This time, the people stood up

An Eclipse of Tragedy and Opportunity: When Media Spin Transforms
While many Americans were enjoying a brief weekend break from the tedium of a typical work week, Tucson, Arizona saw a tragic drama unfold that would shock the entire country. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, while conducting a neighborhood meeting at a Grocery Store in Tucson, was shot in the head by a lone assassin along with 19 others at the meeting. A Federal District Judge, John Roll, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, was killed along with a nine year old girl who was born on ...

More on Violence And Right Wing Rhetoric
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Conservatives who fail to understand the arguments from liberals about Right Wing Hate Speech act as if Jared Loughner lived in a vacuum and acted with absolutely no external influences. This is despite multiple reports indicating Loughner’s interest in fringe politics. NewsOne reports on yet another connection, alleging that Loughner is a fan of right winger Alex Jones. I find it curious that Conservatives have been attacking liberals this week ...

Noah Baron: The Libel of "Blood Libel"
Recently I've heard a lot of people talking about how the shooting in Arizona was merely the product of violent Rhetoric on the part of America's right-wing. Such claims, I feel, are disingenuous. What information I can find about the situation points to the killer being more mentally unbalanced than a political actor. Nonetheless, I feel that this situation presents an opportunity of us to seriously examine the way we discuss politics in our country -- and, especially, how we value Speech. Re...

Per GOP spinmeister Frank Luntz, saying your opponent wants to kill you is just as bad as saying you want to kill your opponent
by Ken No, boys and girls, saying unkind things about someone is really and truly not "violent Rhetoric." Even saying that the Right is made up entirely of ignoramuses, lunatics, liars, criminals, and economic predators isn't "violent Rhetoric." It may be unkind, but then, what are you supposed to say when it's the honest-to-gosh truth? Just not say anything? Well, that seems pretty much what the Right has in mind: freedom to spread its psychotic lies without any answer at all. Here are some t...

People Falsely Accused of Wishing for Sarah Palins Death
In that video of disgusting death threats against Sarah Palin (Aaron posted Screenshots of them here), there were a couple that I think were included by mistake. To me, this is clearly a repudiation of those who blamed Palin. If there were any doubt, the author of the message explains: Anybody who knows me, has read my books, has read my blog, has read my Tweets, has breathed the same Internet air I breathe knows I’m a Reagan-conservative-moving-swiftly-to-libertarian Mormon with a side of...

Letters to the Editor: Jan. 14, 2011
Re: "Paul Krugman's totalitarian temptation," editorial, Jan. 11 Liberal columnists like Paul Krugman have sought to scapegoat Conservatives for the recent shootings in Tucson. But the shooter was once described as a "liberal pothead," and the "Communist Manifesto" was one of his favorite books. There is no evidence he was influenced by any contemporary political Rhetoric. Moreover, harsh rhetoric comes mostly from liberals like former Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., who said of Florida Gov. Rick S...

Tucson Tragedy: The Case for Doing Nothing
From The Economist blog ‘Democracy in America’: Still, freakish death is profoundly unnerving and facing its immunity to reason tends to aggravate rather than soothe our cellular fear of disorder and death. Far from leading us to Resignation, the inscrutability of a sui generis disaster sets our minds in mad motion. We desperately and pathetically grope for some blameworthy failure of foresight, some forward-looking lesson, some food for prudence. It doesn’t matter if ther...

Beating a dead horse
An example of violent conservative imagery Gallup: Most Doubt Political Rhetoric a Major Factor in Ariz. Shootings A new USA Today/Gallup Poll finds Americans dubious that the heated language used in politics today was a major factor that influenced the alleged gunman in last week’s shootings in Tucson, Ariz. Twenty percent say such rhetoric was a major factor in the shootings, while 22% cite it as a minor factor; 42% say it was not a factor at all. Democrats are more likely than indepen...

