How Obama Can Talk About Tolerance without Trivializing a Tragedy

Giffords Eye Opens As Pelosi, Dem Colleagues Look On (VIDEO)
ABOARD Air Force ONE — Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' friends say it's nothing short of a miracle: Days after being shot in the head point-blank, the injured congresswoman opened an eye Wednesday for the first time. Two of her closest friends from Congress, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., were in Giffords' Tucson, Ariz., Hospital room at the time. Both had traveled to Arizona on Air Force One with President Barack Obama to attend a memorial service f...

Boehner's role
Seems like he's still figuring it out a bit: Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) turned down an offer by President Barack Obama to travel on Air Force One to Arizona for a memorial service on behalf of the Victims of Saturday’s shooting, a decision that has upset some Democrats. Boehner is instead scheduled to attend a reception on Wednesday night on behalf of Maria Cino, a former top House GOP aide who is seeking the Republican National Committee chairmanship. Boehner is backing Cino’s ...

President Challenges Nation
In a moving tribute to the Victims of last Saturday's violence, President Barack Obama challenged Americans to live up to the "expectations of our Children". Using 9-year old Christina Taylor Green's untimely death as an inspiration, Obama bemoaned, "I want to live up to her expectations." The president's 34-minute Speech was delivered to a crowd of nearly 14,000 people at the University of Arizona's McKale Memorial Center. They had gathered for a memorial service dedicated to those who lost the...

Boehner Gives Tea Party The Middle Finger With RNC Endorsement
Democrats are criticizing Boehner for skipping Tucson to host an Endorsement party for Maria Cino in the race for the RNC Chair. They have something of a point. He could have gone to Arizona to foster a bi-partisan spirit at the event. But he would have been on the undercard. It was Obama's event, so I'm not certain he had to be there. But what he is doing by backing Cino out of cronyism is even worse. Senior Democrats - who to date had been impressed with Boehner’s response to...

Obama calls Americans to a new era of civility
TUCSON, Ariz. -- President Barack Obama offered the nation's condolences Wednesday to the Victims of Tucson's shootings, calling on Americans to draw a lesson from the lives of the fallen and the actions of the heroes, and to usher in a new era of civility in their honor. The president directly confronted the political debate that erupted after the rampage, urging people of all beliefs not to use the tragedy to turn on one another. He did not cast blame on Republicans or Democrats, but asked pe...

Obama to the nation: We can be better than this
Summoning the soul of a nation, President Barack Obama on Wednesday implored Americans to honor those slain and injured in the Arizona shootings by becoming better people, telling a polarized citizenry that it is time to talk with each other “in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.” Following a Hospital bedside visit with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the target of the Assassination, he said: “She knows we’re here, and she knows we love her.” In an electrifying mo...

Obama urges nation to honor youngest Ariz. victim
(01-13) 03:50 PST Tucson, Ariz. (AP) -- President Obama exhorted Americans to refrain from partisan bickering and urged the country to embrace the idealistic vision of Democracy held by 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, the youngest Arizona Shooting Victim and an aspiring politician who is set to be buried Thursday in the first of half-a-dozen Funerals. Speaking to an arena audience of about 14,000 and even more in a nearby football stadium and at homes across the country, Obama drew on theme...

Obama's Message In Grief: Talk In A Way That Heals
President Obama paid tribute the Victims of the Tucson, Ariz., shootings Wednesday, urging Americans to change the nation's vitriolic public dialogue by "talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds." Obama, speaking at a memorial service at the University of Arizona, somberly called for an end to the political recriminations that have ignited in the days since a gunman killed six people and injured 13 others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). Enlar..

The President's speech as consolation: Is that what is needed?
The president along with many others, like Daniel Hernandez, gave a beautiful, graceful Speech last night. It was a eulogy for those who died like the lovely 9 year old girl, Christina Taylor Green, we all would have wanted as our own. He eloquently evoked the child who skipped in puddles and yearned to be someone to make the world a better place like the woman she admired and came to see, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, whom we all hope is valiantly beginning a recovery. Make the world a b...

Obama: We Can Do Better
Seeking to distance himself from the premature opportunism of the Far Left, U.S. President Barack Obama stuck to Centrist themes in addressing the Victims of last weekend’s tragic Tucson shooting - which left six people dead and fourteen (including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords) wounded. “I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us,” Obama told a sellout crowd at ...

Rand Paul: Democrats Trying To 'Manufacture' Controversy From Shooting In Arizona
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) accused Democrats Wednesday of attempting to "manufacture" the Controversy that has arisen over "vitriol" and political Rhetoric in the wake of the shooting in Tucson over the weekend. "Well, these are the kind of things that I think some on the left decided to manufacture even before the events occur. I mean, this is part of the playbook of Rahm Emanuel where they say any crisis should be used to their advantage to further their agenda," Paul said Wednesday on the FOX B...

Obama Arizona Memorial Speech: We Must Communicate 'In A Way That Heals,' Not 'Wounds'
TUCSON, Ariz. — Summoning the soul of a nation, President Barack Obama on Wednesday implored Americans to honor those slain and injured in the Arizona shootings by becoming better people, telling a polarized citizenry that it is time to talk with each other "in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds." Following a Hospital bedside visit with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the target of the Assassination, he said: "She knows we're here, and she knows we love her." In an electrifying moment, ...

