Kirsten Powers: Why did Healer-In-Chief blame America for Tucson tragedy?

Did the "Healer-In-Chief" blame America for the Tucson tragedy?
Liberal pundit Kirsten Powers, writing in the Daily Beast, makes some interesting, and highly pertinent, points on Obama's Speech at Wednesday night's "Together We Thrive" memorial service/pep rally for the Victims of last Saturday's shooting rampage in Tucson. Although she was clearly impressed with the speech, generally, she saw through the Rhetoric that Barack Obama essentially assigned the blame ... "to all of America." Powers writes: True, as always, he delivered as "Healer-in-Chief" and pr...

There's a New Sheriff in Politics
The Thread is an in-depth look at how major news and controversies are being debated across the online spectrum. Tags: blogs, Internet, Media, tuscon shooting In his Speech in Tucson Wednesday night, President Obama called on Americans to expand their “moral imaginations” and “remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.” Well, never hurts to aim high. For now, at least, the president seems to have put an end to the...

It Did Not'
Jan 24, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 18 • By WILLIAM KRISTOL Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. After a depressing week—a horrible shooting that killed 6 people and wounded 14 others, followed by days of demagoguery and idiocy surpassing even the normal standards of our power-without-responsibility punditocracy—recent days have brought encouraging news. The medical prognosis for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords seems more hopeful than had been thought likely. And the A...

Mortal Recoil
Consider the following reactions to the tragic shooting in Tucson: First, President Barack Obama’s Speech got rave reviews (“magic,” New York Times columnist Gail Collins called it), even though, by the standards, say, of Bill Clinton’s Oklahoma City address, it was pretty humdrum, especially during those times when the president was trying to draw lessons from the tragedy rather than eulogizing its Victims. Second, Obama’s Approval Rating, taken after the killings...

Lessons from a witch hunt
I shouldn’t even feel the need to write this, but alas I must.  Apart from the lessons from the tragedy in Tucson, there needs to be a retrospective of the reactions and the lessons that we can glean from it. A primary lesson is that of media reaction in and around Washington.  CNN in particular is guilty on this one.  They are emblematic of the wider problem.  Within hours of the shooting, CNN reporters began inserting the fact that Rep. Giffords was one of Sarah Palin...

The Tucson Massacres The Hall Of Shame: Liberals Who Used Tragedy To Smear The Right
G.I. Wood Shop Inc. Mrs. Peel Oh…My Valve! V The K’s Caption This! An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later. The massacre in Tucson was a horrendous tragedy. Everyone in the country, of every ideological stripe, should have been allowed to mourn the Victims’ deaths and injuries without the imposition of having to defend people who had nothing at all to do with it. But where normal people saw tragedy, the Far Left saw opportunity. They  jumped at th...

Obama: Time to tackle nation's challenges again
President Barack Obama speaks at a memorial service for the Victims of Saturday's shootings at McKale Center on the University of Arizona campus Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011, in Tucson, Ariz. Citing "great challenges for us to solve," President Barack Obama is pledging to work with Democrats and Republicans in the aftermath of the Arizona shooting that killed six, grievously wounded a member of Congress and brought legislative debate to a virtual standstill. In his weekly radio and Internet address...

The Arizona Tragedy and the American Reaction
The story dominating American conversation this week is the tragedy in Tucson, Arizona. In shock, after a mentally troubled assassin named Jared Lee Loughner shoots a round from his 9mm Glock through the brain of beloved Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and then turns his weapon on the crowd and kills 6 bystanders while wounding 13 others — America mourns. Giffords is alive today and fighting for her life, the extent of the damage caused by her wound still unknown. There are positive signs...

Turning up the rhetoric to 11
Following the tragedy in Tucson, the leftist media has been pushing the meme that “toxic Rhetoric” in politics needs to be toned down.  I (dis)respectfully disagree.  Conservatives will not be silenced by radicals who would love nothing more than for opposition to be muzzled to allow the Left to continue their march to socialism, unabated and uninterrupted. During my morning pass through Twitter, I caught two key pieces on this topic from the American Spectator.  In “Defen

Tucson Aftermath, Part 1: Shock, but hardly a surprise
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat elected to her third-term in the conservative 8th district of Arizona, was gathering at what she called, "Congress On Your Corner," a frequent event where she would meet with her constituents. The event on Saturday January 8th was being held outside a Safeway Grocery Store. Just minutes before the shooting, Rep. Giffords had sent a Twitter message telling people to come by the event. According to witnesses, a lone gunman fired off over 30 rounds befor...

Lawmakers introduce gun control legislation after shooting of congresswoman
The Gun Control debate once again has entered the political arena in the week following the shooting of an Arizona congresswoman and on Friday a Democratic lawmaker released the text of a bill that would ban high-capacity ammunition clips. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) said she would introduce a bill next week that would outlaw the transfer, importation or possession of high-capacity clips - those that hold more than 10 rounds - that were manufactured after the bill was enacted. The...

Political speech today -- it's not Bobby Kennedy's America
No, though it's certainly more debased and lacerating than it was just a few short years ago. We've been through eras of bitterly expressed politics more often than we'd probably care to admit. The Federalists and anti-Federalists bickered ferociously. Contention over the Bank of the United States during the Jacksonian era was fierce. The political Rhetoric leading up to the Civil War was murderous. Franklin Roosevelt's policies were the target of vile opposition. And during the McCarthy period,...

