No More Mister Nice Blog

Bill Maher is a loon
In case you had any doubt, allow this to remove it once and for all: Anderson Cooper took a very different tack last night in trying to make sense of the Arizona shooting tragedy from the weekend. While many on Cable News were turning down the partisan Rhetoric, AC360 producers booked comedian Bill Maher, who was unafraid to compare the imagined mindset of alleged assailant Jared Loughner with Fox News host Glenn Beck, while at the same time calling for responsibility in the media. Huh? Cooper...

Bill Maher is a loon
Anderson Cooper took a very different tack last night in trying to make sense of the Arizona shooting tragedy from the weekend. While many on Cable News were turning down the partisan Rhetoric, AC360 producers booked comedian Bill Maher, who was unafraid to compare the imagined mindset of alleged assailant Jared Loughner with Fox News host Glenn Beck, while at the same time calling for responsibility in the media. Huh? Cooper opened by asking about the soul searching and finger pointing that cam...

The Right Word: Fox and inflammatory rhetoric | Sadhbh Walshe
Rightwing talkshow hosts were horrified by the Arizona massacre - and by the allegations that their fiery Rhetoric may have somehow influenced the shooter. O'Reilly is convinced that the attack was simply the work of an out-of-control "nut job" and was furious with others in the media for suggesting that anyone on the right was in any way responsible for fostering a hostile political environment (View clip here). "The killer Jared Loughner is a psychopath. Civilisation has always had them ...

Controversial figure Bill Ayers to speak next week at Highline Community College
Controversial education Activist and former member of the radical Weather Underground Bill Ayers will be a featured speaker at Martin Luther King Jr. Day events at a community college in Washington State. Highline Community College will host several speakers during a four-day schedule of speeches entitled “Fear and Logic in a Post-Civil Rights Era,” but Ayers, who has a history of promoting Militant action against the U.S. government, may strike some as an offensive choice whose acti...

Glenn Beck seeks Congress members for Giffords letter
Fox News's Glenn Beck is recruiting members of Congress to sign on to his Open Letter denouncing violence and stressing that Jared Lee Loughner's shooting bears no connection to politics. My colleague Jonathan Allen obtained an email from a Fox producer, Virginia Grace, to Congressional offices this morning: From: Grace, Virginia Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 9:45 PM Subject: [LIKELY_SPAM]Glenn Beck// Fox News Request for Rep. .... Dear XXXX, Following the tragedies in Arizona, Glenn Beck ha...

Bill Maher: Jared Loughners Chalkboard Likely Looks Like Glenn Becks Chalkboard
Anderson Cooper took a very different tack last night in trying to make sense of the Arizona shooting tragedy from the weekend. While many on Cable News were turning down the partisan Rhetoric, AC360 producers booked comedian Bill Maher, who was unafraid to compare the imagined mindset of alleged assailant Jared Loughner with Fox News host Glenn Beck, while at the same time calling for responsibility in the media. Huh? Cooper opened by asking about the soul searching and finger pointing that cam...

Glenn Beck denounces those who seek to "reconstruct" our "system"
Glenn Beck, classy as always, has released an Open Letter to... everyone, basically, in response to the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 20 others in Tucson, Arizona. The basic gist is: Don't look at me! The subtext is: Look at liberals. This wasn't his first response to the tragedy. Earlier today, Beck read the very serious e-mail he wrote to one of the Victims. I refer, of course, to Sarah Palin, who has been relentlessly attacked by people armed with criticism of her words and actions....

VIDEO: Add Bill Maher to the Blame Massacre on the Right Crowd Predictable
It’s strange how someone can be so spot-on about Islam and Israel, yet so wrong and so utterly loathsome on everything else.  But, hey, you know about the broken clock’s rate of correctness:  twice a day.  Everything Bill Maher says here is sooooo predictable and such complete BS. As we all know, the shooter at the Tucson Safeway massacre, Jared Loughner, was a lot like Bill Maher-an atheist who liked to watch MSNBC and say obnoxious things-not like any of ...

Media's attacks on conservative women
Jared Loughner, the man who shot Rep. Giffords and 19 others, is an atheist and a pothead who also dabbled in the occult. At just 22 years old, he has a history of drug and Alcohol abuse that includes being taken to the Hospital for Alcohol Poisoning. His abuse of drugs caused the Military to refuse him. He was described by fellow Students as "left-wing" and "out of control." With Loughner's history, it is easy to see why the left is blaming Sarah Palin for the shooting. The left and the esta...

On The Square Today
Featured “On The Square Today” is, first, Joe Carter’s weekly column; today’s is a reflection on emergent evidence about the origins of Atheism—in particular, origins of the non-philosophical variety: A new set of studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology finds that atheists and agnostics report anger toward God either in the past or anger focused on a hypothetical image of what they imagine God must be like. Julie Exline, a psychologist at Case ...

Apocalyptic Rhetoric
The Rhetoric of violence is not the only kind of Rhetoric that encourages violence. The apocalyptic Rhetoric we’ve seen from some on the right, most notably Glenn Beck, should be part of this discussion too. When Beck portrays Barack Obama as the head of a Socialist/Communist/Nazi Conspiracy whose goal is the literal destruction of America, he is implicitly encouraging violence. If that really were the nature of the administration, and our liberty really were on the verge of being snuffed ...

