Jaevyn Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 Sarah Palin started off the day by comparing being called out on her rhetoric to the historical plight of European Jews. Yes, compare rhetoric to events of the holocaust. I'm sure that not only European Jews will be offended by her latest remarks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Avlectus Posted January 14, 2011 Share Posted January 14, 2011 Obamacare is designed to euthanise native white American descendants of the Jaredites and Obama is Satan's boyfriend. Why you Westborough Baptist! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommycat Posted January 15, 2011 Share Posted January 15, 2011 Okay, this is ridiculous. I mean honestly people are blaming literally everything Republican. Now, they are blaming SB1070 for the shooting... What the... REALLY? Did I miss something and Laughner was opposed to SB1070, and Giffords was FOR it? Or was it the other way around. Was it because of his "I hope that you are literate" comments? Because he called his white friends illiterate, which indicates that those comments had little to do with citizenship. Sheesh. Instead of doing as Obama said and coming together, people are doing EXACTLY what he asked us NOT to do. Using this tragedy to further separate ourselves. The NPR contributor that used it as an opportunity to push her "brown people" agenda. Heck she said that she sighed in relief that it was a "gringo" instead of a Latino last name. Ya know what, I wasn't looking for it to be ANY race. Besides, that debate(which has NOTHING to do with this crime) was not about Latinos, but about ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION! I know it's a hard concept for her to grasp, but we're FOR legal immigrants. Just, ya know, not a fan of people breaking laws... So lets run down the list, so far it's been: The Tea Party Talk Radio(Rush Limbaugh specifically) Sarah Palin And now SB1070? Sheesh! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jae Onasi Posted January 15, 2011 Share Posted January 15, 2011 The Republicans and Tea-Partiers are not the only ones who use target maps and "target" rhetoric. Giffords was on Daily Kos' "hit list" in 2008 for not being liberal enough. The Democratic Leadership Council had bullseye targets pasted all over the US map in 2004: Charles Krauthammer wrote a most insightful article that appeared in the Washington Post today. Since he is a board certified psychiatrist who received his MD from Harvard Medical School, in addition to being a Pulitzer-prize-winning writer, I take his opinion on Loughner's condition seriously, with the caveat that one can't truly diagnose long-distance. That being said, anyone who's taken any kind of abnormal psychology course will recognize that Loughner very likely is a paranoid schizophrenic. Here is the text of Krauthammer's op-ed column: By Charles Krauthammer Wednesday, January 12, 2011 The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the "climate of hate" created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires. The verdict: Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence. As killers go, Jared Loughner is not reticent. Yet among all his writings, postings, videos and other ravings - and in all the testimony from all the people who knew him - there is not a single reference to any of these supposed accessories to murder. Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head. A climate of hate? This man lived within his very own private climate. "His thoughts were unrelated to anything in our world," said the teacher of Loughner's philosophy class at Pima Community College. "He was very disconnected from reality," said classmate Lydian Ali. "You know how it is when you talk to someone who's mentally ill and they're just not there?" said neighbor Jason Johnson. "It was like he was in his own world." His ravings, said one high school classmate, were interspersed with "unnerving, long stupors of silence" during which he would "stare fixedly at his buddies," reported the Wall Street Journal. His own writings are confused, incoherent, punctuated with private numerology and inscrutable taxonomy. He warns of government brainwashing and thought control through "grammar." He was obsessed with "conscious dreaming," a fairly good synonym for hallucinations. This is not political behavior. These are the signs of a clinical thought disorder - ideas disconnected from each other, incoherent, delusional, detached from reality. These are all the hallmarks of a paranoid schizophrenic. And a dangerous one. A classmate found him so terrifyingly mentally disturbed that, she e-mailed friends and family, she expected to find his picture on TV after his perpetrating a mass murder. This was no idle speculation: In class "I sit by the door with my purse handy" so that she could get out fast when the shooting began. Furthermore, the available evidence dates Loughner's fixation on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to at least 2007, when he attended a town hall of hers and felt slighted by her response. In 2007, no one had heard of Sarah Palin. Glenn Beck was still toiling on Headline News. There was no Tea Party or health-care reform. The only climate of hate