Monday Big Blue Smuf Blogging: What They Said

Paul Krugman: Climate of Hate
Whether the shooting in Arizona is the beginning or the end depends upon how leaders within the GOP respond: Climate of Hate, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: ...I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008 campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was

Some of us want climate change
I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008 campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again. There are defensive sounds coming from the right that you can't blame "society" and the social climate for the shooting in Arizo

Krugman: Hate Comes Mainly from the Right
You really have to admire Paul Krugman for having the courage to engage in his latest bit of hackery. He didn’t want to do it, you see. He was duty-bound: Column meta: I hated, hated, hated writing tomorrow’s column. . . . But nobody would read a piece about health-care Accounting or Eurozone adjustment problems if I put it out tomorrow, and there are some things I fear won’t be said if I don’t do it (just as there were during the runup to the Iraq War); so Arizona it is....

Krugman: Climate of Hate
When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen? Put me in the latter category. I've had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008 campaign. Why mention his award? Because as an Economist he is used to examining the data and seeing the patterns. And on this the patterns are crystal clear. Read his column. It is as well written as usual, which makes i...

Dont blame the tea parties or talk radio for senseless violence
Less than 24 hours after the mass Murder and suspected Assassination attempt allegedly perpetrated by Jared Loughner, some were immediately attempting to pace the blame for this horrific tragedy, not on the perpetrator, but on the level of “Hate Speech” which has supposedly entered our mainstream discourse.  Had hate Speech truly gone mainstream I would be willing to at least entertain the suggestion, though the blame would still lie with the person who commits the act regardles...

Re: Beware the Leftist scorned
Melissa Clouthier, on on the Left's obsession with placing blame, especially in the case of Jared Loughner: ... why would the Left be so intent to attribute a psychologically disturbed young mass murderer to the Right - specifically to the Tea Party and Sarah Palin? And why would they do so en masse? From David Frum to Markos Moulitas to Matthew Yglesias to Paul Krugman to Jane Hamsher to Michael Moore to Jane Fonda to Roger Ebert to Keith Olbermann to Josh Marshall to Joan Walsh, to well, nearl...

What should Ian do with his life? - He wants advice on what an individual can do to help humanity now
A 25-year-old reader of ClimateProgress is at a turning point in his life, and he is asking CP readers for advice. He posted the comment below in the Open Thread here, inspiring a few good responses, but I wanted more people to see this, so I’m pulling it up into a separate post: Hey everyone, My name is Ian and I’ve posted on CP a few times so maybe some of you will recognize me. Since its an open thread I’ll throw in my personal dilemma and hopefully its not too off-topic. I may di...

Keith Olbermann Special Comment on Tucson Shooting: 'Violence Has No Place in Democracy'
From Olby: "Violence, or the threat of violence, has no place in our Democracy, and I apologize for and repudiate any act or any thing in my past that may have even inadvertently encouraged violence. Because for whatever else each of us may be, we all are Americans." Good try, I must say, although the overwhelming bulk of the "special comment" blamed the right, despite the fact that the shooter was a Conspiracy theorist and atheist progressive and that Giffords was targeted by Democrats and Da...

Weighing the Consequences of Political Rhetoric
For the past two years, our political life has been charged with intimations of violence. Tea Party Activists have brandished guns at meetings with elected officials. (In 2009, a Protester dropped a firearm at one of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' Safeway meet-and-greets.). Republican politicians have hinted at "Second Amendment solutions," in the words of Senate Candidate Sharron Angle, to the intolerable tyranny of the Obama Administration. Last summer, a conservative radio host told a Te...

I've Got Your "Inflammatory Rhetoric" Right Here
If you were logged in to Facebook on Saturday after the shooting in Arizona, you may have noticed a trend in your newsfeed. I did, anyway. Many of my leftist Facebook friends were collectively engaged in assuming and articulating the Tea Party's culpability. More specifically, they blamed, as the media eventually did as well, the "inflammatory Rhetoric" of the Right Wing. The arguments scrolling down my newsfeed went something like this: Of course, there are psychotic nutjobs on both the left an...

Don't Say Gabrielle Giffords' Shooting Not Related to Violent Rhetoric
It would be wrong, not to mention unfair and destructive, to blame the Tea Party movement or any other political force for what happened to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. But it would be equal folly to treat the shooting as though it had nothing to do with the sort of violence-themed and inciteful Rhetoric employed by some leaders and followers of the Tea Party. We are all responsible for our behavior, and the shooter who took six lives and injured 14 other individuals is no exception. The “Tw...

From the weekend
FROM THE WEEKEND.... We covered a fair amount of ground over the weekend. Here's a quick overview of you may have missed. On Sunday, we talked about: * A Republican senator acknowledged that "there is a need for some reflection" within the GOP in the wake of the massacre in Tucson, and that political figures need to remember that "tone matters." The senator, however, was so worried about blowback for expressing this sentiment, he/she refused to go on the record. * An aide to former half-term G...

Beware The Leftist Scorned
Posted by Melissa Clouthier on Jan 10 2011 Filed under Culture, Featured, News & Opinion, Politics, Tea Party. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned, …..Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorned. William Congreve: The Mourning Bride (1697 ) Since the Left seems obsessed by assigning motives, it seems fitting to examine theirs when it comes to attributing any form...

