The left is not about to waste this 'crisis'

Sensibility and Sociopathy: Jon Stewart, Howard Fineman, and Others React to the Safeway Massacre
Buckle up, because this is a long one. First we will start with Jon Stewart.  This segment should be a warning to anyone on the left who thinks this blood Libel is going to work: not even Jon Stewart is buying it. Now earlier Patterico asked which was worse: inflamed, honest Rhetoric or calm, “civil” smears.  Jon Stewart decides he will take door number three: calm, civil honest rhetoric. So his view is that we can’t really blame overheated Rhetoric for the massacre, ...

The Vile Hatred of the Left in America
This video is pretty self-explanatory. It shows series of “tweets” on twitter from the left calling for the death of Sarah Palin. Needless to say - EXTREME CONTENT WARNING! I’m really sick of this, but the next time you hear some lefty saying it’s Conservatives using violent Rhetoric, all you need as a rebuttal is this video. (Via Barracuda Brigade) The media has been just a bit more subtle. Just a bit. Be sure to read The Authoritarian New York Times by James Tar...

Joe Arpaio Defends Sarah Palin, Says Sheriff Dupnik Too Political (VIDEO)
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, not exactly known for his Bipartisanship, thinks that fellow Arizona Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County is getting too political in his Rhetoric in the wake of the Mass Shooting over the weekend that killed six people and gravely injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). "Sheriffs are elected, like I am, thank God. I'm sure if he was a Police Chief he'd probably be fired tomorrow. I'm not trying to defend him, but he's the one that runs that sheriff's offi...

Rush Limbaugh accuses Democrats of 'wishing for' Tucson shootings
Rush Limbaugh was in rare form this week , while he used his Radio Show to bash Democrats for the tragedy that happened Saturday morning in Tucson, which left 5 people dead and 14 people gravely wounded. Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot point-blank in the head by 22 year old Jared Lee Loughner, who was wrestled to the ground by several people at a public meet-and-greet in front of a Tucson Safeway. Evidently, Limbaugh feels that Democrats are glad about the horrific event, because the...

After the Arizona Murders, Politics As Usual
I thought the shootings in Arizona might cause a brief moment of unity. Twenty shot; six dead, including a little girl; an attempted political Assassination, an attack on Democracy itself. Was I naive to think that the instant reaction might be an uncomplicated desire to unite--in sympathy for the Victims and in deploring a crime against us all? Of course I was. It takes more than this to bridge the divide in American politics. One strand of commentary implicated the political right in the cri...

Sheriff Dupnick and the malice of the accusatory left
It is definitely tragic that a young man, born of politically connected parents, who had a history of arrests for acting out, without developing a record, showed up at a public meeting set by a recently re-elected Congresswoman and with malice in his heart started pouring bullets into those that had gathered to share thoughts about their community. What has nearly the same level of malice is the initial and continuing statements of those in our country who are politically left, liberal, progress...

Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste: This is Not a Drill
The left’s response to the Arizona murders was rapid, relentless and focused on people who had nothing to do with the killings. It’s almost like their Strategists think these things through in advance. They do. Mark Penn, Democratic strategist and former chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign, let out the kind of doozy, on last night’s Hardball, that must be seen to be believed. Comparing Obama’s current situation to the aftermath of the 1994 &...

Jon Stewart keeps hope alive for Americans robustness
Stumble This! The Cable Television comedian who led a rally inside the Beltway to advocate for a more temperate public discourse last fall gave a mixed message on the effects of political Rhetoric in the wake of a recent shooting in Arizona. Yet, in the end, Jon Stewart refused to give up hope on the robustness of Americans' spirit. "I do think it's important to watch our rhetoric," Stewart, host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, said Monday night. "I think it's a worthwhile goal not to conf...

Tea Party as victim in Arizona
Image by Getty Images via @daylife Guardian: A nine-year-old girl lies in the morgue. A member of Congress faces a lifetime of struggle to recover from a bullet in the brain. A city is bracing itself for a string of funerals as it tries to fathom the carnage. But Trent Humphries says there is another innocent Victim left by Jared Lee Loughner's killing of six people and wounding of 14 others in his Assassination attempt against Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. It is his Tea Party movement and...

Clinton: Differences should not degenerate into demonization
Former president Bill Clinton is asking fellow politicians to tone it down a little after the Arizona shooting, saying political Rhetoric "falls on the unhinged and the hinged alike." "This is an occasion for us to reaffirm that our political differences shouldn't degenerate into demonization, in the sense that if you don't agree with me you're not a good American," Clinton told the BBC during a trip to Haiti. Clinton has been down this road before, after the 1995 bombing of an Oklahoma City fe...

Bill Clinton: I could see this level of anger rising
Bill Clinton, currently at a Refugee Camp in Haiti, gave his thoughts on the Tucson shooting to BBC’s Matthew Price, making the same Oklahoma City bombing comparison that so many others have made. On the 15th Anniversary of the Oklahoma City incident, in April, I wrote an essay in which I said I could see this level of anger rising as it did once before when I was elected, and that no one intends to do anything that encourages this sort of behaviour - and I think it's wrong for anyone to...

What President Obama should say in Tucson (and how he should say it)
Modern presidential history is dotted with moments just like this one --

Was Jared Loughner's Act Political?
I thought Conservatives said liberals love Big Government. But now some have the audacity to claim Loughner was a liberal. But if one thing is obvious from Loughner's political writings, it was that he hated the government. So, which one is it -- do liberals love or hate the government? Come on, this is all a smoke screen to make sure people don't see what's going on here. In the last two years, there have been dozens of attacks and shootings aimed at government officials and political organiz...