was the pervasive post-Iraq campaign of vilification of George W. Bush, nicely captured by a New Republic editor who had begun an article thus: "I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it." Finally, the charge that the metaphors used by Palin and others were inciting violence is ridiculous. Everyone uses warlike metaphors in describing politics. When Barack Obama said at a 2008 fundraiser in Philadelphia, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," he was hardly inciting violence. Why? Because fighting and warfare are the most routine of political metaphors. And for obvious reasons. Historically speaking, all democratic politics is a sublimation of the ancient route to power - military conquest. That's why the language persists. That's why we say without any self-consciousness such things as "battleground states" or "targeting" opponents. Indeed, the very word for an electoral contest - "campaign" - is an appropriation from warfare. When profiles of Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, noted that he once sent a dead fish to a pollster who displeased him, a characteristically subtle statement carrying more than a whiff of malice and murder, it was considered a charming example of excessive - and creative - political enthusiasm. When Senate candidate Joe Manchin dispensed with metaphor and simply fired a bullet through the cap-and-trade bill - while intoning, "I'll take dead aim at [it]" - he was hardly assailed with complaints about violations of civil discourse or invitations to murder. Did Manchin push Loughner over the top? Did Emanuel's little Mafia imitation create a climate for political violence? The very questions are absurd - unless you're the New York Times and you substitute the name Sarah Palin. The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's? (link here) Loughner is, rather bluntly, bat-sh#t crazy. Blaming it on Palin, the Daily Kos, or anyone else BUT Loughner is ill-informed at best and disingenuous at worst. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Totenkopf Posted January 15, 2011 Share Posted January 15, 2011 @TC: I see the pro-2nd Amendment/NRA types being added (despite Giffords being pro-gun) and maybe even the 1st Amendment as well (which encompasses the first 3 on your list). @Jae--I especially liked that last line in the piece. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimartin Posted January 15, 2011 Share Posted January 15, 2011 Yea, Yea all liberals are blaming the Republicans and the poor right wing is not blaming the liberals. Guess someone forgot to send the memo to Rush. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Totenkopf Posted January 15, 2011 Share Posted January 15, 2011 Most of what I've seen and heard has been the right slamming the left for the sleazy move of immediately pinning the shooting on "right-wing rhetoric". The "left" can't really complain when they cast the first stone. But seriously, who's saying ALL liberals anyway.. it's mostly the professional left-wing punditry and political types that keep picking this fight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Q Posted January 15, 2011 Share Posted January 15, 2011 This thread is a wonderful example of just how pervasive the propaganda has become throughout the media; on both the left and right. It's almost as if they want us to start killing each other. On the bright side, maybe this incident will cause some people to realize that their own vaunted news source is just as full of crap as the one that they've been deriding ad nauseam. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimartin Posted January 15, 2011 Share Posted January 15, 2011 Most of what I've seen and heard...Perhaps Evil Q is correct, but it is our own bias that let us see and hear only what we want to see and hear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JediAthos Posted January 15, 2011 Share Posted January 15, 2011 On the bright side, maybe this incident will cause some people to realize that their own vaunted news source is just as full of crap as the one that they've been deriding ad nauseam. I can't stand the national "news" outlets in the U.S. Once upon a time they may have been just news stations, but now they're not anything resembling journalists. Typically I get my news from the AP or Reuters or I've even been known to listen to the BBC from time to time...I find much less rhetoric and opinion in these sources. @thread: While I'm not opposed to the thought that words can be powerful enough to influence people...the people that those words would influence to commit violent acts have to already be unstable imo. As was pointed out by the article that Jae posted Loughner was already nuts...nobody drove him to this except the voices his own delusional head. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Totenkopf Posted January 15, 2011 Share Posted January 15, 2011 Well, seeing as how I've heard from "both" sides, I guess they're all arguably full of crap. Personal biases notwithstanding, being first out the gate to pin the event on someone's rhetoric (used by both sides, really....see Jae's piece by Krauthammer), doesn't give that side the moral highground to complain when the other side fires back. It would be nice (though maybe boring) if both sides could get along w/o this fractious bs getting in the way of doing the "peoples' work". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimartin Posted January 15, 2011 Share Posted January 15, 2011 (..see Jae's piece by Krauthammer)Not exactly an unbiased source when you consider Rush wanted to name his future child after the man, well until now. Seems once you say something nice and accurate about a liberal you get on Rush’s crap list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommycat Posted January 15, 2011 Share Posted January 15, 2011 Oh mim, I could easily have thrown out the things that the conservatives have blamed it on, but those are pretty much on talk radio, and not really making it to CNN. Here's what the Conservatives have blamed Mental disorder(pretty much steadily) Drug use(makes more sense than blaming Palin) Liberals(thanks Rush) Liberal media(thanks Rush) His lack of religion(Thanks Rush) Music(thanks again Rush). But honestly what most of the talking heads on the conservative side have been doing(Rush aside) is saying "Woah there buddy. Take a look at yourselves before you start blaming us. This guy was a nutjob. Politics didn't have anything to do with it." Just as I've done here. We've been on the defensive from the start. Conservatives have been the ones attacked repeatedly. I haven't heard the conservatives actually attack anyone so much as say, "It doesn't make sense to blame us, he was called Liberal by his friend." At most conservatives have called Laughner a Liberal(which is not true, but an understandable mistake). That's been my point through this entire thread. Blaming it on a political party is completely irresponsible until you can validate that he had a connection to that party. And as more news has come out, we have seen nothing to connect him to conservatives(or Liberals, but since this thread started out being hostile to Conservatives, and nearly every accusation has been from the Left...). Nothing to connect him to the Tea Party. Nothing to connect him to the "gunsights" posted in the top level. Quite frankly it would be nice if those who used this as an opportunity to bash the conservatives would be big enough to admit they were wrong. But they won't because SOMEHOW it had to be the conservatives' pervasive hate speech that pushed Laughner to do this. In their minds conservatives are such a wrong in this world that it's okay to throw poo at them whether true or not. In other words, they are Rush Limbaughs of the Left. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Totenkopf Posted January 15, 2011 Share Posted January 15, 2011 Not exactly an unbiased source when you consider Rush wanted to name his future child after the man, well until now. Seems once you say something nice and accurate about a liberal you get on Rush’s crap list. In a guest post on National Review's The Corner blog, Krauthammer explains this is the just result he'd been hoping for. "Now you know why I returned Rush’s volley on Fox last night: I’ve just saved that poor little girl a world of hurt." At least he's got a sense of humor. His criticisms are valid, though, regardless of whatever bias you seem to think he has. Still, I believe I saw him a few weeks ago say he'd probably lost his conservative "street cred" over something else he praised/agreed w/BO over (don't remember specific issue). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jae Onasi Posted January 15, 2011 Share Posted January 15, 2011 This thread is a wonderful example of just how pervasive the propaganda has become throughout the media; on both the left and right. (emphasis mine here) I totally agree. Had this been a Republican that got shot, I'm sure the GOP would have done exactly the same and posted the DLC target map all over the net. The only reason I posted that was to show that the Dems were utilizing this to try to slam the Tea-Partiers. Had the situation been reversed, however, I have no illusions that the far right would have used it to slam liberal Dems, too. I think if that had been the case, Krauthammer would have slammed the GOP for doing that, too. He may have gotten more conservative as he gains years, but he's nothing if not honest in his assessments. It's a sad commentary on today's "journalism". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Working Class Hero Posted January 16, 2011 Share Posted January 16, 2011 We've been on the defensive from the start. Lolz. It never ceases to amaze me how the right is always the victim. Caught the aftermath of the speech and Krauthammer seemed overall impressed w/the prez's performance. I'm sorry, but I have to say this: The very first post you made about the speech was about what somebody else thought of it. Believe it or not, if I wanted to know Krauthammer thought about it I would go to his site. I want to know what you think about it. --I didn't really think the speech was that great, to be honest. I understand fully that da prez has to make a public showing, since a congresswoman almost died, but I don't really care about the other people. I'm sorry, but people die all the time and in greater numbers. At times, I felt like I was hearing George W speak. Obama really tried that American patriotism rhetoric, which always leaves me feeling ill. Show spoiler (hidden content - requires Javascript to show) Also, it's pathetic when our president calls America a democracy. Clearly, he needs to re-take high school history. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabretooth Posted January 16, 2011 Share Posted January 16, 2011 Show spoiler (hidden content - requires Javascript to show) Also, it's pathetic when our president calls America a democracy. Clearly, he needs to re-take high school history. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Working Class Hero Posted January 16, 2011 Share Posted January 16, 2011 Uh....I guess you're being serious asking if I'm not being serious? Unless my dictionary and history professors have failed me, we (America) have a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabretooth Posted January 16, 2011 Share Posted January 16, 2011 Unless my dictionary and history professors have failed me, we (America) have a constitutional republic, not a democracy. I think your president is referring to democracy as in the doctrine and not the hard-and-fast political system, duder. Besides, America is the world's largest exporter of freedom and democracy, everyone knows that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Totenkopf Posted January 16, 2011 Share Posted January 16, 2011 I'm sorry, but I have to say this: The very first post you made about the speech was about what somebody else thought of it. Believe it or not, if I wanted to know Krauthammer thought about it I would go to his site. I want to know what you think about it. Well, this is what I posted after and was responding to specifically: I’ve cleaned up most of the off topic source arguments; if anyone sees anything else please use the report button and not the reply button. I expected to come back this morning to see the spin from the Memorial Service and everyone’s impression on the President speech instead I get the tired FoxNews arguments. Since I obviously missed the speech, I couldn't have posted my own impression of it anyway. Unless my dictionary and history professors have failed me, we (America) have a constitutional republic, not a democracy. I find that mistake annoying as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimartin Posted January 16, 2011 Share Posted January 16, 2011 I find that mistake annoying as well. It wasn't a mistake... I believe Sabre hit the nail on the head. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Totenkopf Posted January 16, 2011 Share Posted January 16, 2011 Wasn't addressing whether BO was taking some kind of license w/the term, rather that a lot of people often call America a democracy when in fact it isn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimartin Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 60 Minutes had an interesting story on Loughner tonight. The video isn’t available at the moment, but if you get a chance I thought it was an enlightening story. One of the most interesting things I learned was that he went into Safeway to get change for a $20. to pay a $15. cab fare. Timeline 60 Minutes also talked to experts with the Secret Service that pretty much said most assassinations have little to nothing to do the politics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommycat Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 Actually calling it a Republic is only part of it. Yes, we are a democracy, but specifically we are a Democratic Republic. Lolz. It never ceases to amaze me how the right is always the victim. Not saying the right is always the victim. But from the beginning of this the Right has been demonized. So, it is fair to say that from the beginning of this, the Right has been on the defensive. They've had to battle against the near constant assault of people like yourself who just want another reason to hate the Right. I agree with Jae though that if it had been one of the right that was targeted, they probably would have done the same thing. I just hope that I would be intellectually honest enough to not blame the Left or their rhetoric with no facts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jae Onasi Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 Source The Tea Party promised to take America back from the clutches of commie Muslims, and they're doing it one step at a time; frontier justice-style baby. You ain't going to find that ad on Palin's website now, as she's probably avoiding any implication of motivating/condoning a political assassination and/or terrorist attack. But just in case: I'll leave you to draw the conclusions, friend-o. This is the OP, minus the pictures. This is an accusation by someone who is liberal, directly accusing a conservative of inciting a senseless, insane act of brutality. His comments mirror a lot of what was published nearly immediately after the shooting. This accusation has since been proven utterly, completely wrong. I have yet to see anyone apologize for making these irresponsible charges, and I find this to be a sad commentary on (mostly journalistic) "integrity". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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