Democrat hate machine politicizes Arizona tragedy

That’s Political Entertainment!
EMOTE CONTROL Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck. In Morning Glory, last year’s most underrated movie comedy, go-getter breakfast-show producer Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams, divine), in a burst of exasperation, explains the facts of life to journalistic warhorse Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford, face furrowed with mental indigestion): “The world has been debating news versus entertainment for years, and guess what? You lost!” Which hasn’t stopped the l...

Ailes to Fox Anchors, 'Tone it Down'
Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News, on Monday embraced the idea of a more civil public discourse in the wake of the shootings in Arizona. In an interview with Russell Simmons, which was posted on the Web site of the founder of Def Jam records, Mr. Ailes said that his network would try to cool the heated Rhetoric. “I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually,” Mr. Ailes said. “You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other ...

Double Standards
Rush Limbaugh and the right wingers are all over Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for having the temerity to express an opinion about the causes of the shootings in Tucson last weekend.Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik thrust himself into the spotlight in the aftermath of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 other people in Arizona on Saturday, decrying the heated political atmosphere and calling for more civility. "It's not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, ...

Meet Jared Loughner
This is the rather bizarre mugshot of Jared Loughner that was released yesterday afternoon. He has been assigned lawyer Judy Clarke, who defended the Unabomber. One of the more interesting facts to emerge is that Loughner was expelled from his community college after complaints from classmates that he seemed on the edge of violence. In the meantime, the Sheriff is being attacked for criticizing right-wing commentators for their over-the-top Rhetoric, including conservative icon, Rush Limbaugh. ...

Taking, Not Placing, Responsibility
In the wake of Saturday's tragic shooting in Tucson, Arizona, we're beginning to take a long overdue look at the state of our political debate. But that examination needs to be honest. There are times when both the right and the left are equally guilty of some sin or other, and the press' instinct to characterize every problem as the equal responsibility of both sides does no harm. This is not one of those times. The simple, unavoidable fact is that it is the right that has been purveying the r...

Call it what it was: An Act of Domestic Terrorism
Good editorial cartoons rip the heart from the moment and always piss people off. … But even some Republicans sympathetic to Ms. Palin suggested that she needed to find a more substantive and nuanced means of addressing the criticism to avert any risk to her political standing and to maintain control of her political narrative. … But other Republicans said that if she was serious about becoming president, the shootings in Tucson might require Ms. Palin to step out of the political co...

The Morning Plum
* Obama steps up: The President is set to travel to Arizona tomorrow to attend the Funeral service of the Shooting Victims, and he is expected to give a Speech about tolerance, a theme he may reprise in the State of the Union address. But Obama's advisers are uncertain about the exact message he should send: It is not clear whether ideology motivated the alleged shooter, Jared Loughner, and Obama's advisers may conclude it unwise for the president to lecture the nation on mutual respect -- whi...

Who has been "inflaming tensions"
Another rampantly biased piece in the Tribune this morning by Kathleen Hennessey and others. No mention of the Pima County Sheriff's inflammatory and unprofessional outburst. No mention of the contemptible bias of the NY Times and CNN, not to mention MSNBC--and even FoxNews. The LA Times/Tribune "reporters" conveniently cut off the quote from Roger Ailes: Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes — while rejecting any suggestion that his Cable News net...

Can't We All Just Get Along?
I would like to know what rock David Gergen has been living under for the last two years if he thinks this tragedy in Arizona is possibly just the beginning of a period of violence. Someone needs to tell him to go read our contributor Jon Perr's post if he actually hasn't been paying attention to how many people have already been killed over the last couple of years. We don't need to know "what part of that culture" of violence led to the actions by the shooter in Arizona to know that it's long ...

Hate Speech the Rights Magic Bullet (Guest Voice)
Hate Speech the Right’s Magic Bullet by Michael Winship The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov had a rule: if you show a gun in the first act, by the time the curtain falls, it has to go off. For weeks and months, that gun, the weapon of angry Rhetoric and intemperate rabblerousing, has been cocked and loaded in plain view on the American stage; Saturday morning outside a Shopping Mall in Tucson, Arizona, it went off again and again and again. The target, Gabrielle Giffords, a member of the Un...

GOP in Political Siege Mode for the Moment
As the nation remains transfixed by the horrific events in Tuscon, AZ, the inevitable political questions, finger-pointing and analysis unfolds.  While reports stream in about the condition of critically wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), at the root of every conversation about the mass Murder of innocent Arizona 8th Congressional district constituents is why?  Ultimately, the political calculus pushes its way into the explanation, and observers are straining to assess wh...

Poll: Rhetoric, Arizona shooting unrelated
Almost 60 percent of the public believes that heated political Rhetoric has nothing to do with an Arizona Shooting Spree that gravely wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) and killed a Federal Judge. Fifty-seven percent of respondents in a new CBS News poll said Rhetoric is unrelated to the shooting, while 32 percent said they believe the two are connected. Many pundits and lawmakers have keyed in on political vitriol as a potential contributing factor to the shootings allegedly carried out by...

Calls for softer tone in politics gets cool reception
By Ed Stoddard DALLAS | Mon Jan 10, 2011 7:21pm EST DALLAS (Reuters) - Calls to reset the tone of politics in the aftermath of Saturday's shooting rampage in Arizona got short shrift on Talk Radio and elsewhere as left and right traded blame for the massacre. From the right, Bloggers and pundits labeled suspected shooter Jared Lee Loughner a "leftist" while critics of conservative super-star Sarah Palin accused her of creating a combustible political atmosphere with her behavior and Rhetoric....