Was Jared Loughner's Act Political?
Was Jared Loughner's act in shooting Rep. Giffords political? Apparently this is what's being debated with a straight face now. Is this a joke? He shot a politician in the head. He called it an "Assassination." What part of that was unclear? He didn't shoot Gabrielle Giffords randomly and it turned out she just happened to be a politician. He sought her out, targeted her and then tried to kill her based on the fact that she was a politician. He thought the government was the problem and it was u...

Tucson Shooting Reveals Return to 1990s Mindset in America
The public discussion again and again harkens back to the mid-1990s when the Oklahoma City bombing spurred the American elite to a lengthy discussion about the rise of radicals on the right. Reporters and analysts this week have endlessly reprised the arguments of 15 years ago. Will President Obama's memorial Speech at the University of Arizona evoke Bill Clinton's mix of sympathy and political accusation in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing? Is a toxic political climate to blame for se...

Should We Shut Down Debate About Arizona Rampage? A Tucson Paper Says "No"
Hyper-defensive conservative talk-radio and talk-television hosts are attacking anyone who tries to suggests that angry political Rhetoric, weak Gun Laws or inadequate programs to address Mental Illness might offer an explanation for the Tucson shooting rampage that left Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords wounded and six Arizonans dead. They are even condemning the local sheriff for daring to offer his perspective -- as a lawman with more than five decades of experience -- on how Arizona's toxic p...

The Big Chill: Why the Left Politicizes Murder
Deep in the hearts and minds of the liberal media and the left lie an unspoken truth: both know that Sarah Palin’s so-called “crosshair map” nor the “vitriol Rhetoric on the radio and television” (and by that they mean the Rhetoric emanating from conservative radio and Fox News) in any way contributed to Saturday’s massacre in Tucson. Thus, their repeated attempts to link the two is no m...

Congresswoman Giffords' office releases first photos from hospital room
Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford's office released the first photos from her Hospital room a the University of Arizona Medical Center.  Both pictures do not show Congresswoman Gifford's face for good reason.  Instead, the pictures show her husband, Mark Kelly, holding her hand as she fights to recover.  The photos can be seen in the slideshow to the left.  I have included other pictures from the story after the Hospital photos. Doctors continue to be very optimistic about Giff...

Scurrilous
That is the word Dr. Charles Krauthammer used to describe the attempt by the left to blame Sarah Palin and the Tea Party for the horrible tragedy in Tucson, an action carried out by a mad man. It seems rather an appropriate term, not just for their unfounded claims, but for some of the claims that have followed by those in the media. Here is the All Star Panel discussing this very issue, and how the media is continuing to ratchet up antagonism against the right under the guise of moderating our...

Liberals go crazy: blaming Republicans for Tucson shooting
There are a number of liberals out in the media going crazy. There was a Book TV debate between Roger D. Hodge and Alter that I saw recently. This was a broadcast of a 10/5/10 debate between the two, but I just saw it this weekend. This weekend also brought out Dick Durbin, Sheriff Dupnik, and even good old former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerry. Bob Kerry was the least offensive of the three suggesting that the Repeal of the Health Care bill was “one of the reasons that this guy (the shooter) ...

Inside the Beltway
POST-TUCSON Sensible America has spoken. The nation does not think "harsh political tone" had anything to do with Saturday's deadly shootings in Arizona, where a Democratic lawmaker was severely injured, this according to a nimble CBS News survey revealing that 57 percent of respondents agreed that Rhetoric and the terrible events were unrelated. About a third felt there was a connection. Naturally, there's a partisan divide: 69 percent of Republicans don't equate the two, compared with 49 per...

Try to Be Nice, And Look What It Gets You
I've not especially followed the Bad Rhetoric = Violent Massacre stuff. Yes, Wingnut rhetoric is dangerous and irresponsible and loony. But worrying about whether or not Wingnut rhetoric is responsible for the Tucson nutjob, well, that's like worrying about shutting the barn door after the horse has been shot and fucked and sold for glue. Surely: this shooting was horrific. But then, Wingnut rhetoric has directly led to mind-boggling numbers of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan; it's ru...

Video: Chris Matthews Sarah Palin is Going to be Erased
Video: Chris Matthews ‘Sarah Palin is Going to be Erased’ More violent Rhetoric from tingles Chris Matthews and encouraging violence from MSNBC. Tingles had his libtard pals Cynthia Tucker and Richard Wolffe on “Hardball” tonight and said: “If she doesn’t get off of this and stop trying to have somebody else skate her off of it like Glenn Beck or this person Mansour, she is going to be erased” Pause “as a potential Candidate” Quit PREACHING...

Bozell Pushes Ariz. Shooting Falsehoods
Bozell Pushes Ariz. Shooting Falsehoods Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Brent Bozell was clearly in a lying mood during his Jan. 10 interview with Newsmax to discuss news coverage of the Arizona shooting. "Note how quickly the New York Times came out with an editorial calling for the Fairness Doctrine as a result of this," Bozell said. But that didn't happen -- in fact, a search of the Times' website indicates no mention of "fairness doctrine&...

Ed Schultz denies existence of extreme rhetoric from Democrats
Now this elected official from Idaho, I believe, that was on "Meet the Press" (GOP Rep. Raul Labrador) yesterday says it's both sides. I challenge any right-wing talker, correspondent, Talk Show host, cable dude, whatever! If you can find anybody in the Democratic Party that would match the sound bites of the last two sound bites that we just played for you, I sure would like to give commentary on it. But you see, they don't exist. You can't find a Democrat in the last two years that's talked li...