Tone It Down

Late Night: Not the Best Day to Be Sarah Palin
As Jane noted earlier today, Sarah Palin awoke on Sunday to find herself at the fiery center of the debate about increased violent political Rhetoric in this country. And as usual, Palin — scratch that — Palin’s handlers paint her as the real Victim of the Arizona tragedy. Everyone makes mistakes. But anyone waiting for Sarah Palin to acknowledge she might have made one here is going to have some time on their hands.  Following the Tucson shooting, Palin’s aide disingenuou...

Palin e-mails Beck claiming to hate violence, war
By Michael J.W. Stickings Politico: Sarah Palin reached out to Glenn Beck over the weekend, and Beck read some of their email exchange on his Radio Show this morning. "Sarah, as you know, peace is always the answer. I know you are felling the same heat, if not much more on this," Beck wrote. Beck expressed concern about Palin's safety, and urged her to hire the same Los Angeles-based security firm that he uses. The rhet...

AZ shootings: McConnell, Yarmuth talk rhetoric and security
Related: Suspect in attack on congresswoman to appear in court McConnell speaks to Students about Tucson shootings Obama: US grieving, shocked over Ariz. rampage Military: alleged Giffords gunman failed Drug Test McConnell calls for review of congressional security (WHAS11) - The Assassination attempt of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords that killed six and injured 14 others has sparked a national debate about whether inflammatory political Rhetoric was a factor in the attack. After Pim...

Sarah (Reload) Palin and Rush Limbaugh Condemned For Their Hate Speech; Beck Takes Stand Against Violence By Holding Gun
While we don’t know for certain what  Jared Loughner’s motivation was in the attempted Assassination of Gabrielle Giffords, there is an increasing consensus among reasonable people that the hate-speech which has been common on the right is dangerous to Civil Discourse and our Democracy. This has become a turning point in the career of Sarah Palin, who prefers to pander to the Far Right than to speak to the concerns of mainstream Americans. Most likely this week will mark the end o...

About Tucson: Stupid people and crazy people may not know they are, but dishonest people sure do
According to today's Borowitz Report (see below), "Calls for a reduction in violent political Rhetoric have plunged the Fox News Channel into chaos, with a Fox spokesperson warning today that such a move 'would leave us with 24 hours to fill.'” by Ken I thought Paul Krugman said what needed to be said about the political climate that made Tucson ineviteable very well indeed in the NYT column today, "Climate of Hate," from which Howie quoted extensively this morning. As a footnote, I'd like t...

Arizona Sheriff Clarence Dupnik calls some state gun laws 'the height of insanity'
Some more political comments tonight from the sheriff investigating the now infamous Tucson shootings of last Saturday. At his initial news conference after the deaths of six people and wounding of 14 others, Shariff Clarence Dupnik could not provide much information because, he said, the investigation was just in its early stages. He wouldn't even confirm the suspect's name. However, the 74-year-old career Law Enforcement officer did admantly volunteer at least twice that overheated r...

Calls for softer tone in politics gets cool reception
By Ed Stoddard DALLAS | Mon Jan 10, 2011 7:21pm EST DALLAS (Reuters) - Calls to reset the tone of politics in the aftermath of Saturday's shooting rampage in Arizona got short shrift on Talk Radio and elsewhere as left and right traded blame for the massacre. From the right, Bloggers and pundits labeled suspected shooter Jared Lee Loughner a "leftist" while critics of conservative super-star Sarah Palin accused her of creating a combustible political atmosphere with her behavior and Rhetoric....

Sarah Palin blamed for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shooting
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords may be the Victim of more than bullet. Two years of mean-spirited conservative Rhetoric may have sparked the assignation attempt, according to reports. On Sarah Palin’s website, there was a map of the United States with gun targets placed over democratic lawmakers. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was one of the targets. Since the shooting on Saturday, the SarahPAC target map has been removed. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann said, “if there are crosshairs ...

