This is wrong:
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.”
Notice that there is no concern about the facts, just the political calculation of how to take advantage of an atrocity.
“So what if Sarah and the Tea Partiers had nothing to do with it, let’s blame them anyway.”
Sick.
BTW – Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols WERE associated with the militia movement and anti-government people. Bill Clinton didn’t try to pin the bombing on Bob Dole and the Republicans.
UPDATE:
Just so we’re clear, I’m not feeling sorry for the Tea Party or Sarah Palin. I think this is bad strategery and will backfire.
If the evidence showed that Loughner was a Tea Partying Palinista who was motivated by her target list then I would say go ahead and rub her nose in it.
But that is not what the evidence shows.
Filed under: General | Tagged: gabrielle giffords, Jared Loughner, Tucson Shooting |
The Confluence 
Not only are these new fangled dems adopting GOP policies, they are adopting GOP tactics. We are so f__ked.
Asshats.
Hillary 2012
The worst part is they’re not any good at them.
The GOPers might be morally bankrupt but they know how to play the game.
Well one thing is for sure. Things have changed again from worse to terrible.
Hillary 2012
Everything I read, tells me that the tragedy in AZ is closer to the Virginia Tech mayhem than to MLK or RFK.
http://www.hillaryis44.org/2011/01/09/the-dailykooks-left-and-the-arizona-shootings/#comments
If you haven’t already (and I’m quite sure you have), check out her comparison of rhetoric offered by Obumbles, as well as the GOP. i always thought it funny that the knee jerk reaction is for everybody to tone it down all of a sudden. Nobody said anything during the primaries in ’08 when a 2×4 was the weapon of choice against that one lady. Now all of a sudden everybody needs to chill.
Asshats.
Hillary 2012
If Loughner is a mentally disturbed person who lived in his own world and didn’t care what Palin said, she’ll use their feeding frenzy as proof that they used the tragedy for their own political purpose.
Yep.
She’s a master of political jujitsu.
I could not believe my not so good eyes, when I read that Palin was at fault within minutes of the tragedy. I had a whole bunch of piranhas attack me for not seeing the connection. I didn’t come back until later today to make my point with support that Loughner is very likely a mental case. Jeez!
The whole attack, within minutes of the tragedy, seemed like it came from the bowels of hell. Bad stuff.
Btw, it wasn’t at TC that the piranhas attacked me.
I said this in an earlier thread:
Suspecting that the shooting may have been related to the Tea Party and/or Sarah Palin is perfectly reasonable.
If a woman is murdered the cops know that statistically the most likely killer is her current or former husband or boyfriend, so they suspect anyone in that category. But suspicion isn’t guilt.
People should have waited for the evidence to come out before proclaiming Sarah’s guilt. They jumped the gun instead. And now we see many of the people who prematurely proclaimed Sarah’s guilt still insisting she bears some responsibility.
Soon we’ll hear jokes, like: How many obots does it take to turn a light bulb. Not smart.
That would be fine if the future jokes were just about Obots, but more likely the jokes will be about liberals/progressives. They’ll take the whole ship down with them.
Uhm, Dandy, the stern’s up above the water now.
Yea, you’re right. I’m an eternal optimist though.
Hillary might very well be Potus if it weren’t for Mark Penn the incompetent. But she chose him and he drove the campaign into a ditch. Big mistake.
She tried to hire David Axelrod but he was already booked. Bob Shrum is a perpetual loser and Joe Trippi isn’t much better. James Carville is retired from political consulting.
Who was she supposed to hire, Dick Morris?
That’s sad. I didn’t know that there were few competent campaign managers.
There are lots of good ones, but big name, experienced ones tend to have the connections that get things done. And after all, she did “win”.
I hear she’s smarter than Obama. Maybe her genius was absent on the day she made the hiring decision. Maybe it never occurred to her to look elsewhere, find someone new, not look at the same old names.