Happy Meal Conservatism
This is an appropriate time to turn back, once again, to one of my favorite John Derbyshire pieces published waybackwhen in The American Conservative: How Radio Wrecks the Right. A long excerpt: Taking the conservative project as a whole—Limited Government, fiscal prudence, equality under law, personal liberty, Patriotism, realism abroad—has Talk Radio helped or hurt? All those good things are plainly off the table for the next four years at least, a prospect that Conservatives can o...

Placing Responsibility Where It Lies
Sheriff Dupnik insists that it's his official duty and his job as Sheriff to spout off his political opinions and his views on what's wrong with today's society. There's just one problem - he's providing a defense for the killer. And I'm not just referring to the defense that the killer's lawyer will no doubt use in court. While Dupnik is using his post as a soapbox for his Democrat political views, the defense attorney is now apt to cite the Sheriff's opinions as a defense for the killer duri...

Dont you get it, you stupid, reactionary, racist, white, trashy, snowbilly, flagwaving, Constitution-fetish, Liberty-loving Reds
We don’t care that Loughner’s shooting rampage wasn’t inspired by anything other then his Mental Illness … YOU are still to blame. Whether Jared Loughner is a far-left nihilist or a right-wing Racist or — as he most likely is — some weird politically incoherent amalgamation of Extremist beliefs tinged with paranoia, he wasn’t driven to Murder by angry campaign slogans. Steve Kornacki’s right — Loughner was not a Gadsden Flag-wielding Tea Pa...

White Power, White Terrorism, White Mainstream
As you’ve probably heard by now, Jared Lee Loughner is accused of a horrific attempted Assassination of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ.) and the Murder of six other people, including a Federal Judge and a 9-year-old little girl.  Loughner also injured 14 other people.  Remarkably, Giffords survived - in no small measure due to the heroic actions of a gay, Latino intern who rushed to administer first aid - and doctors are cautiously optimistic that she will recover. ...

Poll: Only 32% Of Americans Think Tucson Shooter Was Politically Motivated
Despite a 48 hour campaign by Demcorats and their surrogates in the media to pain the Tucson shooter Jarred Loughner as a tea-partying Sarah Palin devotee, most of the public isn’t buying it. Even a plurality of Democrats are saying that the shooting had nothing to do with politics: Nearly six in 10 Americans say the country’s heated political Rhetoric is not to blame for the Tucson shooting rampage that left six dead and critically wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, according to ...

The Lefts Script of Hate
“Just the facts, ma’am,” Dragnet’s Joe Friday famously informed witnesses he interviewed. Oft-interviewed Pima County Sherriff Clarence Dupnik might adopt the catchphrase: “Save the facts, ma’am. Just the narrative.” The narrative of right-wing Rhetoric fueling accused mass-murderer Jared Lee Loughner proved so seductive to partisans that they didn’t wait for the compilation of facts, or burial of the dead, to advance their politically opportunisti...

Pawlenty defends Palin but differs on crosshairs map
Washington (CNN) - Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Monday he would not have used a map with crosshairs to target Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and other Democrats during the Midterm Elections, but otherwise defended Sarah Palin from suggestions that her graphic may have influenced the man behind last weekend's Shooting Spree in Arizona. "It's not a device I would have chosen to do. Everyone has their style and their own choices," Pawlenty told the New York Times when asked about the map. "But I don't...

First Post-Shooting Poll - Most Americans Still Sane
CBS News has released a poll in the wake of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the Murder of several others. The poll results show that the attempts by the left-blogosphere, Mainstream Media and some Democratic politicians to blame right-wing Political Speech and Sarah Palin for the shooting have not worked, so far, with most Americans: Nearly six in 10 Americans say the country's heated political Rhetoric is not to blame for the Tucson shooting rampage that left six dead and ...

NBCs Mitchell Digs Back to 2005 to Locate Becks Hate Speech, But Cant Find Any on MSNBC
There’s no evidence political vitriol of any kind drove Jared Loughner’s murderous rampage, ABC, CBS and NBC all acknowledged, but that didn’t deter them on Monday night from taking up the left-wing line holding Conservatives culpable as NBC, incredibly, managed to castigate Sarah Palin and go back more than five years to find an incendiary quote from Glenn Beck – but couldn’t find anything over the line from its own Keith Olbermann or Ed Schultz. “It was, by ...

Ariz. survivor: 'It was like a bad crime drama'
Eric Fuller said Tuesday on the CBS "The Early Show" that he felt the bullet that hit his knee but didn't know he had also been hit in the back. Jared Loughner (LAWF'-nuhr) is being held on federal charges. He's accused of killing six people and wounding or injuring 14 others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Fuller says he was lucky and feels fine physically but is outraged that Giffords was attacked. Ariz. survivor: 'It was like a bad crime drama' Why hasn't Obama warned...

It's On: Pawlenty Jabs Palin Over 'Crosshairs'
Possible Republican presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty took a jab at Sarah Palin, saying he wouldn't have used gun crosshairs to target Rep Gabrielle Giffords and others. "I wouldn't have done it," the former Minnesota Governor told The New York Times on Monday when asked if he would have created a map like the one posted last year on Sarah PAC's website showing crosshairs on lawmakers who supported Health Care reform. You must login to comment. The Fox Nation is for those opposed to intolerance,...

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...