Poisonous Political Atmosphere Is Unhealthy

So did you see Obamas speech at the memorial service last night?
Well, I did, and he didn’t disappoint the crowds or most of the punditocracy judging from the immediate, gushing, reactions on both sides of the spectrum that I saw and read afterwards.   In his usual mellifluous voice, with his usual eloquence, he delivered a lovely Speech full of platitudes and aphorisms which is his usual style; and the adoring crowds got t-shirts with slogans on them too! The only problem was it was a Speech he should have delivered days ago, when his ca...

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...

Flashback: Unabomber had underlined, marked and well worn copy of Al Gores book Earth In The Balance
The establishment MSM has been feeding its own derangement over Sarah Palin and the loss of control of Congress this last November. They're using the Arizona shooting as an excuse to try and silence opposition to Obama's radical agenda while at the same time trying to sabotage the agenda of the new GOP majority. They're pointed at everyone on the right for inciting a lunatic - Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, the Tea Party, yada, yada. However, the shooter ‘Did Not Watch TV. He Disliked the Ne...

God Never Apologizes. ... But Don't You Think It's About Time He Did?
BEYOND WESTBORO The instance of Jared Lee Laughner's horrendous Assassination attempt of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has prompted the MSM to analyze just how much politicians and pundits exacerbate violence with their Speech and actions. Notice, however, that not one commentator mentioned anyone within the Religious Right communities: Giffords has weighed in as a pro-choice, pro- ENDA and pro-Health Care Reform. There are over 500 churches in the Tucson metropolitan area, with Baptist (approx. 80...

This time, the people stood up
Now that we're all worked up, let me tell you about a Tea Party type up in Washington County, doing something radical. Mike Bassill is circulating a petition. He doesn't sound very angry, either, defying the narrative that's blossomed since Jared Loughner allegedly shot 20 people, including a Democratic congresswoman, in Arizona. There was swift stab at finding some right-wing link in Loughner, who seems simply to be disturbed. Since then, some progressive commentators have tried tying the gun...

Political Rhetoric Quote of the Day
From Ann Coulter in a piece entitled "Liberals Now Seek a Ban on Metaphors": As for (Jared) Loughner being influenced by tea partiers, Fox News and Talk Radio - oops, another dead-end. According to all available evidence, Loughner is a liberal. Every friend of Loughner who has characterized his politics has described him as liberal. Not one called him a conservative. One friend says Loughner never listened to Talk Radio or watched the TV news. Throw in "never read books" and you have the ...

Obamas Speech
Human minds, much less the varied sicknesses of the mind, are too complex, too mysterious for psychologists and novelists, much less political pundits on a deadline, to map with any certainty. It’s hard to imagine that any columnist can do what even Freud and Dostoevsky could not—which is why I am with those who, despite a deep concern about the most poisonous depths our political debate, are wary of trying to measure with any precision the influences—chemical, familial, or pol...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

Heal This
Speaker John Boehner will host a cocktail party for the Republican National Committee at the same time that President Barack Obama will be addressing the nation at the memorial service for Victims of the Tucson shooting. - Roll Call I honestly don’t know what to say, when in a moment of national mourning the Speaker of the House chooses a Washington, D.C. Fundraiser instead of attending the memorial in Tuscon, Arizona. After a pitch perfect address to the House, the quieting of the c...

Jared Lee Loughner and the Case for Single-Payer
The fallout from the shooting in Arizona has launched a thousand theories about the motives of the 22 year old shooter Jared Lee Loughner ranging from the interesting to the absurd.  Some decry his easy access to a weapon.  Others raise suspicions about a reading list that included the ideological odd couple of the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf.  Yet, most miss a central point - Jared Lee Loughner, a deeply mentally disturbed young man, may not have been able to help himself ...

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

Gun-rights advocate: High-capacity magazine restrictions 'makes sense'
A leading gun-rights advocate says there is no constitutional barrier to restricting the sale of high capacity gun magazines such as the one used by accused Tucson shooter Jared Loughner and that such proposals are justified to prevent "looney tunes" from committing more gun massacres. Robert A. Levy, who served as co-counsel in the landmark Supreme Court case that established a Second Amendment right to Bear Arms, said there was no reason the court's decision in that case should apply to the pu...

the Fruits of Political Extremism
The motives of the gunman who shot the US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killed six bystanders in Tuscon on Saturday are unclear. We do not know whether the youth who has been arrested for the crime, Jared Loughner, was driven by political grievance or Mental Illness. But to many in America this looks like an atrocity that was waiting to happen. Since Barack Obama entered the White House two years ago, the American right has adopted partisan Rhetoric of the most reckless kind. A year ago...

Robert Creamer: Do Americans Have the Right to Bear Weapons of Mass Destruction?
The massacre and Assassination attempt in Tucson have reignited the ongoing battle over what limitations should be placed on our rights to Bear Arms. Let's assume for a moment - though there are many Constitutional scholars who disagree -- that the majority of the Supreme Court is correct in its view that the Constitution does in fact confer on Americans a right to bear arms that is similar in scope to our right to free Speech and assembly. What does it actually mean, that we have a right to b...

Fox News Radio Interviews SportsGrid Guest Blogger About Sleeping With Athletes
For those unfamiliar with our guest ladyblogger Stef, here’s a quick rundown: she’s an unabashed proponent of having relationships with athletes. The way she explains it to me is that, while certain women like brown hair or a British accent, her bag is guys that can play sports, plain and simple. She wrote a piece for us a few weeks ago titled “Why I Sleep With Athletes, And Why You Should Too” (we plan on having her write for us more in the future). She goes into greater...

What we can learn from Tucson tragedy
More pieces of the puzzle are now emerging in Tucson as the shooter’s disorderly web postings come to light. And more ideas are put forth on how the tragedy could have been prevented. But the fact remains: it wasn’t prevented. There was no rewind button when the bullets started to fly on Saturday morning. All the “if onlys” were irrelevant at that point. The only thing to do then was to stop the carnage, and help the wounded. Tucson did better than many other places, such as Columb

MICHAEL MOYNIHAN: The Assassin Who Would Save America From The Extreme Right. But it is often for
Michael Moynihan: The Assassin Who Would Save America From The Extreme Right. “But it is often forgotten, in the swamp of Conspiracy theories and lurid fantasies of Sam Giancana and Judith Exner, that prior to shooting President Kennedy, Oswald made an attempt on the life of Gen. Edwin Walker, the far-right Birch Society Activist who had denounced the Kennedy administration . . . That extreme political environment in Texas, in which representatives of the paranoid right warned of Moscow ...

Gun control? Civility? My Predictions
Nothing will happen. I anticipate we will see reduced restrictions on Gun Control actually, as the NRA and its allies push back against the Tucson tragedy. That means no laws requiring gun registration, closing private sale and gun show Loopholes, reinstating the ban on extended clips, eliminating open carry laws, better Background Checks, etc. That's just not the way gun proponents roll, regardless of the tragedy. After all Columbine had no effect, nor did the Virginia Tech shooter. Why shoul...

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...

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...