Of course he is a mental case. Anyone who picks up a gun and shoots people is a mental case. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t influenced by the context in which he lives. And the context in which he lives is dominated by violence, anger and guns. The populist right is heavily implicated in this, and pretending that it isn’t, and that it has no influence, just because you want to protect Sarah Palin in particular, is irresponsible in the extreme.
Loughner is 22 years old. Chances are he’s seen thousands of people killed in movies and on television. He’s also probably played thousands of hours of violent video games.
OTOH there is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE connecting him to the populist right.
Answer two questions for me:
1. How many violent crimes were committed in the U.S. last year?
2. How many of those crimes were politically motivated?
How many were at a “political rally” where the person shot was a “politician” and the shooter waded through the whole crowd to shoot the “politician” first with a shot to the head execution style? No I see your point it clearly was a random drive by shooting. NOT.
Last year? None
The year before? None
How many people were killed in random drive by shootings?
There is little doubt at this point that Giffords was the target. And there is also little doubt to my mind that the anti-woman, pro-violence, pro-rape contingent of the progressive movement does not have clean hands in this tragedy. Over at RL, Violet shows examples of the violence imagery the PDS trolls use. There’s a photo of Palin hung in effigy and another of a New York exhibit inviting visitors to pretend to shoot Palin with a rifle. After all the vicious misogyny of the past 2+ years, it is despicable (IMO) for the so-called progressive movement (aka D00d Nation) to go pointing fingers when they should be taking a hard look in the mirror.
Good point. And we here at TC have been good at calling them on that shit. And sadly we’ve been the target of the same.
And clearly in this case, Palin and the right had nothing to do with this. But we can still call them on their crap. We haven’t tended too because that’s sort of what we expect from them. We’re liberals and we just assume they’re batshit and will do that. Time to call them on their crap as well.
As far as I know, this is the first political assassination attempt of a woman in US history. Where are the feminists? AWOL as usual?
Wow, is it? That’s pretty sad.
I checked and there was another assassination attempt against a woman politicia. Fortunately she also survived. Now, brace for this… It was also in Arizona!
Mary Rose Wilcox (b. 1949) — also known as Mary Rose Garrido — of Phoenix, Maricopa County, Ariz. Born in Superior, Pinal County, Ariz., November 21, 1949. Daughter of John Garrido and Betty (Nunez) Garrido; married 1971 to Earl V. Wilcox. Democrat. Special assistant to U.S. Sen. Dennis DeConcini, 1977-83; member Phoenix City Council, 1983-93; Maricopa County Commissioner, 1993-; delegate to Democratic National Convention from Arizona, 1996, 2000, 2004 (alternate), 2008; shot and wounded on August 13, 1997, by Larry Marvin Naman, who was angry over her support for a quarter-cent sales tax to fund a sports stadium; newspaper publisher; restaurant owner. Female. Catholic. Mexican ancestry. Still living as of 2009.
http://politicalgraveyard.com/special/attempts.html
I don’t know if it is the first attemped political assassination of a woman – but I would guess it is the first attemped assassination of an elected woman office holder.
There’s little doubt that Giffords was the target, but was it her policies, her voting record, her gender, or the simple fact that a Congressonal Rep is not surrounded by security at all times and is therefore more available to the public than, say, POTUS, that determined the shooter’s choice of victim?
Apparently she was the target of this nut since 2007. And he even mentioned he was planning long term to do this. I don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that she was likely more conservative than the shooter or that she was the target of some progressive blogs for being a blue dog. Or anything else. I think it was a personal thing from some earlier interaction based mostly on the fact that the shooter was a complete nut.
That doesn’t mean the negative and violent type stuff from politicians, pundits, and the media (incl. those very blogs) didn’t have an impact and perhaps give him the extra push to do what he did. So Palin, the DNC, Obama, the media, etc have some blame. And they should all be called on it. But as we know, that sort of target shit has been around forever.
He lived 5 minutes from where the shooting took place. She was his local representative.
And was the murder of John Lennon musically motivated? Should we walk back the Rock Rhetoric?
You know a lot of people seriously blamed Yoko for that. SSDD.
