for a higher purpose or broader fight but for the cheapest moment-by-moment partisan advantage. Whether on the left or on the right, there's a totalist mentality that everything can and should be explained first and foremost as to whether it helps or hurt the party of choice.

That sort of clearly calculated punditry helps explain one of last week's other big stories, which is how both the Dems and the GOP have really bad brand loyalty these days. In its most recent survey of political self-identification, Gallup found that the Dems were at their lowest point in 22 years and that the GOP remains stuck below the one-third mark. The affiliation that has the highest marks for the past couple of decades on average and is growing now is independent. Faced with the way that the major parties and their partisans try to bend every news story, trend, box office hit or bomb, you name it, whether truly horrific (as Saturday's shooting was) or totally banal, is it any wonder that fewer people want to be affiliated with the Dems and Reps? This is a long-term trend. Indeed, Harris Poll numbers that stretch back to the late '60s show the same trend: Fewer and few folks want to view themselves as Democrats and the GOP has never been popular (even though far more people consider themselves "conservative" than "liberal"). And note what Galup are Harris are talking about there is not party registration. It's identification and self-affiliation; how you see yourself. It's a cultural identity.

The easy reading of this is pretty obvious and rooted in our national DNA: Americans want refuge from politics, not an expansion of it to cover every aspect of our lives, and that's something increasingly bitter dead-enders don't want to acknowledge.

http://reason.com/blog/2011/01/10/the-instant-politicization-of

 

rsty's TL;DR ratio per post is astounding. Good job, patriot.

Why don't you just put a link to reason.tv in your signature, then post funny pictures instead. That way everybody wins.

 

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/08/nation/la-na-jared-loughner-20110109

Palin fanatic to be sure.

 

I read it a few times, it's not hard. Try sounding out each word out loud as you come across it.

 

Can we stop the finger pointing for a few days and get a few more facts about the monster. There will be much to learn from this in time.

Some of the victims


http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/01/09/20110109gabrielle-giffords-arizona-shooting-tucson-girl-killed.html


http://i.azcentral.com/i/sized/5/C/E/e298/j350/PHP4D2A2B4F8AEC5.jpg


http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/01/09/20110109gabrielle-giffords-arizona-shooting-retiree-killed.html

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/01/09/20110109gabrielle-giffords-arizona-shooting-morris.html

 

Let's just let one of the multiple readings it required for you count as my own personal reading.

Again, that way everybody's happy.

 

I disagree with this:

[rquoter]
To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?[/rquoter]

On (b), Just because one isn't asserting a direct connection between the two, that does not make it "unrelated". Further, I don't think it should be characterized as a "political point".

 

Ire over hanged Palin doll
West Hollywood Halloween display is not a hate crime, but is in bad taste, officials say.

October 28, 2008|Victoria Kim | Kim is a Times staff writer.

A West Hollywood Halloween display showing a likeness of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin hanging by a noose has caused a furor among some residents who reported it as a hate crime, authorities said Monday.

But Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said the mannequin sporting a beehive hairdo, glasses and a red coat does not rise to the level of a hate crime because it was part of a Halloween display.

Link

 

The Underpants Gnomes’ Theory of the Arizona Shootings

by Pejman Yousefzadeh on January 10, 2011

As presented by port side demagogues . . .

Phase 1: Sarah Palin publishes a map.
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Gunfire.

Really, at the end of the day, they have nothing more than this to make their case that Palin is responsible for the shootings.

Link