Video: Jon Meacham, a gun owner, on restoring the assault weapons ban
First, some personal history.  I am a southerner who grew up with and around guns.  I own some still. My father gave me a .22 rifle when I was 9 and a single barrel .410 shotgun when I was 10.  I have inherited many of my family’s guns, including a rifle made by my great, great, great grandfather, which I will preserve and give to my son. One of the central memories of my childhood is of hunting — not well; I am a terrible shot — quail and dove and grouse on a farm on the

The Tucson Shooting; Where do we go from here?
The tragic shootings in Tucson, Arizona have spawned a constellation of political quakes, accusations of guilt and attacks on Constitutional Rights. Behind the political blame game, though, there are human interest elements to this story that illustrate the true strength of the human spirit. For instance, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' fight for her life.  Giffords, who was shot in the head, and her battle to recover from this unspeakable act of violence, is a display of the most inspira...

Dennis A. Henigan: On Guns: Tucson Shows Two Visions of America
The gun issue confronts us with two competing visions of America. The Tucson tragedy puts those visions in stark, clarifying relief. The gun lobby's vision is guns in every corner of American society. The National Rifle Association wants guns in more American homes. It wants more guns on the streets, in Grocery Stores, in restaurants, in coffee houses, in bars, in churches, at workplaces, at political events, and on college campuses. Guns everywhere, to deter criminals from attacking and to s...

The Lefty Talking Points Fell Flat
Powerline has the details from a recent poll in the aftermath of the Arizona shooting: This Quinnipiac Poll provides more evidence that hardly anyone buys the Democratic Party's spin on the Tucson murders. When asked "What do you think is the main reason for the Arizona shooting; failure of the Mental Health system, lax Gun Control laws, overheated political Rhetoric, or do you think this is a situation that could not have been prevented?" respondents answered: * Mental health system: 23% * Gu...

Epic Fail
Posted by John at 7:17 PM This Quinnipiac Poll provides more evidence that hardly anyone buys the Democratic Party's spin on the Tucson murders. When asked "What do you think is the main reason for the Arizona shooting; failure of the Mental Health system, lax Gun Control laws, overheated political Rhetoric, or do you think this is a situation that could not have been prevented?" respondents answered: * Mental health system: 23% * Gun control laws: 9% * Political rhetoric: 15% * Couldn't have b...

A Climate of Slander
Jan 24, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 18 • By THE SCRAPBOOK Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. Liberal pundits suffered a psychotic break last week, metaphorically speaking, of course. When a gunman opened fire on Representative -Gabrielle Giffords and a crowd that had gathered to hear her speak in Tucson, they were certain that Conservatives must, somehow, be to blame. So the liberal intelligentsia rushed to erect a gallows in the public square (metaphorically speaking, a...

The Tucson Memorial Blessing, Explained
Wednesday’s memorial service at the University of Arizona in Tucson has faced a lot of criticism, particularly from the right. Many commentators noted the raucous attitude of many in attendance (there was much more cheering than one might expect at so solemn an event) and the T-shirts that were handed out (for which the university itself has admitted responsibility). Perhaps the most-remarked-upon aspect of the proceeding was the American Indian blessing given by Carlos Gonzales, an associ...

Amid Tragedy, Tucson Shows What It's Made Of
My family and I love Tucson. It was Gabby Giffords who persuaded us to come there, and we’ve come to feel that her sunniness and warmth reflect the town. We’ve grown to cherish the friendly people, fabulous local food, great colorful talk, cacti, lizards, javelinas, quesadillas, and coyotes howling over the town at night. When I say Tucson is "kid-friendly," I don’t just mean that restaurants keep crayons in a cup on their tables to distract Children. When people stop us on the street to s

Let Me Be Equally Clear
The media coverage of the shooting in Tucson raises the question of why the media so badly misreported the objective facts of the event — so badly that the president himself had to sternly admonish the media that vitriolic political debate “did not” cause the shooting. Let me be equally clear. I am not arguing that the shooting caused the media to be recklessly irresponsible and wrong in its coverage of the cause of the shooting. It did not. But, separate from the Tucson shooti...

Blankley: Tucson is a teaching moment for the media
In the aftermath of the shootings in Tucson, the media instructed us that we needed to have a series of national conversations — on “extreme Rhetoric,” gun, and more appropriately on the handling of the mentally ill.  Tony Blankley, former editor in chief at the Washington Times, says that the conversation that needs to take place is about the media: Because even though the Tucson shooting did not cause the media irresponsibility — this time — continued media misreportin

Civility? Maybe. Maybe not.
James Fallows has been asking his readers to email him their thoughts on civility.  Some excerpts: In the Private Sector people are mostly polite because it's good for business and crucial to getting things done.  The harshness that we find in the public political discourse is the result of self-selection: only the nasty and the really thick-skinned opt to engage in political life.  I and many others are turned off by the nastiness and choose to disengage from the public ...

Civility returns
The president received praised from all corners for his call on Wednesday to be more civil in political discourse. Some people refuse to listen. From Alex Beam of the Boston Globe, today: “Threats from the un-silent armies who take their marching orders from Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Fox News make for good bulletin board material at fund-raising time. There is, however, another current of thought within Public Broadcasting, being kept strictly on the down low: Public broadcasters — ...

KIRSTEN POWERS: Obama Should Have Been Harder On the Anti-Palin Smears. Sure, the president provi
Kirsten Powers: Obama Should Have Been Harder On the Anti-Palin Smears. “Sure, the president provided his usual inspiration, but he failed to shut down the ridiculous media meme that right-wing Talk Radio was responsible for the Arizona shootings. And how are ordinary Americans to blame?” ...