After Their Tax Increase, WI Gov. Begs Illinoisans To Escape To Wisconsin Where Taxes Are Actually Higher
Wisconsin’s new Republican Governor Scott Walker has rushed to make hay out of the Illinois Assembly’s decision to raise individual and Corporate Tax rates, urging Illinois residents and businesses to move to Wisconsin. But, ironically, Illinois residents who move to Wisconsin should bank on paying higher taxes. Conservatives like Walker have insisted on using the figure that Illinois is increasing taxes by a whopping 66 percent. While this is factually accurate, it’s mislea...

Come Let Us Reason Together
The outrage in Arizona has sparked another cycle of mutual recriminations between liberals and Conservatives that points up what seems to be a growing chasm running through our political culture.   Each side sees itself as faithful to good old American principles, and sees the other side as tending (at least) towards a dangerous Extremism. It is remarkable how difficult it is to have a calm, polite discussion on anything connected with politics.  Evidently there are a lot of already hurt fe

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Krugman?
James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal on “the Manichaean wing of American Liberalism:” As we have noted, the New York Times’s response to last weekend’s murders in Tucson was to instigate a witch hunt against Republican politicians and “particularly” against members of the independent (nonliberal) media. This appealed to what one might call the Manichaean wing of American Liberalism: those who mistake political disagreement for enmity, who are so strongly...

LIBERALS SEEK BAN ON METAPHORS IN WAKE OF ARIZONA SHOOTING (Ann Coulter)
After the monstrous shooting in Arizona last week, surely we can all agree that we've got to pass Obama's agenda immediately and stop using metaphors. At least I think that's what the Mainstream Media are trying to tell me. Liberals instantly leapt on the sickening massacre at a Tucson political event over the weekend to accuse tea partiers, Sarah Palin and all Conservatives who talk out loud of being complicit in Murder by inspiring the shooter, Jared Loughner. Of course, to make their case, ...

Mitchell Bard: Right Wing Media Lies and the Arizona Tragedy
In the days since the massacre in Arizona, the mainstream political media (and much online discussion) have zeroed in on one question: Did the uncivil political discourse (with violent imagery) of the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs and Sarah Palins of the world create an environment that encouraged or allowed an unhinged character to go on a Shooting Spree aimed at a Democratic congresswoman. I would like to focus on a related question: Are the Right Wing pundits telling the truth? The reason for...

Is There Anything To Do About 'Civility'?
This post is plenty long, and even so it covers only a fraction of the responses that have come it. The original question was, does increased "civility" mean anything in practice? Any handy rules of thumb, akin to Michael Pollan's rules about food? First suggestions previously here. A reader writes in to begin another installment: >>I would start with the observation that civility works. Violence never persuades; at best, it gets the other person's attention long enough to have an actual c...

A 9-year-old's death hits home for Obama
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is not known for showing a surplus of emotion in public, but toward the end of his Speech at the University of Arizona on Wednesday night, he paused for 50 seconds and appeared to gather himself. The audience was on its feet. Obama had just laid down a stark and powerful gauntlet, challenging the country to live up to the expectations of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, whose death Saturday was an emotional punch to the gut for so many people across the co...

Crime of homosexual conduct still on the books in Texas
There wasn’t a great deal of fanfare last week when U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley released a three-year-long committee staff review of the financial activities of several media-based ministries and churches, but that is likely because the paper offers no concrete steps forward. In the wake of the shooting in Arizona this weekend that critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and that killed and injured more than 20 people, many pundits and politicians are pointing fingers. Others are hoping th...

Limbaugh, Beck, and other conservatives do not approve of how Tucson reacts
In the past 24 hours many prominent Conservatives have questioned the "tone" of the memorial service held last night in Tucson.  The event was held in honor of nineteen Victims, including six dead, of the shooting last Saturday at an event hosted by Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ).  Most of the reviews from "mainstream" media were positive.  President Obama gave an emotional Speech which called for the country to "live up to the Democracy" that nine-year-old victim Christi...