Inside the Beltway
PRAY, HE SAYS The hypersensitive public discourse on violence, Rhetoric, civility, guns, politics and the press barrels on, 72 hours after the Arizona shootings. With irony intact. Take, for instance, Fox News host Glenn Beck , vilified by partisan critics as an arbiter of hatemongering and aggressive culture, right along with Rush Limbaugh , the Tea Party and Sarah Palin . Mr. Beck - like his accused peers - seems mighty peaceful at this juncture, however. He has issued a challenge to "all Am...

Searching for answers to Tuscon tragedy
Image via CrunchBase IBD: From New York newspaper columnists to an Illinois senator, the liberal left is blaming the Tea Party and conservative stars for the shooting of an Arizona congresswoman. How about blaming the Communist and Nazi-loving shooter? It didn't take long for New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to blame the Tea Party and Sarah Palin for the shooting outside a Tucson Supermarket that seriously injured Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords and left six others, including a 9-year-old,...

Giffords promoted softer political discourse in email to GOP colleague day before shooting
Stumble This! Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) on the eve of the shooting that left her in critical condition and six others dead wrote an email to a Republican colleague promoting a softer public political discourse. "After you get settled, I would love to talk about what we can do to promote centrism and moderation," Giffords wrote to Trey Grayson, Kentucky Secretary of State who resigned to take a position as director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. Giffords wrote the congr...

Your Opinions
On Saturday, Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was targeted and shot in the head during a mass meeting with voters. During the contentious Elections last fall, her opponent, Jesse Kelly, held fund-raisers where he urged supporters to help remove Giffords from office by joining him to shoot a fully loaded M-16 rifle (Page 1A, Jan. 9). Hate Speech proclaimed by politicians and political pundits riles up the violent to violence. Those politicians and pundits can't escape charges of complicity. Ther...

I Haven't Stopped Thinking About Sarah Palin's Complicity
in the Giffords shooting. There is the offensive cross-hairs campaign map to consider first. The Palin supporters have now claimed that these are surveyor symbols, not cross-hairs. You can try to run away from your part in the violence that you have incited, but if those are survey symbols, tell me the next big whopper: what did Sarah Palin really mean when she said, Don't retreat, reload. ??? Was she thinking of her stapler or the vending machines at the office? All the gun Rhetoric, all the v...

Pima County GOP Chair Calls On Obama To 'Stop The Blame'
TUCSON, AZ -- With President Obama reportedly set to visit this divided and mourning Arizona city Wednesday, the chair of the county Republican party is calling on the president to help put an end to what he calls "assigning blame" in the wake of Saturday's shooting at a constituent event for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) that left six dead and the congresswoman gravely wounded. Brian Miller called on Obama to "lead the effort to stop the blame" after the shooting, responsibility for which he...

The narrative of the hateful left
The Murder of six people, the shooting of twelve more, including Congresswoman Giffords, and the politization of the incident: Andrew Klavan writes about The Hateful Left Where incendiary political Rhetoric truly resides in America Indeed, the Left’s hysterical response to all who disagree with it—that they are Racist or sexist or “phobic” or somehow reminiscent of Hitler—has become so predictable that satirists, from the Libertarian Greg Gutfeld to the liberal Jon Stewart, h

Dem leader: Alleged shooter sought 'Second Amendment remedy'
Rep. James Clyburn said it is impossible not to connect fiery campaign Rhetoric to the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).  The number three-ranking House Democrat invoked the Rhetoric of a Tea Party Senate Candidate in describing the actions of the man accused of shooting Giffords (D-Ariz.).  "He saw a Second Amendment remedy and that's what occurred here and there is no way not to make that connection," Clyburn said during an interview with the Charleston Post and Courier. 

Tucson Shooting The Hatred And Hypocrisy From The Left
It would be merciful if, when tragedies such as Tucson’s occur, there were a Moratorium on sociology. But respites from half-baked explanations, often serving political opportunism, are impossible because of a timeless human craving and a characteristic of many modern minds. The craving is for banishing randomness and the inexplicable from human experience. Time was, the gods were useful. What is thunder? The gods are angry. Polytheism was explanatory. People postulated causations. And sti...

