Applying the Louis Farrakhan Standard [Anthony McCarthy]

Arizona Massacre Prompts Political 'Cheap Shots'
When Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords collapsed outside the Safeway in Tucson Saturday morning, felled by a hail of bullets that killed six and wounded another 13 innocent people that had come to see her, some were quick to claim that the carnage was the product not merely of the tortured mind and trigger-happy fingers of the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner. Rather, many on the American Left said the horror could be traced to the malign influence of American Conservatives; members...

Arizona Massacre Prompts Political 'Cheap Shots'
When Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords collapsed outside the Safeway in Tucson Saturday morning, felled by a hail of bullets that killed six and wounded another 13 innocent people that had come to see her, some were quick to claim that the carnage was the product not merely of the tortured mind and trigger-happy fingers of the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner. Rather, many on the American Left said the horror could be traced to the malign influence of American Conservatives; members...

Manufacturing false equivalencies
Remember how liberals are anti-abortion, spew Paulist Rhetoric on the gold standard, hate government, and stash guns and ammo so they can fight back against an evil government? They're not? Well, that's why Conservatives are desperate to create a climate of false equivalencies, where "both sides do it". And the media, of course, is always happy to play along. So on one side, we have this: Not to mention this stuff, from Gabby Gifford's opponent in 2010: That's all about peace and love and not v...

What Riverdaughter said
There seem to be two major camps regarding this tragedy: Sarah Palin is a monster and the Tea Partiers must be blamed. Or, Sarah Palin is the scapegoat and her picture had nothing to do with this tragic incident. I prefer the third way. .... In the past 18 years, starting with the advent of Rush Limbaugh, we saw a ratcheting up of Right Wing Extremism. ... And it is into this environment that Sarah Palin steps as the champion of a new set of people. A group that even the Right Wing Republicans ...

Eric Boehlert: The Right's Rising Tide of Violent Rhetoric
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords appears be the latest Victim of anti-government violence that has taken hold in America since 2009. It's a wave of violence that's cresting along with a tide of hateful, insurrectionist Rhetoric that far too many Conservatives refuse to condemn. Instead, the toxic talk is routinely defended as being nothing more than spirited debate. It's not. It's deadly. And until those in positions of power say so, the dangerous Rhetoric is likely to continue. Whether that Rhetoric ...

Republican Rhetoric, Right-Wing Terror
"My tears are flowing and I am stunned and angered that Gabby Giffords was savagely gunned down while performing her congressional duties." So said Minnesota Republican Representative Michele Bachmann in response to Saturday's mass killing in Tucson. But less than a year ago, Bachmann called for resistance to Cap and Trade Legislation, "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue," adding, "Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing." Sadly,...

FLASHBACK: Do you remember the Halloween display Leftists put up in 2008 showing Governor Sarah Palin hanged from a rooftop?
Drudge Report yanked this story from the Memory Hole…where Leftists in California put up a “Halloween display” depicting Governor Sarah Palin hanging from a roof, execution style, her hands tied behind her back. I’ve told you repeatedly about a bar here in Boystown named Sidetrack (which actually happens to be one of the best Gay Bars in the world).  Its owners are great guys 95% of the time, but have a weird and twisted obsession against Governor Palin that also man...

alicublog
WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE WingnutS? Since I wrote about it at the Voice, it's just gotten worse: The entire Right Wing is in mourning over the recent Assassination of their reputations. (I hear some Democratic Congresswoman got shot, too, but they don't have much to say about that.) The Corner is one long blubber-fest. Brian Bolduc repurposes a Glenn Beck Press Release "decrying" -- get this -- "political opportunism of all stripes." Yeah, let's get past these sideshows and fight the re...

Left Rushes To Turn Psycho Killer Massacre Into Excuse For Power Grab
Fox News: When Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords collapsed outside the Safeway in Tucson Saturday morning, felled by a hail of bullets that killed six and wounded another 13 innocent people that had come to see her, some were quick to claim that the carnage was the product not merely of the tortured mind and trigger-happy fingers of the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner. Rather, many on the American Left said the horror could be traced to the malign influence of American conservati...

Warren Goldstein: No Moment of Silence: Speak Out Against Violent Language and Guns
I confess. Rather than observing the nationwide moment of silence President Obama called for 11AM this morning, I wrote this post. Silence is the last thing we need right now. We need Speech: forceful, civil, principled, intelligent speech about the intensifying connection between mainstream violent speech and the so-called "fringe" violent action it encourages. No longer do demagogues get to claim that their casual use of violent imagery has no effect beyond the airwaves or cyberspace. This w...

WWHD?
I should have written a post about this earlier because I really don’t like the meme “politicizing a tragedy” and you won’t hear me using it. The reason you won’t hear me using it is because words like “politicizing” are cooked up by operatives at the speed of light and are used to short circuit the thought process. They provide a sort of cheap grace as a substitute for thinking the problem out. Same for words like corporatist and triangulate. But that...

In Arizona, packing heat didn't work.
The horror in Arizona exposes the lunacy of the notion, popular among Republicans, that a heavily armed populace can stop a deranged gunman. After the horror at Virginia Tech, in 2007, gun advocates -- overwhelmingly Republicans -- advanced the idea that the massacre might have been cut short if Students had been allowed to carry weapons. School policy at Tech forbids students, visitors and most others to have weapons on campus. The Tech massacre even gave rise to an Advocacy Group, Students for...

