27 replies to this topic

[duke_Qa]

So here we are, with one of the bloodier examples of what the fine political polarization and fierce rhetoric the last 10 years have caused in the US.

A shooting occurred near Tucson, Arizona, on January 8, 2011: twenty people were shot, six of them fatally, during United States Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' meeting with constituents held in a Safeway supermarket parking lot in Casas Adobes. The dead include the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for Arizona, John McCarthy Roll; a nine-year-old girl; and a congressional aide. Representative Giffords, a Democrat representing Arizona's 8th congressional district who was said to be the target of the attack, was shot through the head at close range and is in critical condition. A 22-year-old local man, Jared Lee Loughner, was arrested at the scene, and is being questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The motive for the shooting is currently unclear, as the suspect is not talking and has invoked his rights against self-incrimination. The attack was the first shooting of an elected U.S. politician since the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in March 1981.

http://en.wikipedia....Tucson_shooting
http://www.cnn.com/2...dex.html?hpt=C1

I have to say, this was a long time coming, and it can probably be put squarely at the feet of right wing radicals. This poster from back in the election had crosshairs on the top 20 moderate/liberal politicians that tea-party politicians were trying to defeat in the elections.

In 2010, after her office had been vandalized, Giffords had said; "We're in Sarah Palin's 'targeted' list, but the thing is that the way she has it depicted, we're in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize that there are consequences to that action.

also, twitter messages like this, «Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" Pls see my Facebook page.», does not look good after this sort of event.

Keith Olberman also apparently made a pretty ruthless attack on this situation, so I link that. Never heard of him before, but anyone that goes a bit in the other direction should be applauded.

Edited by duke_Qa, 09 January 2011 - 10:36 PM.

[Allathar]

Political murders are of all the time, I wouldn't blame it on the current climate. That said, this is incredibly sad of course.

[Copaman]

Happened no more than 4 blocks from where I used to live. Weird as hell.

Sounds to me like the kid listened to a bit too much Insane Clown Posse and was a huge fan of the far right... it's a shame that the cops didn't get a bullet in his head, because he'll probably be able to plea Insanity to the charges and get away with it.

[Mathijs]

Oh, America.

[Copaman]

There's crazies everywhere

We have yet to have anyone blow themselves up in the name of God Almighty and the 42 Virgins that await them in heaven.


So at least we've got that going for us...

[Beowulf]

Can't say I can disagree with Olbermann...

[duke_Qa]

I don't know if i prefer that they blow themselves up for the great spagetti monster in the sky, or for the right to believe in mind-control and that the government is out to get you.

This guy was apparently during college trying to preach his thoughts during college class, and when he was shot down he proclaimed his right of free speech as an argument to keep on preaching. If someone in a class I was going to started sprouting conspiracy theories and refused to shut up because of his right to "free speech", I'd get up and tell him "you can have your own freedom of speech when you pay for it yourself and gather your own crowd. Right now you are wasting the school and the students time, which we rather spend on class instead of your opinions".

I guess someone tried to tell him that but that he was too socially retarded and self-interested to consider that the world does not revolve around him.

[Vortigern]

Freedom of speech also implies freedom to ignore someone. I guess nobody pointed that out to this dickhead.

[Námo]

I have to say, this was a long time coming, and it can probably be put squarely at the feet of right wing radicals. ...

The assassin was not a Tea-partier, but a pro-Marxist, anti-flag, anti-Constitution, anti-religious crackpot obsessed with the 2012 prophecy; among his favorite books were The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf, and in this favorite video at his YouTube account the US flag is torched. Source: Gateway Pundit

Tweets from people who did know him describes him as "leftwing and quite liberal":

In my opinion, that doesn't mean you in any way can blame his actions on the Liberals ... but I'm not surprised, that the politically correct mainstrem media are so biased, that they imediately see ghosts and conspiracies, and that some are trying to make political advantage of this:

One veteran Democratic operative, who blames overheated rhetoric for the shooting, said President Barack Obama should carefully but forcefully do what his predecessor did.