Answer this one for me:
How many thrapist do we have for the mentally ill population of this country? Just what is their caseload numbers?
I personally have little to nothing invested in Sarah Palin’s political career. I just hate seeing the knee-jerk bashing and scapegoating of prominent women candidates by sexist activists across the political spectrum since women make easier political targets than men (excuse the metaphor). I also think truther conspiracy rhetoric is more dangerous to unstable susceptible minds than what people are characterizing as Palin rhetoric. That’s not for me a partisan bias as much as a view fwiw about the psychology of mentally disturbed nihilist radicals like this shooter. But let’s let the investigators and psychiatric professionals do their work for now, and make sure to keep the fallen and surviving victims in our thoughts. There will be plenty of time later for political incrimination where called for.
I don’t see Palin as holding any moral responsibility for this.
However, I’m not so sure the fringe right, while not legally responsible, doesn’t deserve some of the blame.
I think it is at least as likely that Loughner watched Glen Beck or listened to Rush Limbaugh. Maybe he likes Michelle Bachman. All the three have been guilty of more bad judgment that Gov. Palin, so I am not sure why the focus is on Gov. Palin. Except for PDS, of course.
The DLC had their own map with bulls-eye targets and it is common for parties to talk of targeting certain political races. We all remember the hate and violent imagery — from Democrats — directed to both candidates Clinton and Palin during 2008.
That said, I hope Palin’s map and the DLC map are revised and others carefully consider their language.
djmm
Got my Washington State Democratic Party renewal notice over the weekend. At the top of the letter, in a box was this:
(blockquote)ADVISORY WARNING
On January 5th, the Tea Party dominated Republican Caucus will take control
of the United States House of Representatives.
The 2O1O Republican Party of “NO” has transformed into tbe 2O11 party of
‘REPEAL” dedicated to embarrassing and defeating President Obama and setting.
up the Presidential campaign of ‘(take your pick …) Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin … anybody’s guess???(/blockquote)
Fear tactics of many varieties are used by both sides. Americans could use some self-confidence and logic so they can stand up to this junk and reject it. I’m returning my membership card with a letter to the party and zero money.
I think SP deserves some of the blame, along with thousands of others who use fear and/or violent incentives to get what they want. Singling her out isn’t accurate, though.
Briar:
Soldiers too?
Look. I am, on most counts, a lefty. And I could see right through the strategy from the moment it was undertaken. The left wing whackos are ecstatic that this has happened.
Not saddened. Not sorry. Not respectful. They are salivating over the blood of another women. It is sickening.
And, yes, I hope it will backfire.
A very good point! They were depressed by Obama’s trickle down, but now they found hatred as rallying point.
It’s called whipping up the base.
THIS.
Not saddened. Not sorry. Not respectful.
EAGER to use it politically, and using all the same talking points . Even using the death of a little girl, while admitting there is no proof that Palin is responsible.
Democratic Congress now suggesting written legislation to control “violent” speech, playing a frenzied political game.
It’s despicable.
Group called “21st Century Democrats” is now FUNDRAISING off the incident—by email.
Group was formed in 1986 by Sen Tom Harkin and Jim HIghtower.
Joined SEIU, Daily Kos, and others in 2009 to form a PAC called Accountability Now PAC.
F*cking FUNDRAISING.
Profiting off the death of a 9 year old girl.
I’m gonna be sick.
Article describing same at Memeorandum.
I have to agree, but she was the first female congresswoman to be assault with a bullet.
Correct me if I am wrong.
I find it hard to equate posters on internet blogs saying things as having the same weight as pundits pontificating on the national airwaves as far as influencing the national psyche. Again we miss an opportunity to make a point about the violence being urged by the Rushs, Coulters, Becks, Palins, etc. Instead here we are digging up any thing that equates Liberals to the Right Wingers and giving the Wingers a pass.
Didja notice the clip at the top of my post? That’s from Hardball, an MSNBC program. Those ARE pundits pontificating on the national airwaves.