What white voters fleeing Dems could mean in 2012; lessons from Buck vs. Bennet
Be sure to read this Atlantic article published Friday, which points out that, based on exit polling in November, ‘fully 60 percent of whites nationwide backed Republican Candidates for the House of Representatives; only 37 percent supported Democrats. … Not even in Republicans’ 1994 congressional landslide did they win that high a percentage of the white vote.’ Bucking the trend (no pun intended), White House advisor David Axelrod notes, was Colorado’s U.S. Senat...

Limbaugh: Left is accusing majority of being accomplices to murder
Rush Limbaugh, still smarting from President Bill Clinton’s suggestions 15 years ago that conservative Talk Radio bore some responsibility for the Oklahoma City bombing, pushed back hard in his Radio Show Monday against liberals who had dropped his name over the weekend in connection with the shootings in Tucson. “In continuing this template and narrative that the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, that Talk Radio and Fox News, are inspiring violence, they forget that, in the process of so...

The Politics of Assassination
On Saturday morning, the Nation took a collective gasp as it was reported that an attempted Assassination had taken place in Tuscan, Arizona.  The target, Democrat Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot by a lone gunman.  The Congresswoman survived, miraculously, because the bullet which entered her brain passed through completely and did not enter the other lobe.  As the gunman, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, tried to reload his weapon a woman rose and hit the gun and clip fr...

Is al Qaeda the Greater Assassination Threat?
I'm with Joe in thinking that the tragic Tucson shootings are being over-politicized, and likewise Jon Chait has wise words on the subject. (I think Jon understates the influence that inflammatory Rhetoric can have on the mentally unstable, but then I'm no psychologist.) That said, the most explicit political talk of things like "Second Amendment remedies" is wildly irresponsible and hopefully this tragedy can serve as an opportunity to stamp out that sort of conversation, whether or not there's...

Can New Jersey's Chris Christie overcome his weight?
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is a rising star of the Republican Party seen as having a shot at a White House run, raising questions whether his Obesity could impede his chances. American views on overweight Candidates may help determine the political future of Christie, an alternative to fit fellow-Republican Sarah Palin. While Americans like female Candidates slim, they seem to better tolerate their male politicians on the heavy side. Christie rose to prominence on th...

Gabrielle Giffords: Tragic Prophet
WASHINGTON — There is one commentator whose words should enlighten us on the meaning of Saturday’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the savage murders that took the lives of, among others, a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl. The person is Giffords herself. In an interview last March, the Arizona Democrat anticipated almost everything being said now and explained why what happened on Saturday is a violation of our national self-image as “a beacon.” Our pride, sh...

Riding That Tiger II
Jim Burroway's two cents: Given what we know today, I see no reason why those of us who consider ourselves Progressives can’t concede that Palin, Limbaugh, and the others got lucky (if you can call it that) and that they probably aren’t responsible this time. Maybe we can even let them off the hook — IF they can agree that we all need to come together as Americans who all love our country equally, whether we’re on the left, the right or anywhere in between. Because we all need to a

When Violence Comes From the Right, Media Hear No Evil
Despite the work of media Watchdog groups like Media Matters, and groups that track right-wing Extremism, like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, the corporate media insist on ignoring the influence of the Far Right’s toxic rhetorical drumbeat of hatred and anger in promoting a political context where violence can break out. “At a time like this, it is terrible that we do have to think about politics, but no matter what the shooter’s motivations wer...

Jared Lee Loughner, mental illness, and fringe politics
As appalled as I've been over the past couple of years by ads like this, veiled allusions to insurrection, and the otherizing of the president, I've found arguments drawing connections between a "climate of hate" and Loughner unpersausive. Simply put, the case that far-right Rhetoric contributed or caused this Killing Spree strikes me as squishy, and, at the moment, unprovable. In The Times and Post this morning, there are some of the calling-cards of the conspiratorial right. But more relevant,...

Politicos Ben Smith gives credence to baseless SPLC comments on Tea Party connection in Arizona shooting
Matthew Boyle is a contributing reporter at The Daily Caller. In a column published late Sunday night, Politico’s Ben Smith quoted a Political Activist at the Southern Poverty Law Center as a source to link the weekend shooting in Arizona to mainstream Conservatism. SPLC’s Mark Potok told Smith that the connection is through Far Right-wing Activist David Wynn Miller. Miller is a former Milwaukee welder who has declared himself the “King of Hawaii.” He’s associated w...

Gabby Giffords -" A victim of the politics of hate
However, Sarah's Staffer Rebecca Mansour, has been tweeting in defense of her boss since the tragedy took place, stating that the crosshairs were never intended to be gun sights. According to Kevin Gosztola, multimedia editor of OpEd News, there is clear a indication that the "far-right" in this country, or whatever you want to call them, have escalated their Rhetoric to the point where individuals are feeling like there is nothing else they can do but arm themselves and defend their country ...

Our "Mediocre" Military
Adam Weinstein throws down the gauntlet in Mother Jones to us Military Bloggers with a Controversial commentary on the many excellent officers leaving the military. Don't their departures go against the conservative myth of the silent, stoic warriors who all believe in America and apple pie and are unthinkingly patriotic? Of course, political Conservatives have a vested interest in keeping this myth going. If the Military is perceived as no place for dissent, for entrepreneurship, for innovativ...

David Sirota: Silence Is Complicity & Defensiveness Is Endorsement
I've just finished up 3 hours of the most difficult radio I've ever had to do. The topic, of course, was the horrific shooting in Tucson, which has deeply affected me, as it has many others. As someone who had to flee the Capitol on 9/11, was warned of Anthrax contamination in my congressional office, and has faced various threats of violence, I was shaken by the scenes in Arizona more so than by any other news imagery in a long time. The reason the Radio Show was so difficult this morning was...