The Politics of Insinuation
David Warren: While it did not quite rise to a blood Libel, the headline in Monday's Guardian (U. K.) did not fail for want of trying: "Gabrielle Giffords shooting reignites row over right-wing Rhetoric in U.S." Elsewhere in the Guardian, the distance was bridged. Consider this heading (over a piece by Michael Tomasky): "In the U.S., where hate rules at the Ballot Box, this tragedy has been coming for a long time: The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords may lead to the temporary hibernation of right...

Obama takes opportunity Palin missed (Politico)
In the span of a single news cycle, Republicans got a jarring reminder of two forces that could prevent them from retaking the presidency next year. At sunrise in the east on Wednesday, Sarah Palin demonstrated that she has little interest—or capacity—in moving beyond her brand of grievance-based politics. And at sundown in the west, Barack Obama reminded even his critics of his ability to rally disparate Americans around a message of Reconciliation. Palin was defiant, making the c...

Boehner's blunder? House Speaker picks cocktail party over Tucson memorial
House Speaker John Boehner is taking heat from some Democrats after skipping out on Wednesday's memorial service for the Shooting Victims in Arizona and instead hosting a cocktail party for the Republican National Committee.   The Ohio Republican turned down President Obama's invitation to travel on Air Force One to Tucson, Politico reported.   "It is disrespectful for Speaker Boehner to skip joining the President's and Bipartisan congressional delegation to the Tucson Memorial so he could h...

Tea Party Foes Smell Blood, Shanghai Children Into Their Cause
In the wake of the Tucson shooting tragedy, leftists are decrying all the violence. Yet they are clearly out for blood.  Sound contradictory? Of course it does, but there it is.  Those who hate on the citizen movement for smaller government, as exemplified by the Tea Party, really smell blood now. The shots from Jared Loughner’s gun truly have been heard around the world.  An article in Sunday’s Guardian online describes the sort of feel-good event

Iowa politicos differ on impact of heated rhetoric
Iowa Democrats and Republicans have drawn very different conclusions about what role heated political discourse may have played in the Jan. 8 shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and what changes politicians might make in the way they communicate following that event. Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Sue Dvorsky said politicians can’t control who hears what they say and how they react to it, but it is politicians’ responsibility to monitor what they say. “I think ...

Politicizing the Tucson Tragedy Not Without Precedent
Within minutes of the revelation that Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona had been shot while attending a public event in Tucson, political partisans and their media counterparts began to assign blame for the tragedy to the supposedly dangerous Rhetoric fomented by Tea Party groups and their ideological brethren. Although without facts in hand, partisans were unable to restrain themselves from leaping to conclusions that ostensibly validated their preconceived notions of cause and eff...

Obama at Arizona Memorial: We Cant Use This Tragedy to Turn on Each Other [VIDEO]
President Obama eulogized the six slain and congreswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the Arizona shooting last weekend at a memorial service in Tucson last night--and he delivered a message to those (Read more...) ...

Paging Dr. Krauthammer
I love Charles Krauthammer. A Harvard-trained physician and Psychiatrist, he knows what true Mental Illness is, and he lends his measured perspicuity to our understanding of Jared Lee Loughner: “His [Loughner's] own writings are confused, incoherent, punctuated with private numerology and inscrutable taxonomy. He warns of government brainwashing and thought control through “grammar.” He was obsessed with “conscious dreaming,” a fairly good synonym for hallucinatio...

Systematic Assassinations Not Part Of Our Politics
The steam seems to be going out of the move to "deftly pin this" -- the shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 13 others -- "on the Tea Partiers," as one unidentified senior Democratic operative put it to Politico. It has become obvious that the murderer was crazy, the follower of no political movement, motivated only by the bizarre ideas ricocheting through his head. If any blame attaches to others, it is to authorities who had notice of his madness and did not do enough to confine hi...

Police: Alleged Ariz. Shooter Had Prior Arrests
Arizona police say Jared Loughner, the alleged gunman in the Tucson massacre, had 12 previous encounters with authorities over the years, including two arrests for Alcohol and marijuana possession. They added that on the day of the shootings, he was stopped for running a red light, but was let go with a warning. Friends of Loughner, 22, said he once took Hallucinogenic drugs and was angry at the government, but that his displeasure was not directed at any political party. "He did not watch tv...

Rhetorical bookends
RHETORICAL BOOKENDS.... The political world spent a fair amount of time yesterday pondering the career-changing errors of Sarah Palin's video message, and its petty, defensive, resentful qualities. A half-day later, that same political world saw President Obama speak at a memorial service, delivering an inspiring address. The New York Times noted this morning that the day was therefore "bookended by two remarkable -- and remarkably different -- political performances that demonstrated the vast...

Barack Obama Reconnects
Has there ever been a bigger contrast between crass and class than former Governor Sarah Palin’s video statement and Pres. Obama’s address at the Tucson memorial? Pres. Barack Obama gave the Speech he wanted to give to the nation last night, conjuring up memories of his 2004 Speech at the Democratic convention, as well as the reason Republicans crossed over to vote for him and Young People engaged to elect him. The atmosphere was a bit odd, the raucous, almost never ending applause m...

Two Addresses; Two Approaches; Which One Speaks To The Heart Of America?
Much is being written in the blogosphere about the difference between Sarah Palin’s reaction to the Arizona shootings and the approach taken by President Obama.  For Palin, it was an opportunity to define herself as able to handle a personal Political Crisis, and to display an understanding of nuance and tonality.  The qualities we seek in our leaders, after all, are undefinable. It is not just about promising legislative victories or  thrilling one’s base; it’s ...