Find me an example of “violence being urged” by mainstream rightwing pundits. Find me one.
Because as much as I heartily disagree with much of what they say, I have not seen or heard Rush, Coulter, Palin, et al “urging violence”. Heated vitriol? Yep. Lots of that on both sides. But not calls for violence.
Not Gov. Palin, but one example, after 911, Ms. Coulter suggested it would have been better to blow up the NY Times building, rather than the World Trade Center.
Another example, Michelle Bachman saying we could change the government by the ballot or by the bullet. (I thought it was wrong for Thomas Jefferson to make a similar statement.) The staff member of one of the new Republican congressmen from Florida talking about going feral in the hills with guns if her candidate lost the election.
Glen Beck and O’Reilly talking about baby killers would also fit here, I think. More evidence that they influenced the murderer of Dr. Tillman than there is that Loughner ever listened to Gov. Palin.
djmm
It’s quite a stretch for any of those things to be interpreted, esp. in context, as an “urging to violence”.
I can understand how you can view it that way but I see it differently. Cloaked in humor, but yes, some of the language is violent. Not just from the Right: Olbermann’s vile comment about Hillary Clinton was supposedly humorous but really violent imagery. And we all remember other such comments from the (supposed) Left.
I assign some degree of blame for Dr. Tillman’s murder to O’Reilly and Glen Beck (among others including certain preachers): they created a dangerous climate by painting abortion doctors as child killers. To do this on the air lends support and credibility to such beliefs — it makes them seem mainstream and acceptable. And such beliefs are enough for some to view killing such doctors as justifiable homicide.
Ms. Coulter’s language has sometimes been explicitly violent, urging the killing all the men in Iraq (as I think I recall) and converting others to Christianity. Humorous? Not if you are an Arab and have studied the Crusades or even more recent history. And remember that some factions in the military (some reports of the Air Force base in Colorado Springs) are right-wing, militaristic Christian (and anti- everything else) and might well agree with her.
djmm
I recall reading about Cindy Sheehan wishing she could turn back the clock, and use her two hands to strangle Geo. Bush as an infant. By definition that would be “infaticide”.
Sadly we have to include Beck in mainstream rightwing pundits. And he was definitely inciting to violence. Previous posts over the last couple of days have some examples. I think he’s probably the worst of them on all sides.
Examples, please? I’m serious. I think the guy is bonkers, but I’ve seen no calls for violence. I’ve seen a lot of looking at history, and comments that when things get bad enough things get violent. It has happened time and again. But that’s an observation, not an incitement.
See posts over the last day or two, search for Beck. RD sited a couple of examples. Others may have as well.
I don’t think community college can intervene with a student like this. The student can just drop the classes and disappear or the school can kick them out.
High school is the best place to catch this type of behavior. Parents can still do something and the school can demand it.
Maybe we will find out he was medicated when he was younger but stopped taking meds when he became independant. I understand that happens quite a bit.
They don’t seem to be able intervene when it comes to women raped either.
Here’s a story from the Daily News, about the guy’s insanity and how his classmates in high school as well as the teacher were terrified of him
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/01/10/2011-01-10_chilling_shrine_in_madmans_yard.html
This guy’s biography should be titled “Descent into Madness.”
How come nobody tried to get him help?
Right, and where are his parents in all of this? There has been no mention of them that I have seen. There was a piece this morning about finding some of his letters in his parents safe. Something isn’t making sense here.
Parents are often in denial about their child’s mental illness.
I suspect this man may have been treated/medicated as a young person but is now an adult. Even if they live at home, it is really hard to force medication or intervene when they are adults.
I have a kid roughly this one’s age with asthma – I’m pretty sure he doesn’t keep up with his daily meds because he isn’t convinced he needs them or he just forgets. He is too old to baby and needs to be able to manage himself.
I am SURE his parents never DREAMED he was violent. If he had a record of violence it would be all over the news – instead the news is digging up email of people who thought he was scary.
