Limbaugh says the left openly wishes for such disaster to profit from it (Daily Caller)

Demonizing opponents for supposed "hate speech" is itself a form a hate speech
We pray for the families of those who were gunned down indiscriminately in Tucson last week. Some will survive their wounds and we are grateful for that. I am grateful for the heroes we've heard about as the story of what happened trickle out. Dorwan Stoddard protected his wife Mavy by throwing himself over her as the bullets flew. She survived. He did not. The intern Daniel Hernandez used his medical training to support Congresswoman Giffords in the crucial few minutes after she was shot an...

My reaction to the Presidents Tucson memorial speech
…was noted here last night in the comments: [...] you’d think Lowry would’ve known exactly how this was going to play out. Obama and his handlers essentially orchestrated a minor Sister Soldjah moment. It was planned this way. We know this because yesterday Obama was on the phone with Sheriff Dufus commending him for his fine (dirty) work, which in castigating the Tea Party (YAY!) and right-wing radio (YAY!) set Obama up for tonight, allowing him to appear above the fray even as he w...

Some Democrats seek to dial back overheated rhetoric on shootings
ANALYSIS: Some Democrats are calling for a cease-fire in a heated liberal campaign to pin blame for the Tucson, Ariz., massacre on conservative Speech and specifically on former Republican vice-presidential Candidate Sarah Palin. No evidence has surfaced that the shooting suspect, Jared Lee Loughner, was motivated by any Political Speech, left or right. News reports tell of a deeply troubled man who thinks the government orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, hates The Bible and was thrown out of coll...

The Plum Line: The right-wing narrative about Clinton, the Oklahoma bombing, and Obama
President Obama is heading to Arizona to commemorate the Victims of Saturday's events in Tucson, and Conservatives are already expressing concern about a replay of Bill Clinton's 1995 Speech denouncing "purveyors of hatred and division" on the airwaves in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. In a preemptive strike, Conservatives are already misrepresenting the history of that event, arguing that Clinton politicized the bombing for his own gain. At National Review, John J. Mil...

Require youths to listen to Rush
I know how to save the nation from this violence caused by people who do not watch Fox News, do not know who Sarah Palin is and who do not attend Tea Party rallies. Make them listen to Rush Limbaugh. I got my idea from Rush Limbaugh’s commentary today: RUSH: This morning on Good Morning America a portion of an interview Ashleigh Banfield did with Zach Osler, who is a High School friend of the shooter Jared Loughner.  Ashleigh Banfield: “What was his motive in Saturday’s atta...

Never Forgive, Never Forget
I had a piece about half worked out in my head. It would have been a good piece, on inflammatory Rhetoric in politics. I was going to make a suggestion: that those most concerned with "calling out" those who use violent language start with their own sides first. I'd even set an example, by choosing some right-winger who I thought had gone too far and chewing them out -- then ask someone to point out a leftist going after one of their own. If they needed help, I'd point to any of a number of com...

Michael Russnow: Media Pundit Sarah Palin Says She's Not Responsible: Oh, Yeah? I Don't Think So
The subject of the tragedy in Tucson has perhaps been talked to death on the major networks, but having watched the give and take on both sides of the political spectrum, as well as those who preach moderation, it's my view regarding Sarah Palin and her ilk, that they doth Protest too much. I'll let slide Sarah Palin's use of anti-Semitic terms such as "blood Libel" in her desperate attempt to cast aside aspersions to her integrity, because I honestly don't believe she has the intellectual dep...

Sounding Presidential
Posted by Rich Trzupek on Jan 13th, 2011 and filed under Daily Mailer, FrontPage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Yesterday Barack Obama did something that too many elected officials seem congenitally unable to do: he rose above partisan politics and spoke to the nation as a leader should, rather than as another politician angling for personal advantage. Speaking in Tucson at the memor...