"They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers," said the Democrat. "Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people."

Another Democratic strategist said the similarity is that Tucson and Oklahoma City both "take place in a climate of bitter and virulent rhetoric against the government and Democrats."

This Democrat said that the time had come to insist that Republicans stand up when, for example, a figure such as Fox News commentator Glenn Beck says something incendiary.

Source: BigPeace

What these Demacrats forget, is that president Obama also uses such rhetoric, like urging Latinos to "punish our enemies" and "if they bring a knife to the fight we bring a gun" aimed at the Republicans.

This poster from back in the election had crosshairs on the top 20 moderate/liberal politicians that tea-party politicians were trying to defeat in the elections.

Well, there's no new in this, it's been used in a similar way by the Democrats:

Got it? "Targeting strategy" for Democrats who hope to go behind "enemy lines" and score a bullseye by nailing the target. That comes from the the Democratic Leadership Committee website in 2004.

You remember that map, right? It comes from — what do you know! — the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee website. And there’s more. Each of those tokens leads you to a “targeted Republican,” Thaddeus McCotter, for example:

read it all at: Pajamas Media: How to Turn a tragedy into an emetic

One of the more appalling misuses of the tragic Tucson killing: a Democrat group using the Giffords shooting for fundraiser:

An extreme, left-wing Democrat group calling itself 21st Century Democrats has had the gall to send out an email blast using as a fundraising tool Saturday’s criminal shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona. Judge John Roll and four others were killed in the incident, one of them a 9-year-old girl, but these Democrats are ignorant enough to be using this incident to try and squeeze donations from its supporters. Some might think the action of 21st Century Democrats is itself a crime — a crime against decency.

Source: BigGovernment

[Elvenlord]

Just going to leave this bit:
Him being liberal in 2007 doesn't mean shit. I was conservative back then. I've since changed some of my views.

[Vortigern]

How did they use it as a fundraiser? Did they put blown-up pictures of a dead little girl on billboards with slogans like "Republicans want to kill your daughter?" If not, I don't really see the problem. American politics requires huge amounts of money. If you can use a tragedy like this to earn what you need, you damn well do it.

[Mathijs]

Well, I guess we can conclude that people on both sides of the fence are raving gun-toting lunatics.

[Námo]

There have been a lot of very sharp comments on the MSM's reports on the tragic Tucson killings. Andrew Klavan's is one of the best I've seen so far ... this is not the first case, neither will it be the last, but the writing on the wall is clear: the Narrative of the Leftish Church is slowly crumbling, and the more desperate they cling to it, the faster the bubble of delusion will burst.

... while little useful can be said about the murders themselves, the rush to narrative of our dishonest and increasingly desperate leftist media does have to be addressed. The Left — which has been unable to discover any common feature uniting acts of Islamist violence worldwide — nonetheless instantly noticed a bridge between the Tucson shooting and its own political opponents ... 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, have made fun of it in routines.

But never mind that, because the Left’s sudden talk about incendiary political rhetoric in the wake of the Arizona shooting isn’t really about political rhetoric at all. It’s about the real-world failure of leftist policies everywhere — the bankrupting of nations and states by greedy unions and unfundable social programs, the destruction of inner cities by identity politics, and the appeasement of Muslim extremists in the face of worldwide jihad, not to mention the frequently fatal effects of delirious environmentalism. Europe is in debt and on fire. American citizens are in political revolt. Even the most left-wing president ever is making desperate overtures to his right.

But all that might be tolerable to leftists if they weren’t starting to lose control of the one weapon in which they have the most faith: the narrative. The narrative is what leftists believe in instead of the truth. If they can blame George W. Bush for the economic crisis, if they can make Sarah Palin out to be an idiot, if they can call the Tea Party racist until you think it must be true, they might yet retain power in spite of the international disgrace of their ideas. And though they still mostly dominate the narrative on the three broadcast networks, most cable stations, most newspapers, and much of Hollywood, nonetheless Fox News, talk radio, the Internet, and the Wall Street Journal have begun to respond in ways they can’t ignore.