It’s called denial…….he was such a good kid, but when he used drugs/alochol he was asshole.
Some people must be immune to cognitive dissonance. Either than or they’re dishonest.
I was just at a lefty blog that has been arguing that WikiLeaks is wonderful because it is exposing how corrupt and evil our government is.
Now they are arguing that Jared Loughner must be a wingnut because he is paranoid of government.
HELLO?
Amazing, isn’t it? Sheesh
That’s funny as hell. Or sad as hell. Can’t decide.
Makes you crazy.
WSJ now reporting that Loughner was a 9-11 Truther.
That’s hardly a rightwing , Tea Party belief.
But you won’t hear any pundits on MSNBC reveal that information.
And we all know why not.
The whole thing reminds me of how Catcher in the Rye was blamed for Mark David Chapman’s assassination of John Lennon.
“There must be a connection here someplace!”
And they call us crazy. Wait, OK, we may be crazy, but they’re really crazy. 🙂
the early evidence shows that this guy was obsessed with the congresswoman long before the tea party or Sarah Palin’s target map.
The fact is that the word “target” is a big part of our political language and has always been. We talk about targeted districts, target audiences, targeted constituencies.
I blame people like Limbaugh for the ugliness of the political debate, but I also blame people on the left (like Olbermann) and in the center who love nothing more than a food fight in the public debate.
Sarah Palin’s target graphic is NOT to blame. She is not to blame and anyone on the left who wants to make that point will lose me and convince me that they are stupid, clueless and not worth listening to.
Joe Scarborough made a point a few minutes ago and I have to give him credit for admitting that the current political ugliness started with the attacks on Clinton in 1992. And guess what, the CDS infested left grabbed right on to that ugliness and perpetuated it in 2000 against Gore and in 2008 against Hillary Clinton as if she were only and extension of Bill Clinton.
I am a liberal, but I am as sick of the rhetoric on the left as I am the the rhetoric on the right.
Hear, hear!
Honk! Honk!
Amen to that. I have been busy hiding posts in my Facebook feed so I don’t get take the bait and pick fights.
Great idea, ugsome. I surely need to do the same.
Well said!!
djmm
We didn’t stand for it then, and will not now.
I saw this on another site, from the guy who ran against Giffords:
Get on Target for Victory in November Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly
If it’s real, this is much more likely to have caught the shooter’s eye than anything else. It’s horrifying.
But he’s not running for POTUS, so nobody really cares about him.
They’re SOOOOO transparent. And they assume we’re too stupid to see it.
And THAT will cost them, big time.
Sheesh.
I doubt it. This story will play into two groups. Firstly, the MSM Republicans will use this to get rid of Palin and the Tea Party people. Secondly, the Obots and the Dems who supported O will try and use this to play the race and victim card all the while using this issue to stymie dissent and debate. If you argue or challenge their positions or policy you will need to be silenced. The worst thing is that this will give greater freedom to the Congess and the President to do whatever they damn well please and no one will be able to really speak up or challenge their positions. Sort of like the Airlines who can do whatever they want and if you raise your voice you will be arrested. The government will never look at what they have done and feel any responsibility. Start insane wars, destroy the economy, steal people’s homes, threatening to destroy Social Security, and other
obscene actions are ignored as business as usual. But, now the Congress is going to pass laws to shut people up and make them be nice. Speak up and you will be targeted as a troublemaker. Maybe I am becoming paranoid.
I heard Steny Hoyer in a press conference say “These teapartiers must come from very unhappy families…” Then, of course, a coupla tsk tsks, and a “sympathetic” look.
All this crap does is push more people away from the Dem Party. If Steny thinks otherwise, he’s a bigger fool than I thought he was.
Tea Partiers aren’t going away.
But he’s a HE so nobody really cares.
Ha. Indigo, you are right.
Maybe he thought he thought he was going to a knife fight so he brought a gun?
Touche’
The left blogosphere and media are idiots. Even just from a political standpoint, exploiting this tragedy to rail against the evil right is going to backfire.