Michelle Malkin: The worst sheriff in America
There are many heroes who showed indomitable courage and grace under fire during this weekend's horrific Tucson massacre. Blowhard Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik was not one of them. If the White House has any sense, President Obama will stay far away from the demagogic Dupnik and his media entourage when he visits Arizona on Wednesday to memorialize the Victims. Indeed, if the White House is truly committed to unifying the country, it will explicitly disavow Dupnik's vulture-like exploitat...

Rhetoric as comfort food: The mac-and-cheese instinct
If only we could go back to Monday. Discussions about Saturday's shootings in Tucson, which killed six and wounded 13, including Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, were so much simpler then: inflamed, righteous and deliciously partisan in a comfort-food kind of way. The fallout from the tragedy took a neat and predictable course: the left blaming the right for its association with incendiary Rhetoric, and the right mounting a tough defense against such accusations, arguing that liberal elites f...

RI governor defends talk radio ban; says may be temporary...
PROVIDENCE — With his talk-radio avoidance policy making the national news and rating the second-highest placed headline on the Drudge Report at one point on Wednesday, Governor Chafee is defending his decision. In an interview Wednesday, Chafee denied speculation that the policy had anything to do with the harsh criticism that some of the state’s conservative talk-show hosts had been flinging his way in the wake of his move to rescind his predecessor’s Executive Order on illeg...

A Brief Remark On Sarah Palin
Jon Chait is defending her: Okay, it’s a little over the top for Sarah Palin to accuse her critics of “blood Libel.” But she does have a basic point. She had nothing to do with Jared Loughner. He was not an Extremist who embraced some radical version of her ideas. And her use of targets to identify districts Republicans were, um, targeting is not exceptional or prone to incite anybody. What’s happening is that Palin has come to represent unhinged Grassroots Conservatism...

The Left shoots itself in the foot in Tucson
This past Saturday, Janurary 8, 2011 while conducting a “Congress on Your Corner” event at a Safeway Grocery Store in Tucson, AZ Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head by a would-be assassin who subsequently opened fire on the crowd in attendance killing six and wounding another fourteen. Congresswoman Giffords was lucky to survive such an horrendous attack and remains in critical condition at the University Medical Center in Tucson where she continues to make remarkab...

Palin's Arizona defence fuels 2012 talk
Sarah Palin has fanned speculation about her presidential ambitions as she cast herself as chief defender of arch-conservatives accused of inspiring a horrific act of violence with their fiery political Rhetoric. Palin accused those linking bellicose politicking by the right-wing Tea Party movement to the attempted Assassination of a US congresswoman of spreading a "blood Libel" in a slickly produced video released on Wednesday. "Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and e...

A Tale of Two Speeches: Sarah Palin and Barack Obama on the Tragedy in Tucson
The tragic events in Tucson this past weekend left the nation shaken, and sparked a divisive debate over the tone of our politics. On Wednesday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin released a video address on the Mass Shooting, many hours in advance of President Obama ’s Speech at a memorial service in Tucson. In a guest column, John Ziegler , radio host, Palin confidante, and the filmmaker behind Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted, offers his unique perspective...

In Which I Dare The Corner To Publish Quotes From Popular Conservatives
Arguments that the liberal community is less prone to reckless Speech, or has far less tolerance for those within it who use violent imagery and language than does the Right, are unconvincing. I don’t remember a Krugman column or a Sen. Patrick Leahy speech on the toxic Nicholson Baker novel, the Gabriel Range Bush Assassination docudrama, the Chris Matthews CO2-pellet-in-the-face/blowing-up-of-the-“blimp” comments about Rush Limbaugh, the “I hate George Bush” embarrassment at

For Once, Washington Gets it Right
Anyone walking around Capitol Hill this week would have been struck by the stillness and quiet -- and especially by how vividly this contrasted with the acrimony swirling online, on Cable News, and on Talk Radio over who should bear the blame for last weekend's massacre in Tucson that gravely wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords and killed six others. Critics like to claim that Washington is the catalyst for this sort of rage. But right now, they'd be hard-pressed to turn up much evidence....