Gun-Control Poll? We're Divided. But a Note to Liberals: Run for Your Lives!
Pew Research ​This graphic shows the overall even split in opinion from the Pew Research Center poll about Gun Control. It's about 50-50. But read on for the detailed breakdown, touted today by the pretty rigorously nonpartisan and pro outfit. Just be warned: The poll, taken before assassin Jared Loughner struck, indicates that 78 percent of people identified as belonging to the "Tea Party Movement," whatever the hell that really is, agree with the idea of protecting the right to own guns an...

Why Progressives Lost It
It's interesting, as Charles Krauthammer noted earlier, but by late Sunday (at least) it was beyond any doubt that Jared Loughner acted alone --- Loughner committed crimes of unimaginable evil on his own, without any impetus from Sarah Palin, Conservatives, the Tea Party, Fox News, or Rush Limbaugh. But the charges of guilt by both allegation and implication continue, so it remains important to once again recall why The Progressive left has been insistent on spreading hate and lies following th...

Rediscovering Thrift
Over the past year there has been quite a bit of bandwidth and print given to how we need a better sort of politician and a better government. The Tea Party basically made this their mantra- the need for a turning back the clock, a rediscovering of the principles of our Founding Fathers, runs deep through their Rhetoric. However, the issue, I think runs deeper than that. And unless we address the underlying issue we will continue to send people into government who simply perpetuate the faults ...

Tucson Tea Party Co-Founder Says Tea Party Is Victim Too
AP Sarah Palin and the Tea Party have received a lot of criticism in the wake of last weekend's tragic shooting in Tucson, Arizona, prompting Palin to defend herself in a video yesterday, using the antiquated claim of "blood Libel." Now, Tucson Tea Party co-founder Trent Humphries has gone one step further, calling the Tea Party Victims of the shooting, and arguing that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is partially responsible for having a lack of security. Regarding Palin's Controversial gun-target ma...

Flashback 2010: Jim Clyburn calls opponent terrorists during ObamaCare debate
Clyburn has went off on Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and the kitchen sink as the cause of the Murder spree in Arizona by a deranged "left-wing pothead." He might want to add himself his own list of those using incendiary Rhetoric as he called opponents of ObamaCare Terrorists early last year: Video: Rep Jim Clyburn (D) Calls Tea Party Protesters "Terrorists" Ironically, Clyburn is one of the cadre of kooks in the Democrat party that is willing to risk our safety by treating real Terrorists - the ...

"I'm Traumatized"
A reader writes: I hope you're right about Obama's Speech being a pivot point in our politics and culture. I know the Tucson shooting has forever changed the way I think - and will talk - about politics. My oldest and closest friend was one of the people shot on Saturday. Thankfully, none of the three bullets (one in each arm, one in the back) hit bone, major arteries, or any organs. She is truly fortunate that she didn't die while shielding her teen daughter (who was there to thank Congress...

Tea Party in central North Carolina to have first rally this year this month
   In Raleigh at the General Assembly, Raleigh-area Tea Party organizations are holding the first area Tea Party rally of this year Jan. 26.  Organized by a Wake County group called the Moccasin Creek Minutemen, the rally will be held from about 11:00 in the morning to 1:00 in the afternoon.  It is scheduled to coincide with the day that the new legislative session begins there.    This event is now receiving wide advance publicity on a variety of Tea Party-lin...

Mrs. Obama talks tolerance in open letter to parents
First Lady Michelle Obama on Thursday urged parents to teach their Children tolerance in response to the deadly Tucson Shooting Spree that touched off debate about political Rhetoric. Mrs. Obama, who joined her husband at a memorial service for the Victims Wednesday, issued an Open Letter to parents. Children are struggling, she said, to make sense of Saturday's shooting that killed six and left 14 injured, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. "We can teach them the value of tolerance -...