Arizona Sheriff Dupnik Was Aware of Loughners Mental Illness, Did Nothing
From Reuters: The suspect in Saturday’s shooting rampage in which a U.S. congresswoman was critically wounded was unstable and had been known to make Death Threats in the past, the local sheriff said. The FBI is investigating whether the man is the same person who posted a rambling Internet manifesto accusing the government of mind control and demanding a new currency. Jared Lee Loughner, 22, of Tucson, was taken into Custody moments after the shooting at a political meeting held by Dem...

Happy Hour Roundup
* As Jared Loughner appears in court, Gabrielle Giffords's condition remains unchanged. * And for Giffords at this stage, no change is good news. * Jonathan Alter says Obama's moment of silence today worked beautifully because it's "an appropriate expression of what we need right now: Less Noise." Also: Alter predicts Obama will addresss the shooting in his State of the Union Speech. * As Chris Cillizza notes, the Arizona shooting is unlikely to do anything to stiffen resolve for stricter gun ...

Jared Loughner appears to be clinically scitzophrenic, not a right-wing extremist. Leading conservatives argue this means that
A virtual who's who of Conservatives - from George Will and Marc Thiessen to virtually every well-known conservative media figure and blogger has now reacted with outrage to the idea that violent Rhetoric by Conservatives had anything to do with the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Many, in fact, reverse the accusation and claim that they are the Victims of a new "McCarthyism" or a "blood Libel" when critics suggest that violent Rhetoric by Conservatives in any way contributed to ...

Finger-pointers miss the mark: Ariz. shooter is to blame
Deranged gunmen are usually just that. Unhinged and homicidal. Periodically these lunatics unleash mayhem, make headlines and then, if they haven't killed themselves, spend the rest of their lives in Prisons or mental institutions. Sadly, they also become part of our national narrative. If you're older than 20, you're familiar with the perpetrators of several heinous incidents. The Virginia Tech murderer. The Fort Hood killer. The Oklahoma City bomber. The Beltway snipers. The Columbine shooters...

NTSB weighs benefits of air bags for small planes
Federal safety officials are considering whether small planes should be equipped with air bags and shoulder harness seatbelts — life-saving technology that has benefitted motorists for decades. The National Transportation Safety Board is set to release a study on Tuesday of 138 accidents involving planes equipped with air bags. The report is expected to highlight several cases in which air bags were critical to the survival of the pilot or passengers. There were 474 people killed in 1,474 ...

The Right Wing Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks
Andrew Sullivan has a compilation of some of the more prominent -- and vitriolic -- responses to the requests from just about everyone to take it down a notch.A survey of the bloggy scene suggests a rigid, uniform, passionate position that this Assassination has nothing whatsoever to do with violent Rhetoric and political polarization. It is as if some loony had just randomly shot some schoolkids or ran into a mall killing strangers. If you are looking for reflectiveness, you won't find it, in ...

Arizona gunman must have been a right-winger says Paulding liberals
(Paulding County, Georgia) - If the national tragedy shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle  Gifford by lone gunman Jared Loughner isn’t enough of a concern, you can always count on liberals in Paulding to impute anything and everything on those who are Republican, Conservative, and Tea Party Patriots in Paulding…and then state that those on the right cause violence or at least, encourage it. Then another liberal hack on the same Paulding blog has the gall to state th...

Michael Roth: Sowing the Rage
In the wake of the killings in Arizona we should not be talking about Sarah Palin, or about media elites and who should apologize to whom. We should be talking about the ease with which a very disturbed young man was able to plug his demons into a culture of rage cultivated by the Right. And then why he was able to buy an automatic weapon to turn his personal eccentricities into a public nightmare. "Energizing the base" has become just a euphemism for demonization, the glorification of macho ...