Obama to Americans: 'We can be better'
TUCSON, Ariz.  — President Barack Obama mourned Victims of the Tucson Shooting Spree Wednesday and urged Americans not to let a political debate over the tragedy be used as "one more occasion to turn on one another." In a Speech at a service for those killed in a weekend massacre that left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords gravely wounded, the president appealed for national unity and soul-searching after the shootings. He urged Americans to "expand our moral imaginations" and "sharpen our ins...

Don't Tone It Down, Tone It Up: Make Debate "Worthy of Those We Have Lost"
The crowd of 14,000 that had gathered to celebrate the lives of the six people who died Saturday and to pray with Obama for the recovery of those who were wounded -- including Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford -- cheered the reference to a simpler, more innocent and more humane Patriotism that stood in such stark contrast to the vitriol of contemporary politics. It has been said that Obama strives for a post-partisan balance. But this was Obama speaking as a pre-partisan, as an idealist re...

Sarah Palin receiving unprecedented level of death threats
(ABC News)- An aide close to Sarah Palin says death threats and security threats have increased to an unprecedented level since the shooting in Arizona, and the former Alaska Governor’s team has been talking to security professionals. Palin has taken much heat for her “crosshairs” map that targeted 20 congressional Democrats in the 2010 mid-term election, including that of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was the main target of Saturday’s attack. ...

My Name is Betsy. I'm a Killer
On the morning of January 8th, 2011, I intentionally entered a gathering held by Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and shot her at near point blank range. I injured 14 others, killing six: among them a beautiful, curious, doe-eyed, nine-year-old girl. I didn't actually pull the trigger, but I'm as guilty as the psychopath who did. On occasion, I listen to Beck, Limbaugh, and Fox News. I've been known to pick up a book or two by conservative authors; Thomas Sowell, Andrew McCarthy, or the Foundi...

Partisan Finger-Pointing Is Hypocrisy
The drumbeat continues blaming Conservatives exclusively (or at least disproportionately) for overheated, violent Rhetoric. But it is not that simple.  In fact, some of the exact same people now posturing about a need for “civility” have themselves been guilty of the exact same overheated, violent rhetoric that they now (with no evidence) think is responsible for the Tucson attacks. The fact is that we have a general problem with abusive, dehumanizing political Rhetoric.  It didn

THE LEFT IS TRYING TO MAKE LOUGHNER THE VICTIM: THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS SCOOPS RUSH LIMBAUGH AND WEASEL ZIPPERS BY A DAY
TODAY, WEASEL ZIPPERS POSTED SOME WISE WORDS FROM RUSH LIMBAUGH: What Mr. Loughner knows is that he has the full support of a major political party in this country. He’s sitting there in jail. He knows what’s going on, he knows that . . . the Democrat party is attempting to find anybody but him to blame. He knows if he plays his cards right, he’s just a Victim. He’s the latest in a never-ending parade of victims brought about by the unfairness of America . WE MADE THIS OBSERVATION

Cruising the Web
Jay Cost takes an interesting historical look back at the realignment of the political parties in Congress since the Great Depression and then offers some advice to the new GOP majority in the House of how they can maintain that majority. Governor Christie has some valuable advice for the Republicans in the House - say no to state governors asking for more money. Voters have to realize that the Federal Government won't be bailing the states out so the State Governments are going to have to tight...

Violent Rhetoric: What They Wont Say and Why
I know an awful lot has been said, and more will be said about the shootings in Tucson last Saturday. While details continue to be compiled, it seems clear that Jared Loughner was mentally ill, fully engaged within a surreal world, leaving him devoid of the ability to comprehend himself or others, according to a remarks gleaned from a friend published in Mother Jones. The simplest affirmative thing we can do is recognize that when Rhetoric states violence is a valid answer to something, it has g...