That’s the hateful rhetoric they’re talking about: conservatives interrupting the stream of leftist invective in order to dismantle their arguments with the facts. As for leftists’ reaction to the Arizona shooting, call it Narrative Hysteria: a frantic attempt to capitalize on calamity by casting their opponents, not merely as racist or sexist or Islamophobic this time, but as somehow responsible for an act of madness and evil. Shame on them.

Read it all at City Journal: The Hateful Left - Where incendiary political rhetoric truly resides in America

For a clear and precise explanation of "The Narrative", se this clip:

[duke_Qa]

You are starting to get on my nerves namo, You copy-paste yet again instead of arguing on your own.
These definitions of left-side are insane. The road up to this event is paved with right-wing conservative bigotry.

- Right for crazies to buy easily concealed handguns? Right-wing.
- The religious belief that federal government is a curse upon mankind? Right-wing.
- Generally sprouting freedom of speech/any other constitutional right as a god-given right to be an irrational inconsiderate ass? Right wing.
- Attacking an assembly of moderate democrats that won over the tea-party republican candidate? Seems pretty right-wing to me.


There is nothing left-wing about this event whatsoever. Marx wrote tons of books, not just on the proletariat but also anti-semitic philosophies. In everyday life, Marx was another elitist hack who wrote to make a living. Very right-wing imo. "Mein kampf" as an example of a left-wing book? The only socialistic thing about national-socialism is that everyone burns in the end. Where has the so-called left wing part of American politics been doing while the right-wing was fueling the fires of grassroot fanatism? They made a massive moderate demonstration against polarization and pleaded for Americans to work together through this economic crisis.

Edited by duke_Qa, 10 January 2011 - 11:04 PM.

[Pasidon]

A shooting occurred near Tucson, Arizona, on January 8, 2011: twenty people were shot, six of them fatally, during United States Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' meeting with constituents held in a Safeway supermarket parking lot in Casas Adobes.

You are starting to get on my nerves namo

This year is starting off good...

[Spartan184]

I live in Tucson and it just so happens that my Social Studies teacher knew one of the persons that got shot and was close friends with them. We spent my social studies period talking about it. Sad things, I mostly feel sad for the little girl dieing.

[Pasidon]

You're talking about dead people in social studies? Shouldn't that be done in history? Ho-ho... Ripe. Primitive... Too soon?

I dunno why, but Sarah Pailn is starting to look cooler after time goes by. Excluding her TV show... It's like a good ol' revoluti'ama'cation is going down, just like the ol' west again.

[Copaman]

I feel like Namo isn't so much arguing as he is bringing up interesting and relevant facts.

You can't call it a completely right wing thing if the guy was said to be a liberal. You can't blame it on the "Political Hit List" if the Demmies did the same thing a few years ago. Namo is doing precisely what the Republicans or the Tea Party should be doing if they don't want it pinned on their shoulders.

The shooter was insane. That is the conclusion I have come down to. The guy is a wackjob and had a gun, thought he'd get his message out by killing people. This is not new. We have seen it before. To say that it was the Right's fault... is a bit preposterous to me, but I can see where it's coming from. Honestly if the guy killed a Republican, the GOP would be up in arms with the information that Namo has shown and would be trying to pin it on the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi.

Sarah Palin makes her image being a bit of a right wing radical and that's not okay with a. American Media and b. The White House/Democrats. Hence they are trying to make her look bad with this. It's dirty politics but it's politics and I'd expect no less from America.

I know she's a crazy person who isn't the best candidate for President. Hence, I will not vote for her. I won't vote Obama either, I don't think, unless he does a few things between now and then and has a slight personality change.

[mike_]

Obama's a celebrity, Copa, not a politician.

[Pasidon]

Well said.

Sarah Palin makes her image being a bit of a right wing radical and that's not okay with a. American Media and b. The White House/Democrats.

She's so awesome.