My Take: Rep. Giffords and the karma of politics as war
Editor's note : Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of "God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World," is a regular CNN Belief Blog contributor. By Stephen Prothero , Special to CNN My reflections on America's latest Assassination attempt and on politics as "the continuation of war by other means" begin with one simple claim: ideas matter, as do the words we use to express them. We do not yet know what moved the killer...

First They Came for the Surveyors Symbols
And here we go: Representative Bob Brady of Pennsylvania told The Caucus he plans to introduce a bill that would ban symbols like that now-infamous campaign crosshair map. “You can’t threaten the president with a bullseye or a crosshair,” Mr. Brady, a Democrat, said, and his measure would make it a crime to do so to a member of Congress or federal employee, as well. Asked if he believed the map incited the gunman in Tucson, he replied, “I don’t know what’s i...

Jared Lee Loughner a 9/11 truther and atheist
Jared Lee Loughner - a 9/11 Truther and atheist Well lookie what we have here! Not only is the this whole Jared Lee Loughner story being a Tea Party member and a big Sarah Palin fan, crumbling on the lame stream media and Progressives, it’s turning out to sound like the guy was in fact a Far Left nut job after all. I don’t know of too many Atheist 9/11 truthers who are right wingers do you? I know Van Jones is a 9/11 truther. Wasn’t he a big Right Wing teabagging extrem...

Reflections on the shooting in Arizona
There is something particularly evil about aiming to kill an elected representative who was in the midst of performing her duty of meeting with her constituents. That is a blow aimed not only at the Victim, but at our very representative Democracy. To aim indiscriminately to kill those with the congresswoman as well as those who came to hear her intensifies that evil. The fact that one victim was a child who was there because of her interest in the public affairs seems especially heartbreaking. ...

"There's a climate of hate out there, all right..."
Glenn Reynolds at The Wall Street Journal: There's a climate of hate out there, all right, but it doesn't derive from the innocuous use of political clichés. And former Gov. Palin and the Tea Party movement are more the targets than the source. American Journalists know how to be exquisitely sensitive when they want to be. As the Washington Examiner's Byron York pointed out on Sunday, after Major Nidal Hasan shot up Fort Hood while shouting "Allahu Akhbar!" the press was full of cautions abou...

"There's a climate of hate out there, all right..."
There's a climate of hate out there, all right, but it doesn't derive from the innocuous use of political clichés. And former Gov. Palin and the Tea Party movement are more the targets than the source. American Journalists know how to be exquisitely sensitive when they want to be. As the Washington Examiner's Byron York pointed out on Sunday, after Major Nidal Hasan shot up Fort Hood while shouting "Allahu Akhbar!" the press was full of cautions about not drawing prema...

Tucson tragedy, exploited by main stream media?
Moments after the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the main stream media, in a rush to cast blame, chose the conservative Talk Shows and the Tea Party movement as the main instigator to today’s tragedy. They claimed that it was the “Rhetoric” spewed by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other conservative media that led Jared Loughner to commit such a cold blooded attack. Commentator Keith Olbermann of MSNBC called out Sarah Palin, Allen West, Sharron Angle, Glenn Beck, B...

San Francisco Conservative Scolds Roger Simon for Connecting Sarah Palin to Giffords Shooting
A conservative writer likely unknown to most NewsBusters readers scolded Politico's Roger Simon Sunday for trying to connect Sarah Palin to yesterday's shootings in Tucson, Arizona. DEBRA SAUNDERS, San Francisco Chronicle: But I also -- as an opinion person, I could just see myself getting sucked into this thing where a bunch of people -- and there were some people. There were people in the media with no impulse control. People like Keith Olbermann and Paul Krugman, who just, boom, start...

Which Democrats and liberals objected to the politicization of mass murder in Tucson before the blood had even dried?
I was wondering: which Democrats and liberals objected to the politicization of mass Murder in Tucson before the blood had even dried? • Not several unnamed Democrat operatives, reported to have said, "[we] need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers... Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the Militia and anti-government people" and "[there is a] climate of bitter and virulent Rhetoric against the government and Democrats." • Not the detestable t...

Krugman, Olbermann And The Race To Explain The Unexplainable
In the horrifying shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords that already left six others dead, one would hope that in times of such tragedy, those who disagree politically could come together and realize how trivial their disagreements are in the grand scheme of life. Instead, there is an uncomfortable eagerness amongst many to find someone to blame for the actions of a senseless lunatic. Already some are racing to suggest the Tea Party, Sarah Palin and others are partially responsible. As a...

Krugman ties shooting to Beck, Limbaugh
Keith Olbermann was far from alone among prominent liberal voices Saturday tying the shooting in Arizona to conservative media figures. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote on his blog hours after the shooting that Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have contributed to a “climate of hate.” You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of Partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the Rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re go...

Will the Grown-Ups Please Come Forward?
Yesterday, I had the unfortunate duty of breaking the story of the shooting in Tucson on Race42012 . One of the first things I posted was “This is the kind of thing where politics should be the furthest thing from everyone’s mind.” Unfortunately, that isn’t what happened.  Almost immediately, accusations came up blaming Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and basically all of the political right in this country for what happened.  Leading voices on the left: Paul Krugman, Andrew S