First Comes Fear
By ROBERT WRIGHT NYT People on the left and right have been wrestling over the legacy of Jared Loughner, arguing about whether his Shooting Spree proves that the Sarah Palins and Glenn Becks of the world are fomenting violence. But it’s not as if this is the only data point we have. Here’s another one: Six months ago, police in California pulled over a truck that turned out to contain a rifle, a Handgun, a shotgun and Body Armor. Police learned from the driver — sometime after he opened

CNN's Erickson uses tragedy to bash President Obama
Via Steve Benen, this has got to be the most egregious, offensive response to the Arizona tragedy yet. Predictably, it comes from CNN's Erick Erickson, who has a bone to pick with President Obama. Here's what Erickson said: He (Obama) recently made people mad by quoting the Declaration of Independence and leaving out the bit about the Creator. During his inaugural address he mentioned atheists and subsequently proclaimed us not a Christian nation. In yesterday's "moment of silence" he wanted pr...

Infants Playing with Flamethrowers
Harold Meyerson nails it: Dangerous outcomes from a culture of paranoia: Last October, Glenn Beck was musing on his Radio Show about the prospect of the government seizing his Children if he didn't give them Flu Vaccines. "You want to take my kids because of that?" he said. "Meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson." Last April, Erick Erickson, the managing editor of the right-wing RedState blog and a CNN commentator, was questioning the legality of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey on a radi...

Challenging the media narrative and the results of the challenge
Bains, a long time commenter here at QandO, and someone who I enjoy reading, put out a rather lengthy comment on the post about the CBS News poll that showed the majority rejected the narrative that heated political Rhetoric caused the Tucson shooting.  I thought I’d give the bains comment some further visibility because it has some tasty parts that I think deserve discussion.  Here’s the comment in its entirety: I’m noticing something else at play here. A theory of mine that rec

Palin and Victimhood
Palin And Victimhood by digby I haven't commented much on Palin and the crosshairs because I think it's a bit of a sideshow, which she's now taking full advantage of to push her own victimization. The pistol-packing Mama Grizzly is a celebrity riding the zeitgeist, she's not creating it. The real problem, in my view, is that there is a subset of Americans who believe that government is illegitimate if their chosen leaders aren't elected. They simply don't believe in Democracy. Voting is a rit...

Beck Issues Pledge Against Political Opportunism
On his website, Glenn Beck has published a “challenge” for pundits, politicians, and people in general. Decrying political opportunism of all stripes, Beck writes of the Giffords shooting, “Atheists are not to blame. Those who hate George W. Bush are not to blame. Those who don’t believe in space travel are not to blame. Jared Lee Loughner is to blame. Period.” Later, Beck unveils his challenge. He asks all Americans to agree to the following points: I denounce viol...

Rush Limbaugh Doubles Down On Yesterdays Comments: Put Yourself In My Shoes
Like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh is taking that whole “being connected to a mass murderer” thing pretty personally. You’d think, at this point, he’d be old hat at it but, instead, he seems to think the fact that this has been happening since the 90s makes it even worse. So, today on his Radio Show, he passionately defended himself against heat for comments he made yesterday. You see, some people took that whole “Democrats are fully supporting the guy w...

WFP Targets Right-Wing Talking Heads
In the wake of the Arizona shooting, the Working Families Party is asking supporters to send an e-mail to “Right Wing talking heads and the advertisers who pay for their shows” to condemn what the labor-backed party’s leaders deemed “violent Rhetoric” and ask them to stop “playing with fire.” “No, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Rupert Murdoch didn’t put the gun in the deranged shooter’s hands.” “But they and their politician...

CO School Board Member Gets Threats Over Anti-MLK Broadcasts
A school Board Member in Greeley, Colo., has started bringing his gun to School Board meetings after, he says, he received threats over his regular radio broadcasts attacking the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Brett Reese, who owns and manages a local Radio Station, plays the same commentary twice a day, every day. The commentary, which he reads, calls King a "sexual degenerate," an "America-hating Communist" and a "plastic god." He describes it as a letter he received from a listener three yea...

Crazy Fears Crazier
Colorado school Board Member (and Radio Station owner) starts bringing his gun to School Board meetings because of the threats he's claimed to have received over his radio commentaries calling Martin Luther King, Jr., a "sexual degenerate," an "America-hating Communist" and a "plastic god." ...

Why the surprise? Whats the urgency?
Since the shootings in that Safeway Parking Lot in Tucson, Arizona, on Saturday, January 8, 2011, the Left and its major supporter, the Mainstream Media, have been having a field day with hateful non-statements against the Right: Everybody and his brother in those two camps has been taking every available opportunity to say something more or less like “Although there’s no evidence or solid reasoning to support it, it’s obvious that, even if he wasn’t actually hired and co...

Man-Up Tim Pawlenty
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. 2012 presidential hopeful, Tim Pawlenty, is taking some well deserved heat, this morning from Conservative Bloggers because of his “weak-tea” responses to a questions posed to him about Sarah Palin’s “crosshairs” map. “It would not have been my style to put the cross hairs on there,” he said Tuesday on “...

Barack Obama always thinks he's the smartest person in the room. Hence his foreign policy blunders
Ivy League arrogance: Barack Obama For the whole eight years of George W Bush’s presidency he was relentlessly criticised by America’s Mainstream Media for clumsy communications skills. It’s true that Bush’s constant malapropisms - “strategery” being the most famous - detracted from the content of the message. Yet that content was usually sound. On the other hand, while Obama’s platitudinous style avoids Bush’s clumsiness of expression, he displa

Loughner Friend - "He Didn't Listen to Political Radio"
Is there anything left of the left-blogosphere, Mainstream Media and Democratic political accusation that Jared Loughner was motivated by right-wing vitriol? ABC News presents video of an interview with Loughner's close friend, who says: "He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right."No, there's nothing left, other than the malicious accusations. Waiting for apologies, ...