Americans are not stupid or ill-informed, and the media already has a huge “trust deficit” with the public. If you are going to make accusations to an audience who already views you with a jaundiced eye, you’d better have facts on your side. Because when it turns out you don’t, and it was a thin attempt to rally some manufactured outrage at “the enemy”, guess who ends up looking the ass?
I predict a disgusted backlash, and even more dismissal of and distrust of the media and of the left by the public. Just from a strategic angle, this was dumb, as well as wrong.
Yes, and this is why I don’t agree that the target graphic necessarily ends SP’s political career: the people pushing the link between that and the shooting are all the usual ones on the left. Anyone outside that group will not notice, or if they do they be be unmoved or positively annoyed.
*sigh* “My” side does this repeatedly. Comes up with some insane meme that they get all excited over, and go into paroxysms of echo-chamber glee over.
And no one other than those already on their side are going to be moved by it. It’s great for back-slapping all around within the club, but does nothing but alienate half the country.
I despair of the left sometimes, I really do. They seem utterly clueless as to how a big chunk of this country thinks. Anyone who thinks differently from them must be a raving RW nutjob minority. Um, no. There are those out there, but then there’s your average non-political Joe/Jane whom the left keeps shoving away with crap like this.
It will backfire. And I will once again be banging my head on my desk muttering “I told you so, you morons.”
Honkity honk honk honk!
Doesn’t anyone know how to play this game?
Jaysus.
Maybe just maybe Loughner was just a stalker! Why can’t we wait until the facts are in?
A lot of facts are in, and it looks like he was exactly a crazy stalker, planning this since 2007.
Jack Schafer over at Slate pretty much speaks for me:
http://www.slate.com/id/2280616/
The bar for speech “inciting violence” is very high in this country, and for good reason. I’d like for it to remain so. No one, not even the RW pundits I despise the most, ever encouraged their listeners to go shoot anyone. Not once. And when you have to resort to vagaries like “it was implied, or an unbalanced person could have heard it that way, then you are going down a very dangerous road indeed. No thanks. I really like living in a country where I can freely and off-handedly say “I hope GWB chokes on his damn hotdog at that ballgame”.
Thank you. I’m with you.
Megyn Kelly interviewed PMA County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik yesterday—-an excellent interview.
Dupnik finally admitted there was absolutely no evidence connecting Loughner to any political pundit or personna . What he said was just his OPINION (his own words).
When asked if a Sheriff in a professional investigative environment should be indulging in his “opinion” (ie, no evidence), he just smiled and said “That’s for the listeners to decide.”
Thank God the FBI is doing the rest of the investigation. Dupnik sounds very unprofessional to me.
He’s looking to higher office himself.
Yup. A Democrat in a Democratic county, speaking to constituents on his own behalf.
Verrrrry unprofessional.
Somewhat on a tangent: Here is another thing that annoys me about the meme of “well, it must be the TPs & SP’s fault anyhoo because they promote violence through their rhetoric.”
Aside from the sheer hypocrisy, as detailed by Violet at her blog, I find it reminiscent of abuser tactics. It is typical of an abuser to scapegoat a victim — “she won’t do what I say! Now see what happened!”
Apparently if only the TP would go home and be good serfs, and if SP would just go back to Alaska and fish, there would be no gun violence against anyone on the left.
If the right bear any responsibility for this, it is for opposing a universal health care safety net that MIGHt have caught this guy before he exploded. But seeing as how it’s actually the Dems who are now most gung-ho about preventing UHC and cutting safety nets, I can’t even point that finger anymore.
Trust me: this reaction is ALLLLLLL about 2012. Nothing more.
Bulleyes!
Uh-oh, saying bulls eye means you’re inciting! to violence! eleventyone!!!!!!!!!!!!
😛
The political rhetoric and punditry is too violent it is especially violent and demeaning of female politicians. That the left and CNN are scape goating SP for their favorite political identity grudge to me is just a joke.
Check out the new pic of the guy at Drudge.
Worth a thousand words…..